Then we turned up on the day of our induction and they did turn around and say, you know, ‘Be prepared for a tedious job because it is repetitive’. I was quite used to that anyway doing what I was doing previously.
But I think out of about eight people that actually started on that first night, I think five people didn’t turn up the following night. [Laughs] They had just no idea what they were letting themselves in for.
Lewis S
I think I was naïve when I came here as to what the job role actually was. I think, I thought it was just going to be easier than it actually was. Yeah, the manual work. I think you have to be determined though to get on in here.
I think for, this isn’t … it is tiring, it’s demanding, it’s constant, it can be completely mind-numbingly boring when you’re working on the line. You have to literally come in, switch your brain off and just go into like robot process of doing the jobs.
Kerry W
I think that first week there must have been about 50 blokes leave, and some of them just couldn’t do it, some of them couldn’t handle it all. Because it was repetitive, you know, you’ve got to keep going.
You can’t stop and have a cup of tea, you’ve got to keep going, because the line’s moving all the time, you know. You’ve got a couple of feet to work in and then you’re in to the next guy’s station.
Otherwise you get bored of doing the same job. Some people like doing the same jobs, you know, fair enough. But I got fed up. I mean, sometimes you sit there and you think, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this today. But you’ve got to, because it’s part of your job.
John B
It was … boring, soul destroying which is why I got off it and got on to the absence cover as quickly as I could because it meant doing different jobs. A lot of people didn’t like doing the absence cover because they wanted to know what they were going to be doing. Different strokes for different folks, isn’t it?
There was a job - they used to call it top dress, where they would connect up everything on the top end of the engine and they would do every fifth van, every five of them. They would follow the job down the line and just connect ... and they’d have a dominoes pack out, because you weren’t allowed to play cards, so they played dominoes.
So they’d do their van and they’d work their way down the line, then they’d go back up to the next and on their way back up to the next van they’d play the next part of the dominoes. They didn’t want to be kicked out of the domino school so therefore they wouldn’t want to vary from that job.
Philip L
One more rivet, or one ... different thing could ruin your day because there was so little variety, the teeniest thing was a big deal.
Laurie G