Carefree

I left school in 1967 and by 1976 I'd had the following jobs-
Bank clerk
Invoice clerk
Clerical assistant
Storeman
Telesales office worker
Production planner
Factory department manager
I'd also done a little temporary work.
Apart from a week at the bank's training centre,where I learned basic machine skills I'd had no on-the-job training. I was supremely uninterested in any kind of career, especially if it interfered with my music. I was content to drift.
I wasn't irresponsible. I just wasn't going to take any responsibility, which is a different thing altogether. Any leadership or management skills were kept hidden.
I wanted to be liked. This meant that I found it hard to reprimand people.
I once got my drummer a job in the same place where I worked. It was a disaster. There was a conflict of relationship. We were equals in the band, but I was supposed to supervise him at work. It's not a good idea to work with family and friends until you can get that sorted out. Many years later I could do it, but I had a lot of growing up to do.

Then there was the whole fraternising with the female staff thing. I went to a boy's school and was very shy when I started work at the bank. Although the women were only a year or two older, they seemed so much more grown up than me. I never felt like an adult. How's an adult supposed to feel? Different to a schoolboy? I confess that I never felt like an adult until many years later, in my mid-twenties.

Once I'd had my first girlfriend I felt a little more confident, but it wasn't until I was going out with my second girlfriend that I made up for lost time. I treated her terribly. She came back from holiday a couple of days early because she was missing me, only to find that I had a German girl staying in my bedsit (just for a couple of days until she found a place of her own, you understand.)
I've already confessed to a liaison or two with the temporary staff at Olympia. It was the whole sex and drugs and rock n'roll hippy era. I thought that that was how one behaved. You feel guilty but you soon get over it. I was in a rock band. Isn't that how you were supposed to behave?

I left Telfers and food production in 1975 and was unemployed for a couple of weeks. The novelty soon wore off. We never had enough bookings and I was broke. I had to find another job and quick.

I lived near a large shopping centre. There was a large Tesco there and they needed shelf stackers to work nights. I didn't want to stack shelves and I didn't want to work nights, but I did need a job and I did need the money, so I applied and was taken on.
Welcome to the wonderful world of retail. My career for the next eighteen years.