Working in Television
Gap years hadn’t been invented when I went to university, but in 1979, after graduating and then after doing a year’s postgraduate theatre course, I had a kind of gap year. I’d had enough of studying and exams and had a place on a teacher-training course for September 1979: meanwhile, I was living with my then boyfriend (my now husband) and I needed a job. He was a student, and I didn’t want to be away from him, so it was Cardiff or Cardiff, because that was where he was at university.
It wasn’t too hard to get work of a low-paid temporary nature and I was good at keeping my head down and getting on with whatever dull job they threw at me. So off I went to an agency, which I shall call Dulljobs Inc (it wasn’t really called that, it was called Manpower).
After I’d done a few weeks in offices, Dulljobs Inc decided to test my mettle by giving me the dullest of the dull: they sent me off to the National Panasonic Television Factory. It was a huge place, run by enigmatic Japanese men, with slogans on the walls:
Cleanliness in the Workplace Makes for Quality in the Market Place
The whole place beeped. A lot. All the time. Blue lights flashed too. At one end of the assembly line were some rather more skilled workers doing things with screwdrivers and circuit boards.
I was down the unskilled end, of course. They tested me out with the tricky job of putting the feet on the televisions once they had been assembled. The television arrived in front of me, upside down. I picked up the foot and placed it on the television. I placed a nail through the middle of it. I hit it with a hammer. On to the next foot. Whoopee.
The hours were 8am until 4pm with half an hour for lunch and two ten-minute breaks. Radio One played constantly and top of the chart was Summer Lovin’ from Grease - - they played it what seemed to be several times an hour for all the time I was there. I don’t know what you think of when you think of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, but I think of televisions, and their feet.
I hit on the idea of working twice as fast, stacking up a pile of tellies, and then having a little break where I could stare into space for a bit. The foreman didn’t like this, I could tell, but didn’t say a word to me, because he wasn’t sure what to make of me. I had decided to be More Enigmatic than the Japanese, and that confused him.
The other girls on the line were very nice to me, though there wasn’t much time for conversation. I was horrified to find out that most of them came back in the evenings to do overtime.
“It’s something to do, and the money’s good.”
The money was good too, by low-paid-dull-job standards - £49 per week as opposed to the £44 I usually got for office work.
After a couple of weeks, sensing that television feet were beginning to lose their appeal, they changed my job to sticking the badge on the front that said Panasonic. It was a highly-skilled job: I used a soldering iron to melt the plastic on the back of the badge and then I stuck it on.
But by now I was seriously bored. Seriously, deeply, endlessly bored in big gaping holes of boredom. Bored bored bored bored bored. Then someone told me that the badges tended to fall off after six months. And in six months I would be long gone.
So on the back of the badges, with my soldering iron, in mirror writing, I wrote every rude word that I could think of, in the hope that when the badge fell off the television’s proud owner would be greeted with the word ARSE in neat plastic letters. Hah! There’s not much you can tell me about youthful rebellion.
After six weeks, I left and presented myself at Dulljobs Inc. They expressed surprise that I had stuck it so long, and found me another office job.
After eighteen months, by complete coincidence, Stephen, thenboyfriendnowhusband found himself at the same factory for his Industrial Training Year. The girls I had worked with were still there in the same places on the same production lines doing the same jobs.
Later, when I was teaching, and teenagers asked me what on earth was the point of doing all these exams, I felt I had something to tell them.
It wasn’t too hard to get work of a low-paid temporary nature and I was good at keeping my head down and getting on with whatever dull job they threw at me. So off I went to an agency, which I shall call Dulljobs Inc (it wasn’t really called that, it was called Manpower).
After I’d done a few weeks in offices, Dulljobs Inc decided to test my mettle by giving me the dullest of the dull: they sent me off to the National Panasonic Television Factory. It was a huge place, run by enigmatic Japanese men, with slogans on the walls:
Cleanliness in the Workplace Makes for Quality in the Market Place
The whole place beeped. A lot. All the time. Blue lights flashed too. At one end of the assembly line were some rather more skilled workers doing things with screwdrivers and circuit boards.
I was down the unskilled end, of course. They tested me out with the tricky job of putting the feet on the televisions once they had been assembled. The television arrived in front of me, upside down. I picked up the foot and placed it on the television. I placed a nail through the middle of it. I hit it with a hammer. On to the next foot. Whoopee.
The hours were 8am until 4pm with half an hour for lunch and two ten-minute breaks. Radio One played constantly and top of the chart was Summer Lovin’ from Grease - - they played it what seemed to be several times an hour for all the time I was there. I don’t know what you think of when you think of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, but I think of televisions, and their feet.
I hit on the idea of working twice as fast, stacking up a pile of tellies, and then having a little break where I could stare into space for a bit. The foreman didn’t like this, I could tell, but didn’t say a word to me, because he wasn’t sure what to make of me. I had decided to be More Enigmatic than the Japanese, and that confused him.
The other girls on the line were very nice to me, though there wasn’t much time for conversation. I was horrified to find out that most of them came back in the evenings to do overtime.
“It’s something to do, and the money’s good.”
The money was good too, by low-paid-dull-job standards - £49 per week as opposed to the £44 I usually got for office work.
After a couple of weeks, sensing that television feet were beginning to lose their appeal, they changed my job to sticking the badge on the front that said Panasonic. It was a highly-skilled job: I used a soldering iron to melt the plastic on the back of the badge and then I stuck it on.
But by now I was seriously bored. Seriously, deeply, endlessly bored in big gaping holes of boredom. Bored bored bored bored bored. Then someone told me that the badges tended to fall off after six months. And in six months I would be long gone.
So on the back of the badges, with my soldering iron, in mirror writing, I wrote every rude word that I could think of, in the hope that when the badge fell off the television’s proud owner would be greeted with the word ARSE in neat plastic letters. Hah! There’s not much you can tell me about youthful rebellion.
After six weeks, I left and presented myself at Dulljobs Inc. They expressed surprise that I had stuck it so long, and found me another office job.
After eighteen months, by complete coincidence, Stephen, thenboyfriendnowhusband found himself at the same factory for his Industrial Training Year. The girls I had worked with were still there in the same places on the same production lines doing the same jobs.
Later, when I was teaching, and teenagers asked me what on earth was the point of doing all these exams, I felt I had something to tell them.
posted by Daphne at 6:35 pm
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