Aluminium

Work Sure Has Changed (a bit)

roof racks and barsI’d love to be a fly on the wall, seeing what people nowadays get up to. I’m curious as to how my industry has developed over the last few years…you know, since I’m no longer in it. I can’t leave the house for too long any more, but I recently got the experience of sitting on a park bench for a while and watching the workmen do some renovation on the local play park. Golly, I certainly do miss the old days. Even when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears apprentice, I still loved my job. I stumbled into my first job at thirteen and was being snapped at from day one. Get this, fetch that, crawl under there!

This was back when I didn’t know one end of roof racks and bars from the other, so I learned basically everything from doing it wrong and getting cuffed over the back of the head. But we were made of different stuff back in the day. I was told that was how it was going to be, so I let it all roll off me and just got down to it. I learned the ways of the job, and it was only a couple of weeks before I was laughing along with all the guys as part of the team. It really was that simple. You just get on with it, learn how to properly stack the aluminium ute toolboxes and everything just comes together.

Things don’t seem too different nowadays, though everyone seems nicer to each other. Actually, they were listening to music a lot and didn’t talk all that much, but they were having a good time as they were setting up and leaving. They probably thought I was an oddball for watching so long. Though I’ve noticed that toolbox central locking is now practically the done thing. Marvellous technology. Though by this point I would’ve predicted that the job was being done by robots. That’s one that didn’t exactly pan out. Would’ve been interesting.

-Al