This month's Derby Telegraph has been published today and this time I'm trying to expand my experience with a brand new recruit to Wesley's:
and here's the original, unedited version:
Wesley's in Victoria Crescent,
Burton was always slightly behind the times, which is one of the reasons why I
enjoyed working there in the 1970s. You
could see this trend in their working practices, their machinery, the
rabbit-warren architecture of the old brewery buildings they occupied and, most
importantly, in the reluctance to adopt anything remotely new in terms of
management techniques. This was never more
obvious than in the appointment they made toward the end of my tenure at
Wesley's.
Only Wesley's could appoint a
Work Study Engineer just at the time when that particular science was beginning
to fall out of favour in UK factories. Steve
(name changed) was not just an anomaly in terms of his expertise, he was also
something different in terms of the managers we usually had, who were somewhat
staid and rather serious. Steve had
shoulder-length hair, dressed very stylishly indeed and had a wicked sense of
humour. He always made a point of carrying
his cigarette packet and lighter in his hand so as not to spoil the line of his
clothes, which should tell you everything you need to know about him.
To me, he seemed like a breath of
fresh air but I know that he rubbed some up the wrong way. He had a very forthright way of expressing
himself and cared little about what others thought about him, which I suppose
is a useful trait if you're going to be a Work Study Engineer. I wouldn't say boo to a goose and was
desperately keen for people to think well of me, so I was in awe.
Philip in 1973
Of course, appointing a Work
Study Engineer just after you've recognised a Trade, might be considered to be
unfortunate timing. Sure enough, Steve's
appointment proved to be controversial and the idea of introducing piecework and
bonus schemes across the factory soon fell foul of the Trade Union's
obstinance. Steve did manage to conduct
numerous studies in various departments, although many of these were wrecked by
a degree of imaginative messing-about on the part of the more militant workers.
He did manage to introduce some
new work methods, most notably in the Crepe Paper Dept. where he had one girl
continuously winding and cutting crepe paper to feed to the girls converting
the paper sheets into paper folds, instead of each individual girl winding her
own. The downside to this, from the
girls' point of view, was that this removed the opportunity to stand in line,
take a breather and chat, although it did improve their productivity.
I found the whole business of
Work Study fascinating and, as I still didn't have a full week's work even with
my production statistics and wages clerk duties, I became Steve's unofficial
assistant, helping calculate his Work Studies.
I also spent a good deal of time listening in wonder to tales of Steve's
social life, which largely revolved around his successful pursuit of young
ladies. At the time he was with us, he
was conducting a long-distance affair with someone whose marital status was,
shall we say, a little opaque and who had decamped to the South-West. This involved him driving straight down there
at the end of work on Friday (in his open-topped sports car, naturally) and
driving straight back in the early hours of Monday morning to arrive at work at
08.30, usually looking like what happens if you don't eat your greens!
Inevitably, a Work Study Engineer
who can't find much work to study was never going to be a long-term appointment
and I shouldn't have been surprised (although I was) when he was summoned from
his office one day by the MD and came back minutes later to tell me that he no
longer had a job.
I'll always remember him fondly
as the only member of the management and staff who made the effort to come to
my 21st birthday celebrations (at the Transport Club, of course). I'm sure he could have thought of many better
and more sophisticated places to be, but he knew it was important to me and he
came anyway. Thanks Steve.
The latest collection of Philip's stories 'The Things You See…' is now
available in both print and e-book editions from Amazon
(http://mybook.to/PrintThingsYouSee) or to order through your local book shop.
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