I've only worked for myself since 1991.
Before that, I did a few months of engineering, till the guy I was working for decided he needed me as a welder, so I did a welding course.
He wanted putlogs making for scaffolding, sounded like a great idea. He had rented a second unit in the mill, had all the equipment in there, such as presses, drilling machines, bandsaw and the welding kit.
I thought 2 of the other guys were going to be in there with me, so got a shock when he kindly explained to me this was my domain and I'd be working there on my own.
Me being me, fucked up as before we started he said, let's see how quickly you can produce 1 pice from start to finish.
The process was flat iron cut on a bandsaw to a specific size, this piece was then placed in the 50 ton press to shape it to fit the scaffold bar.
The other bandsaw cut the scaffold bar to size. I then welded the scaffold tube to the flat metal plate, which was bent to shape.
I then had to put this on the vertical drill and drill a hole. Move it to the next pillar and tap the hole.
This was then the job done.
He timed me from start to finish, the competitive me did it as fast as I could. After finishing he said, " that took XX minutes, you should be able to manage XXX an hour, so over 8 hours that should be XXXX a day".
I looked at him and said, you're forgetting piss breaks and my lunch break.
So, this was my first ever experience of Time & Motion.
Down side was after 3 months of doing this all on my own, I discovered he had badly fucked up.
I was drilling and tapping using metric sized drill bits etc, the UK building industry still works in Imperial, so these were useless.
More recent times in an unpaid role: Super Moderator on a forum run by a cockwomble
