Brown Paper Envelope.

[Slowhand]

Does anyone remember in days gone by Friday afternoons at work where someone would come round and give you a brown paper envelope with cash in it?
I got my first one in 1974 and it had just over £3.00 in it. Mum took £1.75 for my keep and I kept the rest.

When did you first get yours and can you remember how much was in it?

 

[trev]

The first one I ever got was when I was 14 and collecting glasses at the Simonside Social Club. I worked 40 hours a week evenings and weekends and was paid £1 ph. Because of the hours I never had time to spend it so was bloody loaded. I think it netted down to £35 or 6 of which my mother took the 5 or 6.
My first apprenticeship pay packet contained the princely sum of £18.

 

[Sintra]

£17 back in 1984 and I thought i was rich

 

[Engineer54]

I honestly can't remember how much cash was in my first pay packet, i know it wasn't much though!! lol!! Iused to earn more going out with my uncle, Saturday and sometimes Sundays working with him on his jobs!!

 

[Geordie Spark]

I honestly can't remember how much cash was in my first pay packet, i know it wasn't much though!! lol!! Iused to earn more going out with my uncle, Saturday and sometimes Sundays working with him on his jobs!!

Grateful Dead- Me and My Uncle - YouTube

 

[gutterball]

I think when I started work I got about £15/20. We used to go to the bosses house and the pay packets were all laid out on his kitchen table.

 

[Marvo]

If we have a site running with a lot of labourers we still pay them every Friday in a brown envelope with their details and hours filled in on the back of it. Payday is an interesting time, some Fridays it can involve a large amount of cash and a couple of firearms to keep the peace. There's invariably some animated discussions about paypackets being light.

 

[7029 dave]

Yes, I remember my first brown envelope, £20 per week for an 40hr week,£5 to mum. (time has flown by seems like yesterday)

 

[silverfox1]

Still had brown envelopes when I started my apprenticeship in 1975, I did block release at college and got £14-00 a week, mom had a fiver for keep had to buy a weekly bus pass which was £1-75 if my memory serves me and the rest was all mine unless I needed more A4 paper for college folder.

 

[rapparee]

When i saw the title of the thread i thought it was about backhanders and corruption

 

[Octopus]

When I read the title of this thread I thought he was referring to the builders "wallets" at my local Wickes!

 

[telectrix]

1st pat packet 1966. was about £6-7s-6d.

 

[Rockingit]

I've actually still got my very first one somewhere. I grew up as a lad with my dad as a local bobby so therefore lived in a police house next door to the (small) nick. When I was about 6 or 7 (yep, you did read that right) the place got generally over-hauled and refitted by a commercial building contractors and I just made a menace of myself over the school holidays and 'tagged along' with the incredibly patient foreman/chippy (although in fairness, I probably learned loads as well and set me on the path). At the end of the first week and they'd all been paid he threw me an envelope too, with 50p wages in it that he'd asked their clerk to sort out. I was well and truly made up. And, to change topic ever so slightly, at around the same period of time the place had gas installed and I vividly remember being out in the middle of the road and in the trench with the contractors trying to use a road breaker!! They didn't pay me.

Ahh......the good old days before health and safety!!!

 

[Coach]

As a 15 year old apprentice at a Sir Richard Arkwrights cotton mill I got £6.17 shillings and could afford to go out more than I do now.

 

[Robotstar5]

My dad told me to give my first 1976 paypacket containing £16 to my mum unopened she took £5 keep and gave the rest to me, after that I just gave her £5 a week.

Our wages office was robbed by the infamous (at the time) "Thursday gang" at gunpoint about 1978!.

 

[Guest111]

My first was on a YTS at 15 and I think it was about £13.50 a week,when I turned 16 I got a job in a steel works,the boss was great I was learning to be a spark but also doing other bits around the factory and he paid me about £150 a week.

 

[driverman]

Where i work ( not been here long) they still do it that way re brown pay packets. Slightly of subject though, can you remember the brown pay packets whereby when handed to you, you could count how much in the pay packet before you actually open it? You could see the notes in one corner. Well if you were clever enough, with the use of a Biro-pen top, you could wrap a note around the clip part of the pen. By clipping the clip onto a note and carefully rotate the pen the note would coil round the pen. Therefore less money in your pay packet and no seals broken! Not that you guys have ever seen seals broken before!

 

[Guest77]

Does anyone remember in days gone by Friday afternoons at work where someone would come round and give you a brown paper envelope with cash in it?
I got my first one in 1974 and it had just over £3.00 in it. Mum took £1.75 for my keep and I kept the rest.

When did you first get yours and can you remember how much was in it?

Yes I had £23.50 in mine, that was the 1st year apprentice rate at the time, I had to give my mum a fiver and I saved a fiver lol, happy carefree days.

 

[Adam W]

I worked in pubs for about 5 years and was always paid in a brown envelope, apart from one (the worst one) which was a managed house, where they paid me via BACS, which seemed new and exciting.

 

[rapparee]

My first weeks wages was £120 for six days work and it was in a white envelope. It isn't exactly hovis advert is it?

 

[Robotstar5]

you could count how much in the pay packet before you actually open it? You could see the notes in one corner. Well if you were clever enough, with the use of a Biro-pen top, you could wrap a note around the clip part of the pen. By clipping the clip onto a note and carefully rotate the pen the note would coil round the pen.

No chance where I worked, they put a staple through the packet/notes to prevent that sort of thing.