[originaltext]Tim: Well, that was easy compared to the job I’m doing now.Jo: W

Tim: Well, that was easy compared to the job I’m doing now.
Jo: What are you doing now?
Tim: Well, the first day of the job I’m doing now...
Jo: What was that?
Tim: Well, now I... you know I work in the clothing shop...
Jo: Yes.
Tim: ... in the High Street. I mean, obviously I’m the manager now, but when I just first started, I just had to go in and learn.., learn the trade.
Jo: What was it like when you first went in?
Tim: Well, it was.., it was terrible because I didn’t know where anything was. People would come in thinking I’d know.., know all about it and they’d ask me for things like a 36 long: Do you have a...?
Jo: So you’d go crossed-eyed and run away?
Tim: Oh, it was terrible.
Jo: But people are helpful on the whole, aren’t they?
Tim: Yeah... yeah, they are.
Jo: And after, what, about a week you felt.., easier?
Tim: Um... yeah, I suppose it was about a week it was just where.., once you got um... more.., confident and.., er... of course then you start selling a bit as well.
Jo: That’s right.
Tim: Because if people say they don’t like something, when you’re.., when you’re there on the first day...
Jo: It’s almost personal...
Tim: ... you say, oh, I agree with you, sir, I think it’s terrible on you. Whereas now...
Jo: Everything’s good...
Tim: ... now I say it all looks wonderful.
Jo: Yes, and you think you’ll stay on there now?
Tim: Oh I... Oh yes, definitely. Well, now I’m the manager.
Jo: Yes.
Tim: Jo?
Jo: Mm?
Tim: Wh... what was the first.., what was the first job you ever did, I mean that you actually got paid for doing?
Jo: Oh, when I left school. I was waiting to be a student and I had four months to fill in.
Tim: What, so you’d be ’about, what, eighteen?
Jo: Eighteen. I needed the money as well and I went down to my local labor exchange and said I wanted a job--I was unqualified for anything and I’d do anything. So they sent me to a laundry.
Tim: Good grief!
Jo: Yes, a hospital laundry.
Tim: Why on earth did you decide to take that?
Jo: Well, it was the only job, being unqualified, that I could do. So I got on my little bicycle and cycled five miles a day there uphill and five miles a day back.
Tim: Yeah, a... a hospital, was it?
Jo: It was just outside the hospital. It was independent of the hospital.
Tim: What were the other people like?
Jo: Terrifying! Er... to me because I was only eighteen.
Tim: What, just when you first arrived there or all the way through the job.?
Jo: All the way through the job, they were very tough ladies.., er... from twenty years upwards. The oldest one, old Nellie, was 74. She took me under her wing and protected me because they were very tough ladies.
Tim: And what did you have to do?
Jo: I learnt to press: to press nurses’ aprons, surgeons’ caps and if I knew the surgeons and I didn’t like them, I would press them extra hard into knife-edged creases. Big revolving press it was, worked by steam.
Tim: And how.., how long did you spend there in the end?
Jo: Just three months.
Tim: Mm, so you left to go to college7
Jo: Then I left to go to college, but it... it... it earned me the money, it grew me up.
Tim: Mm, of course... I... I mean, the first job I worked in...
Jo: It’s frightening, isn’t it?
Tim: The first job I ever worked in, it was.., it was unbelievable.
Jo: Where did you.., where was that?
Tim: That was.., er... that was.., er... in... in a swimming pool, lifesaving.
Jo: Lifesaving? I didn’t know you swam.