I’m bored so thought I would ask people on here what are their careers. I work for one of the big four construction suppliers as a technical person for the ready mixed concrete arm of the company. I got into the industry at 27, which when you consider I always wanted to be in as my father was in the industry. I wanted to follow his footsteps from a young boy, but for some reason tried other things first. Then when the opportunity rose I started and never looked back.
Used to be a Service Delivery Manager working for a large French outsourcing company Worked with clients such as Virgin Mobile. Sky, WH Smith and many others including Govt departments These days I work part time (3 days a week) as a change manager for a Telecoms company
Industrial sales and marketing, finished career as UK sales director for Anglo French,Dutch & UK construction supplies company, retired 2011 for my crimes.
My career started as an apprentice at R.O.F. Puriton out on the Somerset Levels and that factory site has come into prominence as it to be used for the new car battery plant for electric vehicles for Land Rover (I believe). At age 18 I transferred to R.O.F. Woolwich Arsenal in London and since then I stayed in the machine shop business for the rest of my working life. After I moved to Canada in 1976 I transferred into sales and service for the same industry up until my retirement on health grounds in 2003 and now I live a fairly idyllic life on Vancouver Island and I am just going on a 10 minute walk to our local beach to see if any whales or sea lions are visible in the Straits of Georgia between the island and Canada's mainland. Not bad EH.
At 16 I joined the largest print company in Europe. I resigned as as production director aged 35, I'd had enough of Robert Maxwell and won't forget making 800 men and women redundant on his whim/directive. I ran my own print business from 1987 and also for the UN advising 3rd world printers until I retired in 2018.
Hey ho from 2000 to 2016 I worked flat out [ then semi retired ] as self employed courier covering UK [ I marked off on a map all the places I been paid to go to [ towns ] and it was pretty much everywhere East coast near yarmouth was the thinnest ] Also delivered to for MOD to places in Europe Benelux/ France/ Germany, and a few other non military or space related companies. Most miles in a week was 4847. Most trips across the channel In a 7 day period was 8 [ 8th was 10pm on train on the 7th day and did 2 trips in a day twice! ] Since my op in July 2019 done 1 job.... since I first drove back in the 60's have always kept a log [ as known interested in stats ] my current vehicle started me off toward to 3,500,000 miles!!! Never done a job I didnt like whilst doing it ..made redundant 5 times and left 1 company to cash in on pension! Really miss it couriering paid to see the Uk and have time in some places to spend an hour or so "sightseeing" .
In short, printing apprenticeship in Bristol after leaving school.. Then moved to Norwich and managed Pub & Restaurant and also dabbled as DJ.(still have 1000s of vinyl's!!). In between jobs did a stint in demolition which was fun, although nearly killed myself!! Moved back to Bristol after 8 years married with kids! Was foreman for a print company for 3 years before setting up my own print business in 1991..over the last few years scaled it right down to retirement although occasionally I still take the odd order which I farm out as I've now sold all machinery..Still dabble with the odd bit of design, more for something to do than anything else!!
Bear with me - it’s a long read!! At 16 when still at school I got a job in the Dundry Inn collecting glasses and washing up/waiting. When I turned 18 I also worked behind the bar and started my ‘proper’ working life as a clerical temp in the office of WD & HO Wills (Imperial Tobacco) in their office in Hartcliffe before joining Pattersons in Redcliffe St. That didn’t work out and after about 6 months I went full time at the Dundry Inn as Assistant Manager. I worked there for a couple of years but at the age of 20 I managed to land another clerical job at Gateways in Cater Rd. I got on really well there and just after I got married at 21 I managed to get into their Computer Operations department working on their IBM Z mainframe and AS400 mid-range (for you techies). I worked my way up to Senior Op and Gateway became Somerfield and moved to their purpose-built office building in Whitchurch. After being passed over for promotion several times the penny dropped and so I left to join Allied Dunbar in Swindon as a Senior Op. Once I’d settled in I absolutely loved it. When Mrs R&W also got a job in Swindon (Deputy Head of a large Comprehensive school) it seemed crazy for us both to commute so we moved up here. We sold our house in Bishopsworth and I bought 3 Buy-to-Lets here as a side business. Allied Dunbar became Zurich and became a crap place to work almost overnight. I had moved from shift operations to Ops Analysis, writing and fixing JCL and designing (and fixing) processing schedules. I was made redundant from Zurich in 2003 and trained as a schoolteacher for a bit, based in Cardiff but absolutely hated it. That was the lowest point of my life to-date and I was deeply depressed. We had to sell one of the B2Ls to clear some debt but got stung for Capital Gains so with hindsight I should have tried to keep hold of it. An expensive and stressful lesson. Luckily in 2004 I managed to get a job as a Software Engineer working in Reading for German company Beta Systems. Although I really didn’t like the job or the people it got me back into the IT industry which is where I felt comfortable. I left there, taking a pay cut, to join a very well-known financial service provider at their HQ back in Swindon - back as a Shift Operator again - coming full circle. I found the step back very difficult and I don’t think the shift managers liked the fact that I’d held a more senior role before and they made my life rather difficult. In 2007 I managed to escape from the Shift Operations and took a secondment to IT Transitions - which became permanent. Since then my role has expanded - I retrained as a Project Manager, passing my PRINCE2, APM and ITIL exams, had several promotions and am now in a Lead role with several line reports. I really love my work again, but despite this I am now grazing my days out hoping to be made redundant before I retire in 3 years time. 2 years ago when Mrs R&W retired, we used her retirement lump together with remortgaging our home to buy a flat in Gibraltar. Our plan is still to sell here and buy a place in Marbella where we will live and run the Gibraltar flat as an AirBNB - this would allow us to have all our finances based in Gibraltar which would give us access to the free healthcare of the GHA and also as Gib pensioners we wouldn’t have to pay income tax. Whether we can do this largely depends on the Brexit negotiations that have been dragging on since that awful day back in 2016. We are hoping that Gibraltar will somehow become a member of the Schengen zone so we won’t be subjected to the 90 day rule, but that remains to be seen. It’s in the lap of the politicians (God help us). That’s more or less my life story!!
Teaching. I actually like Cardiff as a city - lots going on there. The wife had this dream of us sharing long holidays together but I hated the staff room politics and didn’t like the thought of working for the government. Also the kids were a pain in the @rse.
If you’re going back that far, I worked as a Butcher Boy fof 4 and a bit years on Saturdays and after school on Gilda Parade where Norman Hunter opened his sports shop next door, before I joined a big life assurance company that had recently relocated from London in 1977. Spent just over a year there as a Death Claims clerk which I hated, before joining the newly formed IT Dept as a Computer Operator which I did as a shift worker for nearly the next 18 years until redundancy in 1995
Angelic Norm bought that sports shop from a guy I used to play cricket with. He was a right character who was also an England U19 rugby selector.
I remember we spoke about this a while back Angelic - what technology were you operating? Gateway had IBM Z OS390 mainframe, an ICL (forgot the model type) which had its screen and keyboard in the same moulded structure - and 6 AS400s. We also operated 4 Xerox 3990 laser printers and 2 Honeywell impacts. At Dunbar they had an IBM Z but when they merged with Eagle Star and Zurich we ended up with 3. My current company runs an IBM Z for the main banking services, but savings and customer details are on a Unisys, mortgages are on a Fujitsu (formerly ICL) and the ATM networks are run by an HP Nonstop (all mainframes) I’m currently overseeing a large push to get as much of our ‘Open Systems’ (servers) onto the Cloud platforms. Interesting work - rather be retired though!!!
We ran 2 x CDC (Control Data Corporation) mainframes. Both were water cooled. A 172 and a 173 at locations a couple of miles apart CDC were based in Minneapolis in Minesota The only other machines like this in the UK were used by the European Weather Centre in Berkshire Spares were held in Germany and Minnesota so breakdowns often took ages to fix We also ran a ME29 in the early 90s we switched to 2 x IBM 990s running JES3 which again was supposedly unusual
