Here's What Harry Styles Did For Work Before One Direction

It's tough to remember a time when Harry Styles wasn't a famous, and beloved, pop star. As The Express points out, Styles was just 16 when he joined One Direction during the 2009 season of "The X Factor." Alongside band-mates Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, and Liam Payne, Styles was instantly catapulted to worldwide fame and notoriety. The band released five successful records and toured the world many times over before ultimately splitting in 2015. Styles has since gone on to have a successful solo career in his own right.

Finding fame young has its downsides of course, with Styles admitting, "I was 16 [when I joined the band], I just kind of finished school and didn't really know what it was that was happening." He added, "Everything was really new and exciting and I didn't know how long everything was gonna last. It kind of became like: 'Woah, how long can we keep this going?' because I really didn't expect any of this to happen." Over the years, the pop star grew up in front of our eyes and, behind the scenes, Styles was figuring out how to be his authentic self.

It's worth noting, however, that if things had worked out slightly differently for him, the "Watermelon Sugar" hit-maker might have had a surprisingly normal career trajectory.

As Insider notes, like many teenagers looking to earn a little pocket money, 14-year-old Harry Styles took a job working at the W Mandeville bakery in Holmes Chapel, where he grew up. Styles earned £6 (around $8) an hour at the time. In fact, Styles returned to the bakery while shooting his band's 2013 documentary "This Is Us," showing the global superstar hasn't forgotten where he came from. His former boss, Simon Wakefield, enthused that the One Direction star "was the most polite member of staff we've ever had," in an interview with The Mirror. 

According to insiders, Styles was more than happy to perform his typical chores during the revisit, as well as hanging out with staff-members and, naturally, chowing down on his favorite bacon, beans and cheese pasties. "He was a really hard worker. His jobs were serving in the shop, cleaning the back, ­scrubbing the floor, washing the trays and cleaning the counter," Wakefield shared, noting customers were very fond of Styles too, even before he shot to fame.

Although Styles was clearly destined to be a pop star, it's worth noting his childhood dream, per Capital FM, was to be a physiotherapist as he told Sirius XM. But, "When we had career day at school, I was told there wasn't very many jobs in physiotherapy, so I became a singer." Luckily, it all worked out for the best, particularly considering how much Styles is actually worth.