grown-ups: work

I live in a town next to a large ICI chemical plant where my grandad worked. There was often a stink floating in the air and grandad told me that the smell was coming from a furnace in which all the worker's sweaty socks were burned every day so they didn't have to wash them. I was 27 before I thought 'hang on a minute....'

When I was about ten, I read the word "prostitute" somewhere. I thought a prostitute was a member of a religious order, something like a nun. I pictured groups of prostitutes walking around in habits and doing things for charity... in retrospect, I think I had them mixed up with Protestants... though I don't know where the nun bit came from...

I used to think that the place my Dad went every day was actually called "Work". I also thought that the Government would print money which was then delivered to work in big trucks and they kept it in a room at the back somewhere, and at the end of every week the boss (who was a fat bald man in a suit) would call my dad into his office and hand him some of the money.

When I was younger I use to want to become a cashier at a supermarket. I had just assumed that they got to keep all of the money at the check out counter.

i used to believe the graveyard shift was when you worked in a graveyard

I used to think that I should be a cop when I grew up because I was good at Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

After watching snow white and the seven dwarves (Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it’s off to work we go…), my sister, aged 2-3, developed some strange ideas about my father, who was a teacher at the time. Each day mom dropped him off at the school and he walked in with a briefcase. In my sister’s mind, he walked in to the school and produced a screw-together pick from his briefcase and started mining. That’s what “work” was, according to Disney and according to my sister.

When I was born, my father used to work for a company called Durham China, which made china tea sets etc. As a child, adults used to talk about 'the China Factory' (i.e. the place my Dad worked.) I assumed this was a factory full of Chinese people, making Chinese lanterns, pagodas, etc. It wasn't until a few years back when my Mum died and she still had a Durham China tea set, that my memory was reawakened and it finally dawned on me just what 'the China factory' had really made.

When I was younger I thought that when someone got the sack they were put into a great big sack and the top was tied. Then there was 'custody' - getting thrown into a huge vat of custard. It took me years to work out the truth...

I used to belief that you could only become a barrister or a judge if your hair grew that way, i.e there were a priveliged few who were determined at birth!

My brother wanted a part time job on a milk round, so he decided to look it up in The complete 'works' of William Shakespeare. He now uses the yellow pages!

Before I was 6 whenever my parent's mentioned that they had to go to work I always imagined them going to some farm and chopping wood. I also imagined that they had to wait in line to do this.

I used to believe that "work" was actually the name of a job and since every adult I knew went "to work" I was convinced that all grown-ups had the same job and worked in the same building. It never dawned on me that for example teachers were working, because I didn't consider that a job. It wasn't until a teacher at our school retired (and I learned that retiring meant "to stop working") that I found out the truth. Within a week I learned that policemen, doctors etc. were also "working".

When I was 5, my mom and i hopped in the car to pick up my dad and i asked her why we had to pick him up. She responded "he got fired". My eyes got wide and i said "They're going to shoot daddy!?"

I was very amazed by the concept of ”work” when I was little: I just couldn’t figure out why people got paid at all (wasn’t money something you got from you parents?).

The only explanation I came up with was that you had to pay someone if they were to give you a job, and that a good job had to be more expensive than a bad one...

I used to think that every work place looked like a court and grown-ups argued all day. Kinda true I suppose...