A woman who has worked for the same shopping chain since she finished school is celebrating 40 years with the company – and fulfilling her childhood dream.

Bridget Scott, from Rainham, has worked for Boots since she was just 17. During that time has worked at four different branches and her longest break has been three months for maternity leave.

She said: “I took time off when my second son was first born but went back six weeks after as my partner was unemployed at the time.”

She even went into labour with her first son on the shop floor.

“My waters didn’t break or anything dramatic like that,” she said. “But I did start having contractions, so they sent me home.”

And whenever Bridget, 57, moved counties she just found a new branch of the store to work at.

“I started in a small store in Central London,” she said. “Then I moved to Essex when I got married and worked in a big store there. I’ve also worked evenings at the Bluewater branch when my children were little.”

For the past 23 years she has worked in the small store in Rainham Shopping Centre.

During her career, she has been a supervisor, worked on the beauty counter, in the stock room and in the cash office.

But in the last 10 years, she has gone some way towards fulfilling a childhood ambition after training to work in the pharmacy.

“I wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “But I was never given any encouragement or guidance on how to go about it.”

Since landing her first job at 17, Bridget said she had considered moving on but has never made the leap because she loves what she does.

“I enjoy what I do,” she said. “I like the interaction with the public. I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

She said she had seen a lot of changes in customers’ buying habits in the past four decades.

“Our most popular products are still painkillers and cold relief,” she said. “But we don’t see a perfume called 4711 which used to be really popular and sold really well back in the day.”