What kind of career today? 18 1 23 8 (20) 25 1 30
Well I don't know about that? But think of it this
way these days people rarely go into something and stay in it for the rest of
their lives like in the old days! They have to be prepared for career moves,
especially if they wish to stay in the same place.
But some people know what they wish to do by the
golden age of 7 I told my soon to be 18 year old grandson just the other day:
like the British Public School Eton boys for example who at that age already
knew they wished to be Prime Minister and in point of fact more Old Etonians
than anybody else fulfil this ambition..?
It was rather different in the family in which I grew up though for none of us attended Eton or any other Public School, save
for my eldest son who always professed not to have rated it..? No, the family I
grew up in was full of people with trades in their fingers..? My dad for
example was a Joiner, a Carpenter and later I learned in point of fact he was a
Pattern Maker which is the top job for people working in wood. My mother was a
Machinist: an Embroideress who also worked with her hands, and used to quip how
Winston Churchill would be sleeping again under her bedspread during WW ll
because she was the machinist entrusted with the task of making the quilts for
the state rooms of The Queen Mary, launched from Glasgow in 1936!
The bad news when I came to decide my future career
is that I was never so practical as to consider as suitable the professions of my parents
or of my older brother who variously became a Fitter, a Toolmaker, a
Draughtsman and finally aged about 30 after attending a short Teachers’
Training College, a Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering subjects for the rest of
his working life until age 65.
The good news was that I had all these examples of
things I couldn’t put my mind to, and having attended the same all boys’ Trade
School as my elder brother: Bury Junior Technical School, for the last 2 years
of my secondary education, I was able to exercise my mind to eliminate a list
of the subjects I was taught there which comprised a list of things I didn’t wish to
do…
That’s how I chose my first job start as a
Laboratory Assistant in a Paper Mill Laboratory where a part of the deal was a
part-time day release course to continue studying Chemistry, Physics and
Mathematics, all subjects I shone at relatively speaking.
Then their followed a succession of jobs after 5
years in my first in the Wood Pulp field in Research and Development
departments, during 2½ years, then a stint of 10 months in Basic and Vat
Dyestuffs development, 2 months working as one of the Anchor men on a Steam
Hammer where we fashioned wrought iron crank shafts for Ships’ engines, and
then a year working as the Shift Analyst for a company manufacturing
Transparent Paper, also known as Cellophane, which is produced using the Viscose
Cellulose Process, before returning to my first employer’s R and D Centre where
during 3 years I worked on various paper development projects but where for 2
years I established a Fibrous Raw Material Department in which I would evaluate
a number of exotic fibrous materials for their suitability for producing paper on
the Groups' 144 Paper Machines.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I became a
Doer as opposed to a Talker, and when I look back I realise that the only way
for a doer to get on is to actually do all the different jobs: in the Paper
Mill Laboratory job I didn’t only test all the Mill’s various incoming hard River
water, and outgoing effluents, I then used the results to treat these waters with
chemicals, with a range of chemicals such as Caustic Soda, Sodium Sulphite,
Sodium Hexametaphosphate, to render them free of hardness salts in order to be able to raise steam for the Company's Steam Turbine and Paper Machines Drying Cylinders, etc., treat the incoming River water with Chlorine to render it free from bugs so we could make food contact papers like Bread Wrap and so on...
Then when I landed the job aged 35 that would set
my course for the rest of my life I became Research and Development Manager for
a company reliant on all the various industries in which I had worked during
the first 20 years of my career, where our main product line was teabag papers
and nonwovens, and the second most important fibrous food casing base papers
for which finally I moved company to become a Fibrous Casing Manufacturer’s
Joint Research and Development Director where I would continue to be hands
on.
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