NextBackFollowing my ignominious dismissal from the High Duty Alloys I bounced from one job to another. As there was no shortage of engineering jobs in Redditch I endeavoured to capitalise on the knowledge I had gleaned from my apprenticeship years and secured a job as a lathe operator with 'Reel Turnings' a small firm manufacturing sprockets, cogs and spindles for fishing reels. Unfortunately there was a personality conflict between myself and the owner so, moving on ever downwards, I found myself at another factory in charge of a huge lathe turning out anything from spindles to twenty foot long motor boat propeller shafts. I was only there some six weeks, not long enough to do permanent damage to the motor boat industry but I am sure the whispering campaign was gathering momentum, "Don't use his spindles " or " His propeller shafts suffer from excessive torque"!
I am not really sure how I got the next job but I became a trainee manager at Woolworth’s. It was a very demanding job and initially I gave it my best shot rising to the challenge of the selfless dedication required of a future store manager. Unfortunately this involved quite a lot of unpaid night work in the stock room especially during the Xmas period and of course this began to interfere with band jobs, it was all so predictable. A dark shadow of doubt descended on my managerial potential one morning, two o'clock in the morning to be precise. Potential managers were sometimes expected to work throughout the night during the Xmas period to unpack mounting deliveries of stock. In the process of congratulating myself on being well ahead of schedule I stumbled whilst carrying a box containing a hundredweight of marbles. It bounced down the stairs bursting open and releasing a veritable tsunami of marbles cascading in their thousands, not only down the store but out into the high street and worse still, into the lift well putting it out of action, I was still finding marbles two days later. As this disaster happened during the visit of Mr. Bruford the area inspector currently conducting his annual inspection, I became 'Mr. Unpopular' with the store manager and my days were numbered.
