Re: Work, job turned down

Whatever floats your boat.

Re: Work, job turned down

If anyone remembers BBC's "A Life of Grime" then they'll remember Mr Trebus opening up one of the reclaimed and unplugged refrigerators in his overgrown garden, extracting a packet of reclaimed (presumably out-of-date) biscuits and offering one to the cameraman .....

Re: Work, job turned down

For 23 years yes (including the apprenticeship) but went self-employed for 11 years after that.

I liked meeting all classes of people and leaving them with a smile when a job was done (they can watch television that evening! ). I think that's why I did the job for so long. All those meeting the public in their homes for a living have their stories.

Re: Work, job turned down

Mart, Your post reminded me of the 1970’s. The television engineer that used to come to my house was very serious and correct and wore a trilby hat and brown leather gloves.
This one day, he was explaining about the new television he had brought and installed.
He was standing in front of me, explaining in his usual serious way when l was aware of my mischievous 5 year old son behind him, waving his hands about like Al Jolston. He'd only got the man’s trilby hat and leather gloves on.

I used to be a bit naughty, if l didn’t like the way the engineer set the television picture. After, he’d gone, l would take the back of the television off, put a big mirror at the front of it and with a screwdriver, l would adjust the knobs inside to get the picture to my liking.
It never occurred to me that l could’ve got electrocuted!

Re: Work, job turned down

You're here to tell the tale anyway Art ..but yes, there were some voltages floating around in those old TVs that could hurt a bit. Clothes-wise, I was a smart casual man myself.

We had a few technical factories in this area. I'd occasionally go to repair a TV and get told, "My husband is a technical researcher at .... He says such and such is wrong but he hasn't got the part to fix it."

There were signs that he'd been in the back and had a go but made right a mess of it. He might have been a technical researcher at .... but he knew nothing about how to fix a TV fault, that was for sure!

Re: Work, job turned down

Exceedingly unlikely it would be an engineer, engineer is a professional status. Infinitely more likely it would at best be a technician.

Re: Work, job turned down

The old (vacuum tube /valve) televisions were death traps in many ways as soon as the back cover was removed. Most even contained a source of "soft" x-rays when running. The early color beasts were even worse. Most of the early non-solid state things did produce a hazardous level of x-rays if the safety covers inside were left off.

Re: Work, job turned down

TAT, I purposely, stated engineer as l didn’t want to diminish anyone’s qualification and insult them.

Re: Work, job turned down

I heard the theory that repairers of early mono and colour TVs would have small families because of radiation. It never worked in my case, even though the PD 500 (colour TVs) shield was sometimes not in place during fault-finding. All efforts to stop my family becoming larger failed.

Re: Work, job turned down

We were called engineers for years but the company I worked for did, in the end, make the distinction between engineers and technicians ..and so technicians we were.

I generally use the term 'repairer' or 'mender' when referring to myself but sometimes the word 'engineer' slips out because it was used for so many years. Anyway, I'm not any of those now and haven't been for ages.