Ghosts of Saturday Jobs Past

The 1990s, Mickey Mouse & Little White Lies

On a recent trip back to Blighty from Australia, where I’ve lived for eight years now, I arranged to meet friends at a pub near Carnaby Street. In the past, as a working girl, I would have prepared for a journey across London by treating the underground as a necessary evil and the public with general disdain.

However, like childbirth (I imagine), time and distance tend to rose-tint those specs. So as I marched from Leicester Square tube against the crowds, I admit to having a whimsical smile on my face as I giddily took a trip down memory lane, recalling the places I worked during a carefree period when I had finished my ‘A’ Levels and was naffing about at Goldsmiths Uni.

For those who need reminding, London in the 1990s was filled with a sense of optimism. Social cohesion was stronger, with fewer divisive political issues creating tension. House prices were on the rise, giving homeowners a feeling of increased wealth, and with more people spending, the economy remained relatively stable.

And best of all there was no internet, so we could make utter tits of ourselves without consequence.

If you remember the 90s, you weren’t really there, man! Much like the places I used to work and frequent, most of them now sadly gone, leaving me to ponder the ghosts of my Saturday jobs past.

Specifically The Disney Store, where I was a member of staff for the best part of a year. In 1993/94 it was situated on Regent Street, but there is little online evidence of their flagship shop today, only mentions of the current Oxford Street branch. However, unless it was all a hallucinatory dream, I vividly recall it existing—and furthermore, it being one of the strangest places I’ve ever worked.

If you look closely you can see me inside banging my head against a life-size model of Sebastian from The Little Mermaid

It was after a long day spent trudging across the West End in search of part-time work, that I stumbled upon the store. I must admit, it was a visually impressive place, and when I enquired about job opportunities, a manager there invited me to return the following morning for an interview. Bells should have rung at that point. Who on earth gets up early on the Sabbath for any job? Apart from a priest or a nun, I suppose.

But the very next day, I met with a number of other hopefuls who were standing in line outside The Disney Store, like X Factor wannabes—buzzing with energy and practicing their lines—waxing lyrical about their love for Mickey Mouse and, strangely, kids.

I’ve since learned to trust my intuition, but if talk of a Sunday interview was the tinkle of delicate china, then being surrounded by hyper individuals, grinning from ear to ear, should have been a bloody big church bell tolling, because it was very clear that these happy morons weren’t “my tribe.”

Put it this way, if my pint of snakebite was often half empty, their cup was overflowing with the bright neon juice knows as, Sunny Delight.

And after two hours (yes you read that right) of role play, interrogation, and quick fire questions, such as, “What was the name of the cat in Pinocchio?”¹ I exited the store feeling relieved that my performance had been so poor and my knowledge so basic, that I had most likely sabotaged my chances.

But no! Upon returning home, Mum informed me that I had received a call from “a fella called Mike from Disney, who would like to offer you the job.” This was a time before mobiles, so I informed my mother, in the style of Princess Margaret talking to one of her lackeys, that if he were to ring back, “please tell him I’m out.”

If you were a child of the 70s/80s, i.e. Generation X, you might remember the merry dance you’d have with your parents when trying to avoid someone on your landline. It’s not something to be proud of, but I’ll admit I am friends with the good old WHITE LIE. I believe these fibs serve a purpose when you can’t quite bring yourself to tell the truth but want to extract yourself from a social obligation.

For example, during that time, I remember being on a date with a fella, which wasn’t going well. I should have been a normal person and said, “Let’s not do this again, eh?” Instead, when asked for a second meet, I told him I was moving from London to Manchester for six months, and so, sorry, but, “this isn’t going to work.”

I didn’t imagine that once this period had passed, I would eventually answer the phone to him calling to ask how my trip went. I’m mildly ashamed to say that I thought on my feet, put on a (bad) Geordie accent and said, “Way aye, man! A dinna knaa any Sharon, she must've moved, like!”

Fair enough, not my finest hour, but I honestly believed I was sparing his feelings, even if it resulted in the poor bugger questioning his sanity and, no doubt, my ‘talent’ for mimicry.

But back to Disney, and as my mother is an honest sort, who stubbornly refused to play along in my web of deceit, and as I couldn’t rely on my father to do my lying for me, as he was an Irishman who left the job of answering the landline to my mother, then I eventually had no choice but to accept the job.

And so, during my time there, I:

• Donned the weird unisex uniform, of which there is sadly no evidence, because, pre-internet, we weren’t narcissistic selfie takers.

• Worked the long, tiring hours (late shift was 12-10 pm on a Saturday!)

• Enthusiastically greeted shoppers guests upon their arrival. (I regularly won the prize for BEST GREETER OF THE MONTH, much to the bemusement of anyone who knows me).

• Reluctantly serenaded the general public leaving as the store closed. Attempts to hide in the toilet when this time approached were always thwarted by demon managers.

• Listened to fellow employees cast members, most of whom were out of work actors, moan about missing auditions for, The Bill, Crimewatch and BBC reconstruction drama, 999.²

• Failed to get regular shifts on the cash register because my rubbish mathematical skills invariably led to my losing the firm money.

• Narrowly avoided losing the plot when subjected to a 20-minute repetitive loop of classic Disney tunes during a ten-hour day.³

• Was told to go and buy a birthday cake at M&S for the fictional character, Mary Poppins. Admit it, you thought for one second we were being asked to celebrate a real live human’s birthday, didn’t you? Fool.

• Laughed when I heard that we closed one day mid-week for Michael Jackson to shop for, erm, friends.

• Evacuated the store early one Saturday morning before Christmas when we were told that an incendiary device had been planted in a West End toy shop. The bomb scare sounded authentic, so while the cops raided the soft toy mountain, we and the staff from Hamleys wandered the nearby streets of Soho, looking very out of place next to the dirty-mac brigade stumbling out of Raymond Revue Bar.

When the time came to leave the job, before I lost all sense of reality, they threw me a lovely leaving do, where I asked Mike why, out of all the half-wits auditioning for the role that day, they chose to give me the gig. He explained it clearly: Disney wasn’t looking for nursery school teachers or wannabe kids' TV presenters. What they really wanted were people with an edge—individuals who could connect with the parents and, ultimately, help them part with their hard-earned cash.

I’m not even sure I managed that…

While walking to Carnaby Street, thirty years on, I am struck by how much of my past has vanished. The Disney Store where I once worked has been replaced by a massive Pret a Manger (bleurgh), and the charming family-run Italian café that served as my lunchtime sanctuary is now just a memory. This loss extends beyond these specific places; countless quaint shops have fallen victim to the rise of online shopping and soaring rents. Even the independent pubs, once vibrant community hubs, now cling to survival, hanging on by a thread in this rapidly changing landscape.

It’s made me wonder how today’s generation of young adults navigate the transition from apprenticeship to full-time employment. With so many of these establishments closing their doors, where will they find similar opportunities to hone their craft and gain practical experience? I can't help but question how the impact of Covid lockdowns and the continuing decline of our high streets will affect their ability to step confidently into the workforce.⁴

I look back fondly on all of my Saturday jobs and appreciate how lucky I was. It began at 14 years of age, when I clambered up stepladders with a bucket and chamois in hand to wash the windows of local shops. Hard to imagine that happening now, but it was a good little gig - cash in hand. Moving on from confessions of a window cleaner, I then found a job with less chance of falling to my death, at a jewellery shop in Greenwich, and later survived a brief (one-day) stint waitressing at a café in Blackheath (horrible bosses). But the best years were spent post Disney, serving drinks behind the bar at the Funnel & Firkin by night, while selling pasties to the masses at nearby Greggs by day—back when it was still The Bakers Oven. It remains the only place still standing.

Despite the changes and closures, I still feel incredibly fortunate to have had those Saturday jobs. They taught me resilience, a sense of independence, and gave me stories to tell—experiences that shaped who I am. And while I wonder how young adults today will gain the same practical grounding in a world increasingly driven by screens and algorithms, I’m hopeful. There’s always a way for people to find their footing, adapt, and create their own paths, even if those paths look a little different to mine.

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1. Figaro (in case you were wondering)

2. Ironically, my first full-time job, later on, was as BBC casting assistant on this very show.

3. And yet I still find myself singing this tune at any given time of the day, proving perhaps that Disney planted a chip in me??? Nah, they wouldn’t be that sinister.

4. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240307-gen-z-casual-workplace-language