Child LabourThere is a special part of Hell I'd like to reserve for those arses that order every single Sunday paper. Do you know how heavy that makes the bundle of papers some poor kid (ie me) has to lug around? Funny how your papers always seemed to get mangled in your letterbox...
I loved my paper round, but, looking back, I was getting paid peanuts to ruin my back and cycle around in the cold and dark. How were you exploited as a child?
(
chthonic, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 12:05)
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Umm...The Disillusioned Starburst, you have it easy!
I started my paper round when I was 13 way back in 1987. It was 6 days a week, was in a place almost out of town, and in pretty much the hilliest section. And as it was posh, it consisted of little more than lots of Telegraphs, a few Times, and just a single copy of the Sun.
Thursdays were bad due to the fact that the local paper (also a broadsheet) was delivered that day, and Saturdays required the Sunday Supplements to be delivered at the same time.
I got £5 a week for it, and the round usually took me about 1h15 to do a day. Means I was working for 66p/hour. Yes, in retrospect I was a gullible bastard.
That included having to deliver during the Hurricaine, navigating my way over fallen overhead lines that could have been phone or mains.
I decided to call it a day when the papers started doing Saturday supplements as well. By that point it meant the Saturday round required me to make three trips back to the shop and was taking anything up to 2h30 to complete.
I moved onto delivering the free newspaper, which was one day a week for a couple of hours, and paid a quid more.
(, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 13:04, Reply)
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