Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Clocking on

I'm sorry i have to waffle on about myself first but i have to set the scene for others to contribute. When i left school at 15 years old i started at Lairds one week later, because one's apprenticeship never started until 16 years old i found myself in the Time office as a time lad (can lad)
Cutting a long story short, after only being there for about a week i was put in charge of what they called a clocking on station, it happened to be the sawmill that about 20 men worked in, so it was a very small clocking station with little responsibility. I had to be there to put the time cards in the clock racks to enable men to clock on and off. The story's and tales of clocking off and on are endless and i could rabbit on all day but I'd like to hear other contributions and others memories. The clock below is not Lairds but they had something similar and they later moved on to electronic devices. Having been self employed since 1984 I'm not familiar with clocking on now, I assume people still do, is it still a card system or is it digital keypads of some kind?

That picture's very familiar to me, Bert. When I was about 7 or 8, my granddad used to take me to his work at the electricity generating station at Bentinck St. I used to stand by the clock and work the handle as the men put their cards in. There were always a few who wouldn't let me, but had to do it themselves.

A friend of mines on a site where you clock on and off with your thumb print!you just press your thumb on a coloured box for 2 seconds.slightly different from the picture above = )

We use a clapped out Packard Bell 286 Computer in our factory with a swipe card. But, I must admit it does the job (most of the time)

Interesting, a form of fingerprint recognition, no chance of skulduggery there.
I remember being taken to the clock i had to look after by its previous attendant to show me the ropes, my first lesson was how to turn a blind eye, my second lesson was how to arrange the clock cards so they could clearly be seen and my third lesson was how to turn a blind eye.

Lessons 1 and 3 were very important , in the self preservation stakes Bert. It was once said that, if there had been a Major Incident in the yard, and they had held a roll call. They would have been lucky to find 50% of the staff who had "clocked on" that day, still there. The rest would have gone "over the wall". You would not want to get in the way of the guys whose turn it was to clock that mob of n,er do wells, in and out.

I was put in a "Time office" for my first job straight out of school. I know what you mean about the "blind eye", a member of staff would walk back in after lunch and collect about 10 cards and clock them all in whilst they all stayed in pub.:).

HELP!! what was I supposed to do?, I valued my life .

I have recently come back from working at Malta airport and they used your index finger to clock in and out, give it a few years and we will be using iris scans like at manchester airport

Nomad

bert, what did you do with all the half crowns you had stashed away once they ceased to be legal tender.

Vaguely remember if you clocked on a few minutes late you lost a quarter hour pay,lucky for me my boss let me stay a few minutes
at clocking off to balance it so I had 8 hours.
When I first started work hours were quarter to 8 until half 5 with 1 hour dinner then at some time it went to quarter to 5 finish.
Do any firms still pay overtime time and a half for saturdays and double time for sundays

I remember that if you didn't have a full weeks hours in i.e 40, then you could not do overtime!

Fair observations by Kitty and Flycaster, valuing ones life and self preservation.
Mentioning going over the wall, one particular day Lairds started about half a dozen men, one of these men had worked at Lairds before but not for about ten years previous, more about him later.
Lairds had a lot of sub contractors working for them, the very same day as the new men starting work the sub contractors wage van was robbed of its contents, thousands of pounds.
Immediately Lairds was locked down and the place was crawling with CID, robbery squad and the outside perimeter was being patrolled by uniformed officers, some with dogs.
Going back to one of the men who had started that morning who had no idea what was going on because he was working well inside one of the ships, he thought he'd carry on as he left off 10 years previous and go over the wall about 11.40 for a pint.
As he touched down on the other side he was pounced on by three coppers and a German shepherd tearing shreds out of his boilersuit legs, quickly handcuffed and being carried away with the German shepherd now tearing shreds from his jeans he wore beneath his boilersuit.
I believe his first line of his statement was
"Fooking hell, security wasn't this tight when i last worked here ten years ago"

To answer Dereks post, in Lairds if you clocked on at 7.31am you lost 15 minutes pay, if it was 7.46am it was half hours pay up to 8.00am, if you were after 8.00am you had to get permission off your departmental manager to work the rest of the morning.
That's were Jimbobs half crowns come in very handy.

When I started in Lairds which was 1955, the hours where 7-30 till 5-0 Monday to Thursday and 4-30 finish on a Friday making it a 44 hour week { hour for dinner 12-00 till 1-00} and payday was a Friday at 4-30. No such thing at that time as late gates. Sudden death if you missed hitting the clock before 7-30.

i remember clocking on and off in my first job which was Sam Scotts Millinery in Lord St B,head,thing is that if you were just one min before your clocking on time and there were a few in front well you could easily loose a few mins! i remember the mad rush at home time to get to the clock and get out! oh those were the days!!lol

Used to have to clock on at 3 counties, needless to say i was ALWAYS late, hahahaha