My dad left school at 13 as making money was more important than education at that point (his dad died young leaving a wife and four kids in an already poor situation) He ended up working general labour jobs for most of his life, but for the last ten years of his life he was a traffic warden. He'd get a lot of verbal abuse from people just for doing his job, but he was well able to give as good as he got. He loved the job as it allowed him to walk the city centre streets he grew up on rather than the far flung suburbs we lived in. Despite his lack of school education, he was a big reader, wrote poetry and volunteered teaching adult literacy classes.
My mam raised us at home though for a few years she cleaned a small hotel on the weekends. She once told us a story of a seemingly respectable guest who smeared #### all over his room and down the corridor. Thankfully she wasn't working that shift. After my dad died, she worked in a couple of local schools as a classroom assistant up until she retired last year.
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