Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

I’ve written many times in this column of problems faced by contractors who have turned to Altro’s team of technical experts for help. With years of practical flooring experience, we can offer sound advice to solve a wide range of queries regarding our products.

Many of the problems still faced on site are the same as those when I started my career. At 7.45am in mid-December 1970 in Rochdale, I had arrived on the biggest building site I’d ever seen with rows and rows of identical houses stretching as far as the eye could see. I was just 18 years old and my job for the foreseeable future was going to be tiling houses for 1/11d a yard (less than 10 pence in today’s language). There were 50 yards in the downstairs of each house, including two cupboards. There was no electricity so my main source of light and heat during that cold winter was the flickering yellow flame of my blowlamp.

The first house I ever did took me twelve hours. But I made the trip every day for weeks, getting a bit faster day by day until I could complete a house in under three hours.

However, every cloud has a silver lining. It was in May 1971 while I was still tiling those Rochdale houses that I first met fellow tiler, Peter. This chance meeting turned out to be my lucky break. The two of us got on well from the outset and although he left the company a couple of months later for pastures new, we swapped telephone numbers over a pint. He rang late one night, really excited about this “little flooring company” he’d found. They were just starting a contracts branch in the north and they were looking for an apprentice.  Peter had put in a good word for me and after a brief interview in an office over a cake shop in Manchester, the job was mine. And so it was that in September 1971 at the age of 19, I started work as an apprentice with a well known “little flooring company” Altro.

This memory of one of my earliest tastes of the industry may sound all too familiar to many of you today, but thankfully the industry has moved on since then. We can’t do much to change the cold, damp working conditions you face on site day in day out, but at least today there is support from technical experts back at base should you need it. No matter how bad things are, stick at it because you never know what’s round the corner. In my case it was Peter - thanks mate, I owe you one.

I particularly value my continued contact with contractors through Altro’s training school and technical support as it keeps me in touch with the challenges you all face day to day. I hope it’s reassuring to know that if you ever need to call the Altro technical hotline, there are people there who have got the T shirt.

This article first appeared in the July 2007 edition of the CFJ.