Like Lady Louise Windsor, I grafted in a summer job as a teen – Andrew should have given it a go, says Vanessa Feltz
BEING a teenager used to involve summers of stacking shelves or delivering newspapers to earn extra money.
But the number of young people working has almost halved in the last 20 years, sparking fears of the death of the part-time job.
A 2020 study found only 25 percent of 16 and 17-year-olds were in work between – falling from 48 percent in 1997.
A work-shy 44 percent of young people now say they needed to focus on their school work rather than paid work – and were given an allowance by their parents.
Self-confessed workaholic Vanessa Feltz feels the nations teens should take a leaf out of Lady Louise Windsor’s book and get grafting this summer.
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Amid knickers and sweaty feet, I learned the value of hard graft…and hard cash, says Vanessa Feltz
IN any front-facing job, you work long hours, are paid pennies and have to put up with the – at times – irate general public.
Even when something’s gone awry and it’s not your fault, you have to stand there and take it on the chin because you are representing the company.
So I’m massively in favour of Her Majesty’s granddaughter Lady Louise Windsor taking up a £6.83 an hour summer job in a garden centre before heading off to St. Andrews to study English.
She’ll be working long days, with people who don’t have a clue who she is and will be very honest in how they speak to her – which means rude, short tempered and unpleasant.
It just goes to show what a well-grounded girl she is – which is no doubt something she has inherited from her mother Sophie, the Countess of Wessex.
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She had a career before becoming a working royal – climbing her way up in public relations where no one handed her anything on a plate.
Perhaps people like Prince Andrew may well have benefitted from being in situations where people aren’t always polite, because that’s the real world.
My summer jobs certainly turned me into a real grafter and taught me the value of hard work.
I took my O-Levels aged 15 as I skipped a year for being smart.
The very next day my well-earned lie-in was interrupted by a phone call from my father who was known as Norman the knicker king.
His maxim was that if I didn’t have a job by lunchtime that day, I’d be straight on the 251 bus coming to work at his underwear factory.
Working there was awful – I would inevitably cut through my hand with the Stanley knives used to open boxes.
My dad would wrap my hand in a dirty tea towel from the canteen and send me on the bus to A&E.
Once I got stitches my dad would expect me back on the factory floor that afternoon.
Oh and of course there was no wages – my dad wanted us all to muck in and pay our way.
Oh and of course there was no wages – my dad wanted us all to muck in and pay our way.
This all might sound like some sort of Dickensian nightmare made up for your delectation but I promise you it is entirely true.
The mere threat of working for my dad had me toiling up and down the streets of northwest London until I got a holiday job.
Eventually I was hired by the shoe shop Barratts near Selfridges – during an exceptionally hot summer.
And there I was kneeling at the altar of ingrown toenails and verruca-ey feet day in, day out.
I remember there was Miss Higgins who was in charge of the sales staff – who she called “girls”.
Her motto was “introduce your hose” which has the potential to be misunderstood.
What she meant was when a customer is buying shoes, you must try and upsell them hosiery.
I was a good saleswoman but selling tights to sweaty customers buying sandals was a mean feat.
But I stuck with it and worked hard – eventually I was promoted to cashier which was absolutely magnificent.
You had a spike for dockets which you could take your frustration out on, and you got to sit down all day in a glass booth.
The job taught me about knuckling down and doing something you don’t really want to do because you are getting paid for it.
And if you work hard enough at it you will get promoted. Nobody cared if you liked it or if you were unhappy – the concept of mental health hadn’t been invented in those days.
It was about earning a wage packet and it was a valuable lesson – it’s what I’ve been doing ever since frankly.
The job taught me about knuckling down and doing something you don’t really want to do because you are getting paid for it.
It’s one of the factors which helped me get up at 3.30am and be live on air at 4am every morning for my 12 years and then run across the road and do my next show straight after.
I haven’t buckled when other people have and I’m sure these holiday jobs were part of it.
It’s taught me every single thing about what PM hopeful Liz Truss calls “graft”.
But do I think Britain is lacking a work ethic? I couldn’t disagree with her more. For years, I’ve been on air broadcasting to the two and a half million key workers we clapped for in Covid.
To say these people aren’t hard workers is just insulting frankly. Most of us like working – I certainly do. Even at Barratts it was the camaraderie, meeting new people and ganging up on the boss which got me by.
Hard work gives you freedom – if you want to buy a pair of shoes, buy them and you don’t need to depend on anyone else in your life.
I’ve hopefully instilled the same in my daughters. They got summer jobs with one tutoring and another sweeping the floor at Toni and Guy hairdressing salon.
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Now it is a great shame there’s a lot of red tape and barriers stopping teens working.
But in the same breath it’s good no one is sending them up chimneys – or into knicker factories – anymore.
