Entertainment For Lively Minds
Factory Records, never worked in an Office
Posted by ip29 on 25 October 2011 - 10:04am.
As the title of this entry says I've never worked in an Office, only in Retail and in the last 24 years in a proper old-fashioned factory.
I work in Print Finishing, Bookbinding in old money. It quite hard work but I do actually produce something which is pretty satisfying.
I don't remember many people doing manual work on here, so anybody else work in a proper dirty factory? And do you like it?
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Factory Work
I spent a month in a factory straight from school. I didn't like it. I then spent seven years in retail. I didn't like that either. I eventually figured out that it was routine I coudn't stand: Getting up the same time every day, taking the same bus to and from work - it wasn't for me. I'm self employed now and I love it.
The only thing I miss are workmates. Although I didn't like the jobs I made some great friends who are still great friends.
I have worked in warehouses.
It was horrible, hot, heavy work. Hated it.
Train Driver
No, it wasn't what I wanted to be when I was a boy.
Yes, it is the best job in the whole world.
I tried plenty of other jobs before landing it, mostly in offices, though they were nearly all attached to proper old-fashioned factories (soap, engineering, armaments).
It's hardly physical labour, but it's shift work, noisy work sometimes dirty, walking on ballast work. I like knowing that I've got everyone to work on time (which I usually do) and got them home again, taken them to school, got them home safely and legally from the pub etc Within minutes of joining the railway, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. More than any other workplace I've seen, it defines your life.
And does time fly by?
... or will you gainsay this evidence?
Well, since you ask
Apparently so.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=manchester+to+chester+in+4+m...
One of my regular runs
Thank you!
From a regular train commuter. Our trains do normally run on time, and are generally clean and safe, and yes, I do live in Cheshire.
Now, if you could just arrange to stop the train so that the woman carrying a copy of Word Magazine is right outside a carriage door...
Collective industrial action
I shall have a word with the lads (and occasional lasses) for you.
Looks like
I'm on a different line to you (from your comment/YouTube clip above), so no need to count the votes for collective action, unfortunately.
I take the North Wales (Arriva) line to Manchester - but I could nip down to Delamere, my closest station, and do a Railway Children by waving my Word mag from one of the bridges in the hope you're driving.
Yes, I do.
I work in a t-shirt printing factory and have done for 22 years. In fact I've worked in factories since leaving school. I started doing the shittiest job in the factory, up to my elbows in white spirit cleaning screens and gradually progressed to running the art studio for the last 10.
Most of the shirts we print are for bands on tour, at the moment it's Katy Perry, Rihanna and Motorhead that are taking up the majority of our time. Always the official gear. Like you It's satisfying producing something tangible but with me it is often seen out and about on the high street.
Most of the time I really enjoy my job with great colleagues, it's just my long commute that can get me down.
I also started in the printing trade with that shitty job:
cleaning screens is no fun is it? No proper health and safety in my time either, so you were constantly exposed to harmful chemicals.
I was at one of the biggest screen printers in the country for twenty years. Working my way up as the company expanded, I ended up managing the stencil department but was unceremoniously dumped when our biggest client Safeway, went bust and our turnover halved overnight.
I now work at a large paint factory, labelling and cartoning tins on the production lines. It's fairly monotonous work, but reasonably well paid and I haven't got the slightest bit of interest in furthering myself these days: I did all that in my previous job and was rewarded with the bullet.
Last Two Jobs Have Been In Factories..
..current one is Okay but no fun to be had - get your head down and just get on with it. Not hard work but the permanent nights can be a pain when there's a great gig on. One before was in a pet food factory - smelly noisey and often great fun cos the guys there had been there so long they could run the machines with their eyes closed - and one of them did when he felt "unwell" lay down in the first aid room and emerged 12 hours later as the shift finished.
Before that 18 years retail in a huge supermarket - long hours but every day different. You never knew what might happen especially with the security announcements for all managers to head to the front doors - you didn't know if one of your colleagues was being attacked or if a shoplifter had been spied and they just needed the doors manning.
Yes
Worked a very large factory for my first job then a couple of smaller ones, the last being a very specialist company who I started working in sales for after 6 years in the factory.
Some good times but, as mentioned above, was not keen on the routine aspects of it, funnily enough I now watch guys leaving same time each morning and getting home same time each evening and it seems quite appealing.
Do you work in one of the big bookbinders? Have been into clays and st Ives, both looked like pretty good places to work.
Quite small
No, I work in a fairly small outfit on the South Coast, about 35 people work here. 22 years ago when I started it was about 70! Up-to date machines mean that less and less people aren't needed, a lot of things were done by hand in the past but machines have gradually taken over.
I mainly Cut, Fold and Stitch which means my days are quite varied, and I can listen to my iPod all day which is brilliant!
Yes, the reason for my visits to the other sites....
Was to discuss some machinery that would increase levels of automation. Not always pleasant but I console myself with the thought that if these sites do not become increasingly competitive then whole sites could well be lost with all manufacturing moving to china.
Fair enough
That is fair enough. In some ways the job has become easier because of the newer machines but the bosses do expect faster and faster turnarounds on jobs!
The other thing that is becoming very hard is that Printers are installing their own finishing equipment and not using the Trade Finishers.
I once worked in the Mr Kipling Factory
Exceedingly ghastly.
I've never eaten their cakes since.
Was it
Rudyard work?
*coat*
Will never forget a stint in a high street fashion warehouse
just before starting college in the mid-1990s. On the first day, the supervisor gestured towards a clothes rail, on which were hanging around 30 expensive jackets, all tagged with blue plastic clips. "Just pull them off" he said, gesturing, and chuck em on the floor."
About 10 minutes later he returned, saw what I'd done, and peered at me like I'd escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane. I'd pulled every lovely jacket off, and strewn them all over the dusty warehouse floor - leaving the little blue plastic clips still attached to the rail.
"What is it you're going to study again?" "Um, journalism." "I see."
Cucumbers.
I hauled tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of the bastards onto conveyor belts in the summer of 1999. Horrible.
Worse still was working at Metal Box in Mansfield in the autumn of 1995. By the time a tin got down to me on the last machine on the line it would have three or four different people's blood on it.
But it's still better than working in an office with the incessant chatter of.... shall we call them arseholes?
Not like it was
Office working now is very different to what it was. I like it. In an open plan office there almost inevitably will be arseholes and they always seem to have the loudest voices but these days it's acceptable to blot them out with music of your choice. I think everyone has a pair of headphones or earphones on their desk.
I worked at Metal Box
the toolroom in Alperton. I was the last intake of apprentices 1980. I stuck it out for four years of apprenticeship and one further year. Years later, I temped at a Coca Cola can plant. 12 hour shifts, pulling out cans with dodgy print. Another glamorous temp job was in a sandwich factory, standing in front of a belt putting one ingredient on sliced bread as it went past. "Shudders at memory"
The one in Mansfield has been pulled down
except for the clock tower.
A grim symbol of the many million of hours of wasted human existence that passed on the site.
Alperton is still there
although Metal Box was bought by a French company about15 years ago. I still go past it occasionally. I doubt there's anyone there I would know now although I still see a friend who started on the same day as me 30 years ago.
The year I started they had just pulled out of a site behind the Renault garage on the A40. Us apprentices were sent to remove anything useful so we spent a jolly fortnight wandering around a dead factory and eating lunch in the BBC Outside Broadcast building. This had been a big site, built in the 30s with its own rail lines to carry materials in and out. Seeing it abandoned with personal effects left behind was possibly the most depressing thing I've ever seen.
I work in a factory that
I work in a factory that prints food packaging (labels for soft drink bottles, chocolate bar wrappers, crisp packets etc).
My job isn't exactly mentally demanding but it's physically draining. I work twelve hour shifts, 7-7 either days or nights, and am frequently on my feet lugging pallets ranging in weight from 200kg-700kg about for the full term and struggling with a heavy lift door that doesn't want to work. I also find it hard to sleep during the day, despite eye masks and blackout curtains and earplugs, so frequently do the night shift on about four hours sleep a day.
It's a world away from being a broadcast journalist on regional TV news as I was doing before but the money is actually not too bad and the shift pattern gives me a week off every month in that it goes:
Weds, Thurs, Fri night
Weds, Thurs, Fri day
Sun, Mon, Tues night
Sun, Mon, Tues day
Week off
Weds, Thurs, Fri night etc
I've hardly used any holidays this year because of my 12 shifts a month so I've taken Sunday, Monday and Tuesday day off this week and have got a fortnight off for the sake of three days booked.
I'd like to get back into a more creative job but at the moment, while I'm not really sure what job I'd like that to be, this is perfectly fine.
Sorry to be nosey...
...but on which local TV station did you work? Were you on screen talent?
And yes, I am aware that I sound faintly like a stalker. Apologies but for some reason I've always found local telly interesting. I feel I should now retire to my attic/office and attend to my paperclips.
I was at the BBC in the
I was at the BBC in the North West. Whilst my face never made it on screen, you could hear my voice doing short reports on the breakfast bulletins before guidelines from up high scrapped them
As I'm in the North West
I will have heard you!
Thanks for that.
Double post
Double post
new
I work in building trade but have worked in a few factories.
In one, my job was to stand on a line with a fork and punch the holes in cornish pasties as they passed by.
I found them grim places to work although the craic was good.
I do think that shiftwork is bad for your health.
I know a few lads who had problems after doing shifts
No factory
but I work in a grocery store and it's quite hard work, more than people think. My arms, shoulders and neck are pretty worn out these days, I'm always in some pain. Thankfully, I have the ability to block it out of my mind most of the time, my threshold for pain is very high, and I've never wanted to use any painkillers.
But I sometimes worry about how crippled I will be in my old age...
I've had my job for something like 25 years, switching career now doesn't seem to be an option really. And as I work the late shift it suits my habits. The 9 to 5 lifestyle makes me physically ill.
It's stressful, hard work, I've lost most of my friends by now, the pay is low and it's the same routines day after day.
But I get to sleep until 11AM, I like my colleagues, I'm in a position where I pretty much make my own decisions and the customers are for the most part sweethearts. Old ladies giving you hugs and telling you all about their ailments, little kids asking funny questions, silly banter with the regulars. You get to be rather friendly with a lot of people when you work in a store small enough to only attract locals.
So it's OK. Most of the time. I just wish I didn't have to work as much as I do.
Worked in a coal mine for 26
Worked in a coal mine for 26 years, 25 if you take 12 months strike into consideration.
Greatest work mates anyone could wish for, we all looked after each other at work and out at play...fuckin` horrible conditions, wouldn`t go back down that shithole if they paid me a banker`s wage.
I now work in the care industry and I love it.
12 months out?
Re-spect.
Most people have forgotten. I haven't.
My first job after college was as a setter/operator
in a light engineering factory in Clerkenwell in the mid 1970s for 4-5 months Conditions were not that pleasant and the machinery was very old (i.e lathes in wartime finish!). I was stuck in the basement turning out handles for post office stamps. It was a jobbing shop doing small batch work, but some of the repetitive jobs drove me mad.
They wanted me to become a production engineer, but when they moved to Co. Durham, I left and got a job as Assistant Production Controller in another factory in Islington. Stayed there 3 years covering all the bases from purchasing, inspection, progress-chasing, sub-contracting, order control, hiring/firing labourers, running 3 workshops (18 men) - you name it. Eventually moved to Midlands and worked as a project engineer, planning manager and stores supervisor, managing men twice my age until I was made redundant in the early 80s. Left engineering at that point. Have no regrets about studying engineering (except now I would have done Production Eng. with Management or a Language rather than Mech/Aero). Time in manufacturing gave a my a great grounding (in many senses), which I took into my later IT/analytical work.
Straight From School
into Mechanical Engineering Apprenticeship.
4 years of machining, fitting and making stuff work.
Post-Apprenticeship: Briefly worked in the machine room, but was more adept in the Fitting workshop (which basically involved hitting things with hammers).
Went back to college and transferred to the Metrology Lab (remember the adage: "Those who can, Do. Those who can't, Inspect").
Being in the Civil Service meant after one year at Industrial grade, due to the apprenticeship and the college qualifications, I was entitled to a Promotion Board which I passed, meaning I could take any available job at my newly acquired grade. I chose a job in the Manufacturing Planning Department, and have been in an office ever since (not in the same job I hasten to add).
The smell of machine oil and coolant on a warm summers day is still one of the most evocative odours to enter my nostrils.
And I've still got my Apprentice Toolkit (I made all of it, and it still works)
Mmm, coolant
that brings back memories
Coolant
I think the first time I smelt "that smell" was when I was at junior school and went round the Rolls Royce factory one open day (the factory/airfield was just down the road. The next time would have been .... another open day. Through secondary school it was a regular smell during metalwork lessons. After university I worked on a large manufacturing site where I rarely went into the huge machine rooms but when I did, there was the smell again. The manufacturing moved away to a different site in the late 80's and that was that... until last year. I was in Italy for a few days to help some colleagues get some software working but then at lunchtime we walked through the huge machine shop (where they make tanks!)... there was that smell again and it reminded me of those visits to Rolls Royce.
Soluble Oil -also referred to as 'Suds' or 'Slosh'.
as an old instructor at Loughborough MTC used to intone as part of his standard rubric/introduction to lathes - every time.
When I say old, he was very old - didn't often move from his stool - white paper-thin skin!
In those days, Loughborough University had a Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) - effectively a fully fitted factory, where engineering students could experience and practise all manner of production processes on a range of machine tools, dies,and finishing techniques, plus a pattern shop, foundry, pressure die casting room, thermosets/ thermoplastics lab, Metrology, fitting - the lot. We didn't get into the foundry, because our instructor dropped dead over the weekend between pattern making (and filling sand casting boxes) and the foundry practice.
Don't know if it is still there - the Arts Lobby in the University were in favour of closing it down in the 70s. I ended up there for 6 months after Rolls Royce Aero went bust and took with it my planned EITB scholarship to Derby.