Hilary Mantel, Richard Eyre and others on their first jobs Scandals about the treatment of the elderly are no news to me, and the looming crisis in social care was entirely foreseeable, back in 1974. Rory Stewart: Black Watch soldier I joined the Black Watch at 18. I deployed with an ironing board, and the regiment's heavy kilt, which came back from Sicily when my uncle was killed in 1943. On a salary of £11,763, I learnt to dance, pull on wet boots, and wear two pairs of socks, but never mastered how to melt shoe polish. In 1991 the regiment seemed eternal and war unlikely. But in the next 15 years, I met them in the Balkans, Fallujah, and Helmand; in 2006 the Black Watch was amalgamated: its uniform gone. The Army taught me how to walk, helped me to understand a great institution - and I'd have liked to pass that kilt on to another generation. But now I can't. Joe Dunthorne: "infuriating" barman I worked behind the bar at an old-fashioned pub, the St George, near my house in Swansea, on a salary of about £3.50 an hour. I was 18 and did not know any of the terminology, could not serve "a lager top, cider and black, "alf a mild." I must have been an infuriating employee - forever pouring frothy pints that the landlady had to correct, the drip trays sloshing with my overspills. I remember that, at 7.30pm every weekday, I had to leave a pint of ale at the end of the bar to get warm. At 8pm, a middle-aged guy would come in and start drinking it - which was my cue to pour his next. He liked his ale room temperature. He would drink one warm Brains every half-hour until 10.30pm, then he'd go home. He spoke to no one, watched no TV, read no newspapers. I asked the landlady his story and she told me his wife had died unexpectedly. I'd seen depression before but never anything like this - this was nuclear grade. Nothing could reach him. I liked the matter-of-fact way the landlady treated him, always saving his special seat, pouring his beer - but never trying to cheer him up. Whatever grim processes were occurring inside him, she let them happen, just making sure to maintain the structure of his evenings, and to welcome him in by name. "Wild Abandon," by Joe Dunthorne, is out now, priced £8.99 Lucy Worsley: historic house tour guide When I arrived for my interview at Milton Manor, a minor historic house in Oxfordshire, I was surprised to see the back end of a submerged boat poking out of the lake, upon which was painted a prominent swastika. I didn't then realise that historical re-enactments were a regular occurrence there, and that D-Day had just happened. I had found Milton by ringing round all the stately homes listed in Hudson's Historic Houses that I could reach by bus from my college in Oxford, and asking for work. And I use the word "minor" as a compliment; it was just the sort of offbeat, eccentric and magical place I like. I was employed to give guided tours, wash teacups, and look for important pieces of paper my boss Anthony had lost. I also fed the llamas, and in due course got to take part in the historical re-enactments. This included, most memorably, performing the lead role in the coronation of Elizabeth II. I think my salary was £5 per tour. Plus unlimited gin. If only all work since had been as crazy and fun. Susan Hill: junior reporter Coventry, 1959. I was 18, A-levels were done, my first novel had been accepted for publication, to much shaming publicity, and I needed a temporary job. What else could I do but write? I approached the editor of the local weekly paper, the Coventry Standard, and he gave me a junior reporter and book reviewer post, at £5 a week. When I arrived, I joined another temp. His name was Donald Trelford, he was at Cambridge, and already rugby correspondent of the Observer. The hardened professional journos didn't take to young upstarts, but Don taught me the ropes and took me about the city on the back of his Lambretta. I wrote about everything - agricultural shows, council meetings, the magistrates" court, interviewed the lord mayor and the provost of the new Coventry Cathedral, just taking shape. I even wrote leaders about local housing problems which ended: "The council must act!" I did wedding reports, highlighting any unusual feature. "The bride went away in a grey suit with Willow Green accessories." The offices were tiny, hot and overcrowded and I learnt to turn out exactly 200 or 1,000 words within the hour, became an instant expert on anything - and long before Google. It was the best professional training possible, though I discovered I didn't want to be a journalist. I left for King's College, London to read English. Trelford returned to Cambridge and later became editor of the Observer. "Dolly" by Susan Hill is out now, priced £9.99 Emily Maitlis: hopeless hairdresser When I was 14 I worked as a Saturday girl in a Sheffield hairdressers. There were pot plants in reception, Prince's Raspberry Beret on the sound system, and a tiger-striped sofa. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I got paid £6 a day (no lunch hour) and on Wednesday night I went to training school where I went wild with the Majirel colour system. I was a terrible hairdresser - I left shampoo in everyone's hair and my highlights made the sofa look subdued. I was - miraculously - offered a full-time job a year later, for effort perhaps rather than talent. Or now I come to think of it, perhaps I was just gloriously cheap. John Hegley: table-tennis playing benefits officer My first part-time post was that of shelver in Luton Central Library, which celebrates its half-century as I write. I was 10 and took up the position partly in the hope of seeing a girl at school with whom I was enamoured. I knew her to be a borrower and as I shelved away, I fantasised about her coming in and witnessing my enormous badge. She didn't. My first paid, full-time employment was in 1972 with the Department of Health and Social Security, Fishponds, Bristol. My task was to process claims for supplementary benefit: to add on heating bonuses for the elderly and to defer payment to those laid off who had been paid a week in hand. It could get tedious, but there were some lovely officers in there and some animated games of table tennis at lunchtime. For myself, a most cherished aspect was the arrival of the tea trolley at around 11.10 of a morning. Documents were left on desks as officers casually coalesced in a cluster of gentle camaraderie. Hierarchical ranking was of no consequence. It was about the Kit Kat, the loose change, the chit chat, and the thanking. I cannot recollect what I was paid, but I do remember it was significantly less than the £54 a week received in my next job, conducting the No 13 from Staple Hill to Bedminster. John Hegley's latest poetry collection, "Peace, Love & Potatoes," is published on October 4, priced £9.99 Lynne Truss: forgettable librarian When I left school, I wasn't sure I'd be going to university. This is how I ended up having a year "off," which I spent working as an assistant at the University of London library in Senate House, Bloomsbury. I remember it well. I was part-time in the philosophy and psychology libraries (my bosses being Mr Statham and Mrs McKie); the rest of my time I worked in the busy catalogue hall, issuing books and filing issue cards alphabetically. I was generally mousy, I think. I earned £16 a week; I wore ill-shaped long skirts that I made myself; when I left after 12 months, I remember the head of classification saying: "We'll miss you, Susan." So I'd obviously made a good impression on him. I particularly remember the misery of the staff room, where nobody spoke (too busy reading); also the clamminess caused by the Thirties steam heating, which made me pass out if I stood up too quickly when shelving. On evening shifts, all classes of librarian had to meet in the staff room to eat convivial salads with lots of grated cheese on top, and I used to dread it. Last year I was using the university library and checked the shelves in the philosophy section. Some of the labels I hand-wrote in 1973-74 were still there. It made me feel quite proud. Attica Locke: sleuthing legal clerk In the summer after my freshman year of college, I got my first "real" job, working as a clerk in my father's law office in Houston, Texas. I had some employable skills - I mean, I could type, which is more than I could say for my father or his secretary who, like the character in my first novel, Black Water Rising, was named Eddie Mae, had a house full of grandkids and was perpetually distracted - but I think my father was just being cheap. For $5 an hour, I summarised depositions, filed case notes, and answered the phone when Eddie Mae was at lunch. And whenever a new client walked in, I got to play amateur private eye. I used to spend hours in the basement of the courthouse, looking up the criminal records of prospective clients, and/or the number of businesses they'd sued in the past. My father made a decent living doing personal injury work, but had an eye out for scams. Anybody who claimed to have had a "slip-and-fall" more than two or three times a year needed a doctor, not a lawyer. The best part of the job was the endless supply of cold Sprite in the fridge. The worst was the hours of down time. Which is how, one day, I ended up laying my head on my desk, and waking up three hours later with my father standing over me, informing me he would no longer be using my services. Attica Locke's new novel, "The Cutting Season," is out now, priced £14.99 Antonia Fraser: self-styled "senior editor" In 1953, I graduated from Oxford and went to work for a tiny publisher called Weidenfeld & Nicolson under a young George Weidenfeld. I'd been extremely idle at Oxford - I gave myself up to pleasure - but I suddenly found there was a joy in working. I started on a salary of £6 a week and there were only about six of us, so it was all hands on deck. Since I typed my own letters, one of my favourite tricks was to give myself titles. I was publicity editor and senior editor and all sorts of things! George himself was wonderful and still is a close friend. As a child of the post-war generation, with no money to go abroad, I was rather provincial. George, on the other hand, who I believe left Vienna at the age of 19, was the incarnation of European culture and opened up another world to me. He spoke every language, quoted Proust - the first time he told me I was a "jeune fille en fleur" I had to look up what it meant - and rushed around doing deals. I found it all marvellously exciting. One day, an extraordinary thing happened. We had a contract to produce something called the Heirloom Library for Marks & Spencer; children's classics that were out of copyright. One day George said: "Well, we want King Arthur," and I piped up that we couldn't possibly print Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur for children. George just waved his hand and said: "Oh, Antonia, you write it." So that's what I did. King Arthur became my first published book and my role at Weidenfeld & Nicolson became the only job I ever had. John Banville: "townie" strawberry-picker I was 15, keen to earn some pocket money, and someone had told me a strawberry farm not far from our town was in need of pickers. So one Monday morning I turned up on my bike, and was hired on the spot - a bad precedent, since it led me to imagine that job applications would always be so easy. I was the odd one out, being a townie, the other pickers being all country folk, mainly boys and girls of my age or younger. Had I been of a scientific bent I might have done a fascinating anthropological study during that long, hot week. There seemed to be a great deal of sex going on among the younger folk, whose favoured trysting place was the local cemetery. It was the stuff of future fictions: love and death in a prelapsarian, sunlit lost world. We were paid by the weight of our pickings and I must have earned about £10 that week, most of which was spent on illicit cigarettes. It was a long time before I could again face a strawberry. Ann Widdecombe: soap marketeer In 1973, on a salary of £2,000 a year - considered magnificent at the time - I started my post in marketing for Unilever. It was a mistake. I was an ambitious Oxford graduate seduced by the company's size and reputation, while the selectors were seduced by an appearance I'd made in a televised debate at the Oxford Union. It wasn't a marriage made in heaven and it broke up after less than three years. The training included a spell as a sales rep during the miners" strike, when lights were switched off without any warning. On one occasion I was clambering about a warehouse counting boxes of Knight's Castile when I was plunged into utter darkness. Somehow I fought my way back to daylight, upsetting towers of boxes as I went. Unilever thought the good times would never end. We'd always need soap and the future was full of exciting variations on the theme: a floating soap, soap on a rope, longer, longer-lasting soap. Alas, the shower arrived to overtake the bath and shower gels soon overtook the clumsy old soap bar. Simon Rich: babysitter (to himself) I was just out of college when I joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live and the experience was absolutely terrifying. That wasn't my first job though - or my scariest. When I was eight years old, my mother hired my big brother, Nat, to babysit me. His fee was $5. Nat was only 13, but business savvy for his age. As soon as my mother left for her dinner party, he outsourced the job to me. In exchange for babysitting myself, he told me, he would pay me $1. It was an impressive sum, the equivalent of one week's allowance. Still, I wasn't sure I was up to the task. It would fall on me to bathe myself, feed myself, read myself a story and, ultimately, put myself to bed. It was a lot more work than I was used to doing. I tried to haggle Nat up to $2, but he was a skilled negotiator. "No," he said. Shut up. We shook hands and parted ways, he for the computer room to play Tetris, me to the kitchen to eat Nutter Butters. I was finishing up my third box when I suddenly became very sick. "What were you thinking?" my brother shouted, discovering me hunched over the trashcan. "It's your fault," I mumbled between heaves. You shouldn't have made me babysitter. My brother sighed. "I knew something like this would happen," he said. But not this quick. Now, as a screenwriter at Pixar, it's my job to keep children entertained for nearly 90 minutes. I'm better at it than I was before - but I guess that isn't saying much. Simon Rich is currently writing a script for Pixar. His second novel, "What in God's Name" (£11.99), is out now