Shimano has launched a call for evidence across the cycling industry, which the components giant says will form part of a report set to be published later this year, assessing the factors behind the worsening and “critical” shortage of skilled bicycle mechanics across Europe.
The initiative, titled ‘Nextgen Mechanics: Advancing Cycle Mechanic Standards & Careers Together’, aims to understand and tackle the ongoing “skill drain”, as experienced and skilled mechanics leave the industry and are replaced by untrained alternatives, and its potential impact on the uptake of cycling in general.
According to Shimano Europe, as cycling continues to grow across Europe, driven by the increasing popularity of e-bikes, cargo bikes, and hire schemes, as well as successful active travel policies, the demand for high-quality repair and maintenance services is “rapidly outpacing the available supply of bicycle mechanics”.
“This is leading to a shortage of skilled mechanics in many regions,” Shimano says. “This is worsened by a skills crisis, with qualified mechanics leaving the industry and being replaced by untrained or uncertified individuals.”
As part of its Nextgen Mechanics scheme, and to properly analyse why this skill drain is taking place, the Japanese manufacturer is calling for contributions and insights from across the “whole cycling eco-system”, including industry leaders, governments and councils, NGOs, and mechanics themselves.
Collaborating with Cycling Industries Europe, Shimano is hoping to “bring in a broad alliance of stakeholders committed to strengthening the profession, raising standards, and inspiring the next generation of cycle mechanics”.
The call for evidence, which aims to gather “insights, challenges, and success stories” from the world of bike repair, is open until Friday 25 July – and can be submitted through Shimano’s Nextgen Mechanics website – while the initiative’s findings will inform a major report, set to be published at the Cycling Industries Europe Summit in October 2025.
“We are currently facing a critical and worsening shortage of skilled bicycle mechanics,” Ties van Dijk, Advocacy Specialist at Shimano Europe, said in a statement announcing the initiative on Monday.
“What makes this even more concerning is the ongoing skill drain. Many experienced mechanics leave the industry, often replaced by untrained or uncertified individuals. This threatens the quality, reliability and accessibility of bicycle maintenance.
“Bicycle mechanics are the backbone of the cycling ecosystem. Their expertise is essential to every business model that keeps bicycles on the road – from independent shops to large-scale leasing fleets.
“Without them, we risk creating serious barriers for people who want to start or continue cycling.
“This is not a challenge that any single company, association, or city can not solve alone. It requires a united effort across the entire cycling ecosystem. Therefore, we take this as a first step in close collaboration with Cycling Industries Europe. We invite everyone who shares this concern to join us in tackling this urgent issue.”
Shimano’s aim to tackle Europe’s bicycle mechanic shortage comes just nine months after a UK-based bike shop claimed it was “banned” from its controversial Hollowtech cranks inspection programme, after the company’s main UK distributor took issue with its policy of sending all cranks back to the manufacturer due to safety concerns.
One of the biggest cycling industry stories of 2023, few were surprised when Shimano finally announced a voluntary inspection and replacement recall of its Hollowtech cranks, cyclists having reported cracks and delamination on the 11-speed road cranksets for years.
However, in Europe and the UK, to the frustration of many, including one lawyer from Leigh Day that we spoke to, Shimano opted for issuing an “inspection and replacement programme” rather than a full product recall.
This meant bike shops were tasked with inspecting customers’ cranks, documenting any issues and, if found, sending concerning cranksets back to Shimano for replacement.
There were numerous issues with this process reported during its first year, from legal fears over liability in case of incidents, through to questioning whether Shimano should instead be recalling all relevant cranksets regardless of present damage.
And then, in October 2024, Mapdec Cycle Works, a Lake District-based bike, claimed it was “banned” from the inspection programme after revealing it is sending all cranks back to Shimano.
The shop’s owner and founder Paul Vousden posted a YouTube video in which he suggested that for all Shimano cranks included in the recall which are brought in by customers, “we don’t bother inspecting them, we just ship them back, it seems to be the industry norm on all the bike and mechanic forums that we follow, they all just say just ship them back, get a new set.”
This seemingly did not go down well in Shimano HQ, with the brand’s UK distributor Madison contacting the bike shop to say they are now on a ‘banned list’ and will not be paid the £35 that shops are given for each crank inspection.
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
71 thoughts on “Shimano is trying to figure out why Europe has a “critical” bike mechanic shortage”
Bicycle mechanics are indeed
Bicycle mechanics are indeed critical, but your goal as a company should be to make your products as simple and as easy to service as possible.
It is a real shame that bicycle technology has often taken backward steps regarding ease of service and reliability, let alone cost.
Internally routed headsets
Internally routed headsets are a joy killer!
Shimano didn’t invent
Shimano didn’t invent ‘internally routed headsets’ whatever that means, I presume you meant internally routed cabling.
Di2 is simpler to set up than cable systems, you can use the app / lever buttons to set up correctly.
Budget Shimano CUES is easier to set up than older groupsets and works flawlessly.
tomascjenkins wrote:
Probably means hoses routed through the headset bearings. They are a pain…..
Oddly, an “internally routed
Oddly, an “internally routed headset” is one with cable routed internally through it.
Watt nonsense 😂! Pun
Watt nonsense 😂! Pun absolutely intended.
There are several key factors
There are several key factors at play:
1. Lack of willingness to invest in key staff training;
2. Failure to accept that a well trained bicycle mechanic is a skilled technician, and an asset of the business.
3. small minded businesses, that treat staff as an unwelcome expense, and therefore underpay them, until they leave and the recruitment process starts again.
4. Bicycle shops, failing to convey that bicycles are quite complex methods of transport and require skilled technicians, and that the skill, costs.
5. Public perception of the cost of bicycle servicing, is simply under valued, and the public expectation is reinforced with bicycles sold in boxes for home assembly.
I would suggest that its a
I would suggest that its a combination (certainly in the UK) of:
The quality of mechanics driving people to work on their own bikes.
The salary that mechanics can earn vs other careers and the shit they have to deal with.
The country as a whole being super hostile towards cycling which limits the numbers of people who do cycle.
Finally the average bike cost and people who ride them likely ride them into the ground and then buy another piece of crap which costs in total a not dissimmilar amount to what it would cost to service one properly.
Something else to factor into
Something else to factor into that is of course the rise in online shopping for bikes and bike parts. I had an excellent LBS, Paul’s Bikes, one street away from me in Peckham: he made headlines on this site and elsewhere when he closed his shop several years ago leaving a note in the window saying that if people wanted to keep local bike shops they would have to stop just using them for servicing and repairs whilst buying all their kit online. He was a brilliant mechanic (and a nice bloke too) but as a one-man band he simply couldn’t turn over enough repairs for financial viability without some retail income as well. I’ve heard the same story from other mechanics and as consumers we do have some responsibility; obviously it’s difficult to resist buying a bike from an online store when it might be almost half the price of a local bike shop, but most of us could at least pay a quid or two more for our inner tubes or whatever if we wanted to. I’ve heard stories from LBS employees of people bringing in chains, inner tubes, cabling et cetera purchased online and asking for them to be fitted because the LBS would charge a bit more for the parts. That definitely comes under the heading of taking the piss.
Rendel Harris wrote:
That’s terrible!
The mechanic at my lbs left
The mechanic at my lbs left to set up himself. One of the reasons he gave was he was in favour of letting people buy the parts and asking them to be fitted !
Although he stopped his business in the end !
Hirsute wrote:
I can see how it could be a working business model in some cases, particularly with hard to find parts, if the client spends hours trying to track down the part instead of you that’s obviously working time saved. However I think you’d probably just have to increase the hourly rate to cover the lost profit margin on the parts and intuitively I think people would be less happy with that. If the mechanic is charging say £30 per hour labour and £60 for the part they are fitting and making a £30 profit on the part that looks a better deal (“after all, they can’t help what the manufacturers are charging for the parts”) than charging £60 per hour to fit a part supplied by the client. The client would be providing the same profit for the mechanic but I think the latter instance would seem worse value to them.
It’s called capitalism – not
It’s called capitalism – not taking the piss.
kevgravelkev wrote:
Well there is some evidence that capitalism and taking the piss may not be unrelated. I mentioned that to Karl Marx once and he said he thought he might be able to get a book out of it…
Rendel Harris wrote:
You should’ve asked him one on sport…
https://youtu.be/vZ9myHhpS9s?si=c5SOlW5zDMc0SuxW
I’m a former bike mechanic.
I’m a former bike mechanic.
The main reason I am no longer working as a bike mechanic is it is not very well paid for what is a skilled job. Much as I enjoy working on some bikes, I just can’t afford to live on what it pays.
Modern bikes can be a pain to work on and having to work most weekends is not great, but if it paid an actual living wage I’d be far more inclined to put up with these things.
I don’t buy and would be very
I don’t buy and would be very reluctant to own a bike that I couldn’t maintain myself. Why is it Shimano wants more skilled bike mechanics? Maybe it’s so that allsorts of complicated tech that needs special , expensive, equipment to service can be sold . As well as the ever increasing price of the tech! Maybe that’s okay for some , however my road bike is all cable and easy peasy to service.
Because there are a lot of
Because there are a lot of bad mechanics out there. From what I can tell in the UK, there are a lot of people who are bad at their jobs. Most of shimanos stuff is pretty simple outside of their ebike motor stuff. Di2 is simple. All their mechanical stuff is pretty simple. The hardest thing about internal cable routing in my experience is working around badly designed frames which put sharp angles on cables.
I do 99% of my own stuff. I have had mechanical and di2. I have a bike with internally routed cabling as well. None of its that complex. Right tools and ability to think logically and work to documentation gets you almost anything done.
Complexity just adds cost to services and they should be notifying customers of that and charging accordingly.
VIPcyclist wrote:
99% of people will never, ever want to do that….and why should they? They just want to ride their bike. That’s why we need skilled mechanics as opposed to badly paid and trained 16 year olds etc etc
If you only have one bike you
If you only have one bike you are likely looking at min. one week with no bike if you choose to use a bike shop for service / repair in my experience. And this for a simple stuff like replacing a spoke, or bb bearings. My longest with no bike was 6 weeks, when my local Decathlon first took the job on, then after 4 weeks of complete silence, told me the spokes were difficult to source and they couldn’t be arsed to put in more effort to get them. Chap in a local LBS sorted it out in 2 weeks.
whosatthewheel wrote:
Well there is an easy and logical solution to that problem…
Perhaps they want to hire
Perhaps they want to hire them all, slap them all with NDAs, and then just bench them. No mechanics out there means either everyone does the work themselves or else they have to go to the in-house mechanics owned and operated by Shimano.
I often use Evans Cycles for
I often use Evans Cycles for servicing of my higher end bikes as they are usually very good and my LBS mechanic often isn’t quite upto it. The last time I took my bike to Evans the mechanic was explaining that there was a 6 week waiting list as she spent most of her time plugging electric bike motors into a computer and calling round colleagues to help decode error messages.
They arnt a very good
They arnt a very good mechanic then as error codes don’t need decoded ,they are very specific and accurate .
I’d cite two factors:
I’d cite two factors:
1. too many competing standards for mechanics to learn / master / get certified in
2. pay is too low
low pay = that’s it.
low pay = that’s it.
Factor in working weekends
Factor in working weekends and why would you bother.
My very fine LBS is closed on
My very fine LBS is closed on a Sunday, slightly inconvenient for myself, but I completely understand.
Two years ago, I left the
Two years ago, I left the trade (after many years) to become a bus driver, and I wish I had done it ages ago. Compensation aside, the job is far less stressful and much more satisfying than managing a workshop for a toxic “like a family” corporation that imposed unrealistic targets and schedules, understaffed the shop and paid peanuts. Not Evans;-)
As someone who used to do 90+
As someone who used to do 90+% of maintenance at home, it feels as though part of the issue is that ‘modern’ bikes are a PITA to service. Internal routing, hydraulics, propietary everything just make it annoying, time consuming, and therefore I suspect far less financially viable for a small workshop to do. My old-school steel, external cables, rim-brake bike can be serviced (full strip to frame + rebuild) in less than a day with little more than a chain-whip, BB removal tool, and some hex keys. Doing the same job on the hydro-equipped, internally routed, summer bike is almost two days and requires a bunch of extra kit (bleed kit, right oil, internal cable fitting kit, all the gubbins for refitting hydro lines, tubeless sealant if you’re that way inclined).
While the lack of secure, well-paid opportunities for mechanics is a problem, it seems that some of the issue is that there are fewer quick/simple jobs that pay well relative the level of effort.
Most likely because the pay
Most likely because the pay generally isn’t good enough. Bike mechanics need to be skilled to safely and efficiently maintain bikes, especially modern ones, but people generally don’t want to pay for it. Someone buys a car worth £25k+ and they accept that a garage mechanic will charge them at least £70-100/hr hour to maintain it. They spend £1500 on bike and think that having to pay more than £30 for a service is a rip off. Our local bike shop doesn’t list their actual hourly rate, but it’s certainly at least £50/hr, and presumably the individual mechanics are only getting a fraction of that. Their basic service is £50, and one for bikes with hydraulic brakes is £100. The overheads for tools, training, and all the other costs of running a business soon add up, but too many people think it’s “just a bike” so why should they pay so much to have it looked after properly.
As a former bike mechanic and
As a former bike mechanic and assistant manager for a well know retailer (Evans) before the Sports Direct buy out. I feel qualified to chip in.
I’m thankfull I can just ride now, service my own bikes and be happy. I do still support my LBS because they need it the most.
How could it better
First Post Done
Micky Flavour wrote:
Is this some kind of woke nonsense that needs stamping out?
Micky Flavour wrote:
Welcome! My nearest bike shop is a branch of Balfes and they refuse to do any work on ebike conversions regardless of whether or not they are legal or whether the requested work has anything to do with the kit, they won’t so much as change the bar tape on an ebike conversion. Seems a very sensible approach in terms of ensuring legality and avoiding liability.
This was about 10 years back
This was about 10 years back when they first started popping up on the market. Thing is you had targets for services / repairs so you had to book stuff in
Micky Flavour wrote:
Sounds old school and ‘woke’ all at the same time.
[Edit: damn, mdavidford got there first, and better – just got the stamping out pun 👏🏻]
I’m a Cytech qualified
I’m a Cytech qualified mechanic. I got my Cytech qualification through Decathlon during my short employment with them. I was told when I’m qualified I’d get a 10% pay rise, when they realised I’d be on a higher wage than my department manager they quickly stopped me from having it. Then I joined a LBS as a sales person and had to deal with idiots who just needed to loose some weight rather than spend thousands on bike parts and how can you afford to buy niceish bike parts on minimum wage. Your advising people when your own bike isn’t at top spec.
Overall I lost my love of cycling while working in the bike industry, I met some amazing people but it wasn’t worth me loosing the passion I had for riding my bike
Kyle_0491 wrote:
Sorry but that’s exactly the same kind of sniffy attitude that stops people going into their LBS and makes them want to buy online or from a big chain. People are entitled to spend what they want on their bikes regardless of their BMI and not to be called idiots for doing so. Hear this sort of sneering over and over again online from bike shop employees, you can’t have that sort of contempt for customers and then complain that they are not coming in any longer. Selling an expensive bike or top end groupset just once a month could make the difference between a decent profit or the shop going bust but you’re going to sneer at people because they’re buying good bikes even though they are a bit overweight? I certainly wouldn’t shop anywhere that had salespeople who had that sort of attitude.
(No vested interest particularly, all my bikes are secondhand and the most expensive was £1350 and my BMI is (just) within the healthy range, I just think that attitude sucks)
exactly this!
exactly this!
and BMI is bullshit
Folks with BMI over 30, who
Folks with BMI over 30, who aren’t overweight due to excess body fat are a tiny minority, so on an entire population’s level it is rather accurate in indentifying the overweight/obese ones. What it fails at is identifying the so called skinny-fat.
whosatthewheel wrote:
That is true, because a BMI over 30 is obese, but the “overweight” range between 25 and 30 is much more questionable. As a 6 foot tall reasonably well built man I stray into the overweight category if I’m more than 13 stone 3 lb. I would admit that there are times I’ve gone over that limit because I put on some weight through too much eating and drinking and not enough exercise, but on the other hand when I was at my fittest as a rugby player around the age of 28 I had a body fat percentage of around 10 and yet because of the extra muscle I was carrying I weighed nearly 14 stone.
losing
losing
great sales attitude… only skinny people are justified in spending thousands of pounds on a bike.
Look folks, this is A Good
Look folks, this is A Good Thing. Cycle use is on the rise, skilled mechanics are in short supply, and the law of supply vs. demand means wages will rise.
I charge £65/hr in rural Scotland, and I’ve never had a complaint. If someone did complain, I’d suggest they drive the 1-hr round trip to the nearest LBS where their bike will take a week or more to turn around. I now think £65/hr is too low….I have a 75yo customer’s £10k eMTB in now for a whole new drivetrain. He only rides it on estate roads, and LOVES it. Most folks will pretty much never fix their own bikes, especially complex ones. SERVICE is what they want. If someone isn’t willing to pay for it, there’s 99 others who are.
If I can charge £65/hr, I could pay a mechanic at least £25. Channels like Bikebook are shifting the sands of how consumers get connected with service shops, and the big internet bike brands are forming alliances with service aggregators to give their customers better support. This is the future – LBS doesn’t hold a large mortgage’s worth of bikes, they have a few demo stock, or the demos arrive next-day from a central warehouse for customers to try. Shop then gets cut of sale, and service contract.
Service-only is the key – online isn’t going away, ever. Stock high-margin high-turnover stuff and smile. Never do clothing, of any sort. Ever. Unless the service side of your business can support the cashflow impact and you’re big enough to have turnover.
My biggest beef: Shimano do need to stop selling huge amounts at knocked-down prices to internet channels – when acustomer can buy cheaper than I can from Madison at trade, there’s something *seriously* wrong.
Please do not take this post
Please do not take this post as negative to the min Wage as I am very much – and have been positive to a min wage resoning to lift low wages, I am old enough to remember a time before such laws were in place. I work in social care another sector that can not find staff, and keep staff in place, but only a few weeks ago a number of My collages and I had facebook post that came up from Welsh Labour showing there commitment and history around the min wage and how it had risen to a living wage, this was odd as it was around the same time we were given our pay rises for 25/26 years. All of us have many years in the NHS and can and do have pay slips from the past. I looked at what my wage per hour was 2015 and what the minimum wage was for that year and the difference was nearly 3 pounds (with inflation that would be more like 4 pounds today) that I was earning. Today it is in 2025 less than a pound a hour! This is the point, yes wages have risen at the bottom, but there is a missing middle. Many jobs and sectors that used to pay a reasonable chunk above the bottom and reward for hard work and staying power with out going and doing a degree are now on almost min wage and so what is the point in doing those jobs or staying put to gain more skills when the local supermarket pays just as much. Wages need to rise as not all jobs need or would benefit in staff having degrees, but those with partical time served qualifications need a wage rise fast or we will end up with a very hollowed out work market where there is nobody other than people from far away lands who are willing to do the work!
This was EXACTLY what the
This was EXACTLY what the critics of the minimum wage said would happen before it was introduced.
They said, yes, it will pull upward the lower wages to the new minimum, however it will also pull downwards those wages which previously were above this arbitrary level, therefore becoming something like a government ‘standard wage’.
They have absolutely been proved to be correct.
The worst of this is now there is no gradual progression, instead there is a water jump following the hurdle which the horse has to get promoted to after multiple qualifications. Management level basically and we all know what managers do (or dont do..!)
Talk to your union rep about
Talk to your union rep about it (you are in a union aren’t you) as this is exactly the sort of thing that they are there for. Stop trying to keep other people in abject poverty so you can feel better than them and start doing something to improve your own pay.
I can’t belive there are so
I can’t belive there are so many posts about this. The reason is a one word answer, “wages”.
If you want more than one word, “low wages and little career progression to increase the wages”.
Legin wrote:
I reckon there’s a one word answer but it’s because there is career progression:
Army: if you can fix a bike, you can fix a car. If you can fix a car, have a go on this Typhoon…
Scrolling down now to find that no doubt someone else got there first.
Coincidentally, this article
Coincidentally, this article came up the same day as my LBS put an advert for a mechanic on social media!
Well, i can speak from my own
Well, i can speak from my own expirience.. our government killed all schools that provided educations to skilled proffesions like builders, mechanics, metalworkers, plumbers etc. About 10 years ago so there are allmost no people to be found that can do the job. If someone wants to become a bike-mechanic bike shops have to find and train theire own staff.. and the pay.. i recenty looked at an ad for a bike mechanic and found out €1000 a month short . Only half the days of compared with the industrial job i have now..
Kiled orl the skools that
.
Poor pay probably pays a
Poor pay probably pays a significant part.
Simple. The tech is too
Simple. The tech is too annoying, repetitive and expensive. I stopped because i did not like charging 400 euro’s for a pair of tubeless tires. And shimano wise, the hoods would not be possible to put back as was. Chainring were too expensive to replace. And wholesalers sold us parts for a bit less than internet prices. Its became too hard to be an independent mechanic
Stefan Fish Vis wrote:
That’s a lot for the tubeless – how long did it take?
I had a bit of a look and
I had a bit of a look and snow studded tyres for my 27.5+ tubeless setup were 200 dollars a pop.
Pnp, import duties and the required sealant costs would push it to £400.
ktache wrote:
I can imagine that snow studded tyres are a bit niche and so cost a bit more, but I wouldn’t expect a bike mechanic/shop to be paying much for the rim tape and sealant as they’d be buying it in bulk.
Nope – you buy it off the
Nope – you buy it off the internet, as the qualtities you have to buy to qualify for a bulk discount from the mail suppliers are generally very large, many most don’t offer credit terms so you have to pay (and be taxed) up front for stuff you’ve not sold yet, and you pay for carriage unlike most internet sellers.
Bigtwin wrote:
Yep, I appreciate that. I meant more that you can buy the sealant in 5 litre bottles which is cheaper than the typical 500ml that a home mechanic might buy.
I spend many years working in
I spend many years working in the indrustry, then training and examining people to be cycle mechanics. The change has been staggering. LBS are now few and far between outside of the big cities, meaning that if you want to wrench, you have to work for terrible organisations like Evans and Haulfrauds and/or have long expensive commutes. Who wants to? The cost of bikes and parts has left the stratosphere over that time, yet wages have not increased in real terms at all. And frankly, selling bikes to self-important tossers for 1/3 or more of your annual take-home salary whilst being spoken to like dirt is a depressing way to fail to earn a living.
Bigtwin wrote:
I was trying to put my finger on why some people find bike shops intimidating places to visit due to some having high-handed or imperious staff and prefer to shop online instead…
Do let us know when you think
Do let us know when you think of something (I’m assuming – though I feel I know – that you don’t work in a bike shop).
Bigtwin wrote:
You’re right, I don’t work in a bike shop, but I can say after working in commercial IT for over 35 years as a consultant/developer, I have a lot of experience of self important tossers (or “clients” as we used to have to call them). I don’t think this dynamic is unique to the bike industry, it’s prevalent in many customer facing roles.
And obviously it makes no
And obviously it makes no difference to job satisfaction and thus endurance whether you are paid min wage or close to, or the presumably marginally different salary that someone can endure for three and a half decades in Commercial IT. Yes, people treat lost of retail workers like shite these days – it’s modern Britain. But if you career aspirations and skill-set are burger-flipping related, it may or may not irk more than if you’ve paid a couple of grand of your own money to train to do a skilled and safety-critical job.
Bigtwin wrote:
All I know is that you can’t tell from his workshop pictures…
Actually, yes you can – his is extremely well kept and has refreshments on tap!
Bigtwin wrote:
I guess a lot depends which side of the counter you’re standing, I think a fair number of cyclists – in fact I know because I’ve heard them saying it and seen it in action – feel that it is they who can get spoken to like dirt by bike shop employees, particularly if they are new to cycling or a woman. Also, someone who is buying a bike that costs a third or more of your salary is basically providing the money to pay for a couple of months of said salary so tosser or not there’s a plus side. Sounds like maybe a customer-facing job wasn’t the best choice of career for you.
Doubtless you’d be happy to
Doubtless you’d be happy to be paid a non-living wage for years with little or no prospect of ever earning more or progressing just so long as the plus side that you describe was in place. You seem to be incapable of getting the point as to why there is a shortage of mechanics no matter how many people here and elsewhere tell you. And clearly what you know about doing a customer facing job in today’s Britain could be written on the back of a postage stamp. You ever been had at with a knife for trying to stop someone walking out with a few hundred quid or more’s worth of stock stuffed under their jacket – no, thought not. Doubleless you’d blame that on the “attitude” of the staff and just tell them to “suck it up buttercup”.
I haven’t worked recently in
I haven’t worked recently in customer-facing employment, I admit; as a younger man I worked in several shops and behind several bars (yes, for less than the living wage) and no, I was never threatened by anyone with a knife, although I was threatened by people with broken bottles. What the experience did teach me was that regarding paying customers without whom I would have no salary at all as “tossers” and being generally contemptuous of them would not only reduce the potential profit to be made but quite quickly turn one into an angry and bitter man. Thank goodness that hasn’t happened to you.
Leaving aside your snide and
Leaving aside your snide and nasty completley ignorant personal insults aside, I suspect that things just might have changed a bit since you were a “young man”. For instance, I doubt the term “gammon” was even common parlance then.
Bigtwin wrote:
Yes it was, we used to have it roasted with a bit of pineapple or sometimes fried with an egg on top. Very nice it was too.
Bit presuming, but based on
Bit presuming, but based on Rendal’s posted pics, and maybe being a little younger, there was no minimum wage back then.
ktache wrote:
Correct indeed, I left school in ’86 and worked in shops and bars before and during University and for a bit afterwards and there was very little wage protection especially for youngsters – looking back it was quite scandalous how low some wages were, OK if one was living at the family home (as I was) and just needed beer/bike/holiday money but no way could one have rented even a grotty bedsit and fed oneself adequately on them.