Career options in factories and warehouses
Schooldays
Before I ever thought about a career, it was clear that I was much better at academic subjects than practical subjects. I was absolutely useless in the gymnasium, on the sports field or on the cross country circuit. I remember one occasion when I took part in a 4-lap one-mile race. I was so slow that everybody lapped me. The person who finished second-last recorded a time that was closer to the winning time than it was to the time I took, which burned into my memory as eight minutes and five seconds.
I was equally useless at woodwork, metalwork and (on the only occasion that I attempted it) pottery. I managed to avoid woodwork and metalwork eventually by attending cookery lessons instead, with some limited success. I was also useless at playing the recorder, but I'm sure that I'd have been useless at playing any musical instrument. I did well in chemistry and physics but those subjects involved both academic and practical work. Nevertheless, it was obvious that factories and warehouses were unlikely to suit me and so it has proved.
Jam tarts
In what turned out to be my final few months at school, I secured a job as a trainee computer programmer with Plessey in Swindon and abandoned plans to take GCE "A" levels in mathematics and chemistry. However, because I finished my exams in June 1969 and planned a holiday in August, I agreed with the employer not to start work until after I had taken the holiday. This made sense on a number of levels but it left me with the problem of what to do before the holiday. I actually decided to take a temporary job and worked for four weeks in a bakery. The unfortunate employer was R and K Wise.
At the bakery, I was put on a production line. Jam tarts came out of the oven on trays. These trays were put on a conveyor belt during which time they cooled, at the end of which one person stood, removing the trays and putting them in position ready for their next journey. On another conveyor belt, these jam tarts were packed into boxes and topped with icing. I guess that the basic idea is similar to production lines the world over although it just happens that the products here were jam tarts. Unfortunately for me, conveyor belts are set to work at a certain speed. I was just about able to keep pace with the jam tarts coming out of the oven (and I could stop that belt if I had to) but on the second belt, I was a total embarrassment. Whichever part of the belt I was on, I was noticeably slower than the other workers so I had to keep switching positions to even things out. I learned there and then that factory production lines were not for me. Fortunately, it was only a temporary job and I had a better job lined up, one that (as it proved) I could do much better.
Furniture
I never expected to work in a factory again but I eventually did in 2004. It wasn't a production line so at least I was spared a repeat of my bakery embarrassment, but I was equally spectacularly unsuccessful, notwithstanding that I was presented with a certificate that reads otherwise. This factory job lasted three months and was part of the New Deal scheme, which I discuss in depth in The politics of unemployment, that is supposed to help unemployed people get back to work. Originally, I was keen to try out this scheme, to see if I could do a completely different career. I suggested I'd like to try light warehousing work. I didn't get it, instead being sent to a flat-pack furniture assembly factory.
I described the experience humorously in Assemble furniture from kits (badly). Well, I suppose that in some ways it was a worthwhile experience but it was mostly a waste of time. Insofar as I learned anything from the experience, four weeks would have been enough. It certainly didn't help in my quest for a proper job. A return to the same company, albeit at different premises, a few years later found me relegated to menial duties such as sweeping floors, though this was only for four weeks rather than thirteen. On the first occasion, I was also consoled by the fact that New Deal was optional for people of my age although I suspected that this might change one day. It did, but not before I'd tried out a forklift truck.
The forklift truck
At one of the Next Step meetings I had to discuss future career possibilities, somebody suggested forklift truck driving. I told him that I couldn't even drive a car, never having taken a driving test. He said that it wasn't necessary because you need a different type of licence. I was doubtful about the prospect but soon after that, I saw trials being offered by a forklift truck driver-training centre. This gave me the chance to try one out to see whether it was worth committing to a full training course. It occurred to me that, within the confines of a warehouse, at least I wouldn't have to worry about all the traffic that car drivers have to contend with. And if I did well, maybe I could start those car driving lessons again. So, despite serious misgivings, I went along to the trial.
The area where the trial took place was divided into two sections, one being a big empty space and the other being a tightly confined obstacle course. The big empty space was just to test basic steering. All I had to do was to steer the truck (classified as a counterbalance, though not necessarily one of the models in my link) in a straight-line forwards, then reverse back to where I started. I was absolutely useless (the truck preferred to take a curvaceous course) and declined to try the obstacle course, much to the assessor's relief.
I knew then that my original doubts had been confirmed. Maybe forklift truck drivers don't have to contend with other traffic but it became clear to me that warehouses are designed with absolutely minimum road space to squeeze as much shelf space in as possible, which saves a lot of money. Good for them but it definitely rules me out. With practice, I would have managed the basic steering but never the tight spaces. And any chance that I might resume car-driving lessons has gone forever. The story of those lessons that I took (a total of forty) during the mid-seventies in London, Watford (where I had a provisional booking in Berkhamsted for a driving test) and Newcastle is best forgotten and is in any case outside the scope of this blog. Actually, I've forgotten most of the details anyway.
Preparing waste for re-cycling
In 2007, New Deal became compulsory for all unemployed people under the female pensionable age (then fixed at sixty but now on a rising escalator). I eventually ended up at a waste-recycling centre. Actually, the work there could be described as light warehousing, which is what I'd originally suggested three years earlier prior to my furniture assembly ordeal. Nevertheless, I was equally incompetent. I could do the paper shredding and I could sweep the floor. Wow! But elsewhere, I was absolutely useless, just as I had been with the jam tarts, the furniture and the forklift truck.
Even the paper shredding had its downside. It was easy just feeding the paper through the shredder as I quickly got used to the problems with this and was able to sort out (and mostly avoid) any jams. The problem was that the shredded paper had to be shifted to a skip (unless it was to be used as bedding for the chimpanzees at Twycross Zoo, in which case all the staples had to be removed prior to shredding, which certainly slowed the process down) and that was the job of whoever was doing the shredding. Maybe in a bigger establishment, one person would be shredding paper full time and somebody else would carry the waste to the skip, but it's not a foregone conclusion. In any case, employers want their staff to be flexible, so that they can cover for absences by others. Also, can anybody imagine me (or anybody else) spending all their working years just standing at a paper shredder, feeding paper through? Only a placement agency working for a government desperate to force people off jobseeker's allowance (or the government itself) could think that way.
As I lack physical strength or any of the other skills that are so necessary in a factory or warehouse, any attempt to force me into such a job would appear doomed. Even where the basic tasks are within my capability (including all the processes in my part of the jam tart production line), I cannot do them fast enough to be an effective employee. It's one thing working for an organization that is paid by the government to put up with me for three months, when anything they get out of me at all is a bonus, but quite another thing to expect the same from an employer who would regard me as a liability.
Anything else?
But just supposing that there is some kind of manual work that I can do at a pace acceptable to an employer? Then we come back to the question of Employer attitudes. Several people have made it clear that if I, as a former computer programmer, were hired to work in such an environment, I would (to quote one of them) be taken apart. Others were more diplomatic but meant the same thing. Quite simply, I would be seen as a misfit even before I had a chance to prove anything. This didn't happen on New Deal because misfits are expected in such an environment, but let's not be fooled by that. Employers would be most unlikely to consider my application for a real manual job except in desperation, knowing the likely consequences.
I have occasionally applied for such jobs, including one as a kitchen assistant, and will no doubt continue to do so to keep the government agencies happy, but I've never had any response to such applications apart from outright rejections. Barring a very unlikely set of circumstances that I cannot foresee, my future lies elsewhere.
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