So apparently all young people still at school should be taking on a Saturday job, according to the Works and Pensions Secretary, Esther McVey, who has reported a fall in the number of those taking such jobs. She said it’s about learning timekeeping, putting down your phone and also “people understanding what a boss wants and what you want out of a job.”
I had a Saturday job. Prefiguring the volunteer roles I’ve taken up in my retirement, it was at my local library. In my small community, this was one of the better-paid options on offer although, like another popular local Saturday job choice – hairdressing – it involved a lot of standing around (and, in my case, without any tips). I think it was because it was in a council-run venue that I had to have a health check before I could take up the job offer; this was rather less gruelling than I’d feared, the time mostly being taken up by the undemanding eyesight test (“Can you see this chart? Great, you’ve passed”).
What did it teach me? Well, it definitely helped with timekeeping; as it was within easy walking distance of my home, I soon had the timing down to a fine art. However, I was already pretty good at getting up in the morning, and I used to be far better at it than I am in retirement! (When a former OU colleague told me that ‘sleeping a lot’ was the best thing about being retired, I had no idea how much sleep a retired person can achieve)
What about Esther McVey’s further suggestion, that “It’s about people understanding what a boss wants and what you want out of a job”? Let’s think about that. What the boss wanted was pretty simple: she expected Saturday staff to carry out some simple activities like putting books back on shelves, checking their order on a shelf, stamping them, finding matching tickets and filing cards. Underpinning these basic actions of a Saturday person, she trusted us to do something more: to move easily between tasks, while staying sufficiently focused on the big picture to be aware of what was going on. If you were on shelving and there was a rush at the counter you moved your shelving trolley to the side and went to help. Sometimes it was very quiet, so I’d be moved to the back office to stick labels in books. That was repetitive and boring, but it had to be done. Sometimes it was frenzied, and everyone was on the counter at the same time, trying not to get under each other’s feet.
Learning “what I wanted out of a job”? Well, at that age, mainly I wanted the money, and the fact that I was earning it in a warm, quiet, friendly environment was a bonus. I also thought I wanted a career in librarianship, but by the end of my years as a Saturday girl I wasn’t so sure. Yes, I loved public libraries; spending my life in one was something else.
In addition to making me realise eventually that I didn’t want a career in libraries, the job definitely taught me a lot. It involved dealing with the public, which helped me learn how to be polite, listen, and respond appropriately. It also prepared me very well for my later, between-school-and-university, role as a bookshop assistant; the whole ‘Do you have the book they were talking about on the radio last week?’ thing which kept happening at the library played out well beside the ‘I’m looking for a book, it’s red’ thing which was big in the bookshop. The job taught me how to put things in alphabetical order efficiently (start big, with categories like A-E, before breaking that down into individual letters), how weird people can be (rasher of bacon as a bookmark), and what was in the section of the stacks labelled ‘V Reserve’ (books considered dodgy; for example, Lolita). It taught me the limits of my knowledge; I could deal with most queries, but had to refer others to those with more experience. It taught me about flirtation and harassment, with Roy the librarian’s habit of chasing Saturday girls along the corridors. It had a negative effect on my ability to browse, simply because there was no time to do it, but the recompense was the chance to stow any books which were returned under the counter until the end of the day and then have a flick through.
Perhaps those skills were useful for a career as a university lecturer? Listening, and responding. Interpreting questions. Finding and organising material. Knowing when to pass a question to someone else. Being alert for harassment and finding the best way to defuse situations. Yes, all of those.
Learning “What a boss wants”, though? Multitasking, yes. Always that. In a university lectureship, however, the multitasking seems to me to be particularly difficult. In the UK, most university lectureships involve teaching, research and administration. Sometimes the expected percentages for each are spelled out, but that doesn’t make it any easier. In term time, clearly, you are doing less research and more teaching. However, ‘administration creep’ means that more and more planning, meetings, admissions work and so on happens in the vacations, which used to be when the research happened. Some aspects of the job may get redefined: within the Annual Workload Model in my former university there’s currently an initiative to reclassify PhD teaching – reading drafts, discussing work in supervisions – not as ‘teaching’ but as ‘research’, meaning that if you have several PhD students (used to be seen as Good, bringing in fees to the institution, as well as Stimulating) then you’ll have no days left to do your own research for publication (which then makes you less attractive as a PhD supervisor, while reducing your chances of promotion or of a job in another university). “What a boss wants” also shifts with the political wind, from 4* (internationally leading) Research for the REF, to Impact (showing your research has changed the world), to Public Engagement, to Getting Grants, to Scoring Points in the TEF…
But perhaps the most significant difference between my Saturday job and the day job I held for so long was simply the hours. On those long-ago Saturdays, once the doors of the library closed I was out of there. University jobs come with no such pause button. Your next lecture, your next book, the problems you couldn’t solve … all those are still with you into the evening and into the rest of your week. There’s no such thing as closing time.
The retiring academic 