The Patch

I’m super fortunate that I love my day job, but it hasn’t always been that way. Especially not thirty plus years ago when I worked at (something like) Q&R Pattern Books, on the outskirts of Stockport, Greater Manchester. The company made wallpaper sampler books, essentially by hand. I know, wallpaper sampler books! That alone tells you how long ago these events took place.

At the time I had just pitched up from London, and I needed a way to make some $$$ immediately. The funny thing about Q&R was that in spite of the work being mind-numbingly boring, it was surprisingly well paid. The owner’s wife told me at my interview that there could well be a lot of overtime available, and “…if we ask you to do overtime, we would like you to do it.” I told her I was in. I was informed there was only "about four weeks" of work available, but she was very vague; in the event I was there almost five months.

In previous jobs overtime meant staying later at the end of the day. At Q&R I was shocked to discover it meant expanding the normal 8:00 am to 5:00 pm workday to 6:00 am to 6:00 pm; Saturday was 6:00 am to 12:00 pm. We always got paid in cash at lunchtime on Friday, and with overtime being time and a half or double on Saturdays, I was taking home almost 400 quid a week - an absolute fortune in the summer of '95. (Note: This was the same year that Oasis headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury).

I'd never worked in a factory before, and it took me a few weeks to get used to the culture. It started with having an actual thick paper timecard which we had to get stamped at the start and end of every day. If you clocked in more than three minutes late, the time would be stamped on your card in red ink instead of black. Two or three minutes before the end of the shift, a line would start forming by the time clock. If you ended up at the back of the line, it could cost you fifteen minutes of queueing and waiting to get out of the parking lot.

The other thing that was new for me was the bells which would ring at the start and end of every day and every break. There was a mezzanine floor at the far end of the factory where everybody except management would sit around in cliques before work and at break times. Lunch was only 30 minutes and in any case the factory was in the middle of nowhere so there was no incentive to step outside. It was actually tough to find a space to sit at first; almost every chair had somebody's bag or towel hanging on the back. Q&R's generosity extended to providing hot water from a gigantic urn, but access to cups, tea bags and milk was tightly controlled by the various groups of permanent staff and I couldn't be bothered to get involved. I figured I wouldn't be working there long enough to make it worth the effort. 

At 8:00 am the first bell would ring and there would be a gentle buildup of noise as chairs scrapped across the floor, teacups were put away, and people gradually made their way down the stairs to work. There was a cycle where the gap between the bell and the chairs moving would get very slightly longer each break time until it was approaching 30 seconds. At that point one of the supervisors would have a moan and the cycle would reset. 

On my first day at Q&R I was given a huge pile of what would become the front covers for wallpaper pattern books and shown how to install two (2) fake brass corners at the top and bottom right of each cover. I took me until mid-afternoon to work through the pile, and when I informed the supervisor, he showed me where "the rest of 'em" were stored. It took all of the first week and a couple of days of the second to install corners on all the covers. After the last one there was a brief pause to move the front covers to another part of the factory, and then I got started on the back covers... 

It was a very boring place to work. You would find yourself looking at your watch just a few minutes after you last looked at it. There was a strict no smoking policy on the factory floor, but it was allowed on the mezzanine at break times. It was also standard practice for the smokers to head into the bathroom for a ciggie in between each official tea or lunch break. I was a non-smoker at the time, but after a few weeks of working there I began popping into the can too, when I was ready for a mid-session sit down.

When, on my first day at Q&R, I had asked a coworker for the location of "the toilet," he had pointed into the far corner while announcing "the shithouse is over there." He was right too; it was a shithouse. If you've seen Trainspotting, you can probably imagine it. The best bit about it was the graffiti, which was either football related, e.g. "all Manchester United fans take it up the $%#&" or about people who worked there - nowadays it would be stone cold bullying; at the time it was hilarious. Part way through my time at Q&R the bathrooms were painted black throughout in an attempt to stop the graffiti. The decorator said it was the worst bathroom he had ever seen. But it didn't stop; folks just scratched their messages into the wall with their keys.

There are a number of different steps or jobs in the production of a pattern book, and there was a well-established hierarchy to those jobs. Top of the tree was the nailing table where the covers were attached to the books with ornate fasteners which had to be hammered in by hand. I never made it to the nailing table. After that it was the jobs that involved machinery: cutting, printing etc. Installing metal corners was near the bottom of the list, but it wasn't quite the lowest of the low: that was The Patch.

The Patch was a large group of tables at the front of the factory where the most menial tasks were accomplished; tasks which mainly included sticking several sheets of wallpaper or fabric together with glue. The name "the patch" arose because you had to be a cabbage to work there! It was a phrase that was best not uttered within earshot of management, especially if you wanted to avoid immediate redeployment to that section of the factory. I was told a story about how one guy that had worked at Q&R was moved from the patch to work on one of the better jobs that involved using some type of machine. After three or four weeks he suggested to management that maybe he should get a pay rise. The next morning, he was back on the patch.

I did a few weeks on the patch. Everybody did, because they figured if you could stand that, you might be worth a permanent contract. There was actually a pretty high rate of turnover among the temporary staff. As workflow went up and down, temps would get canned or hired, and it was always at the back of my mind that I could be the next person looking for another job. But there was actually an observable pattern: when staffing levels got too high, people would be assigned to just about anything to keep them from sitting around. This included having a big, supervised bonfire outside the factory to get rid of trash. Anyone who got put "on fires" was almost always canned on the Friday lunchtime.

As well as nicknames for parts of the factory, there were plenty for the people that worked there, well for the guys anyway; I can't think of any female staff members that were labelled in this way. Some of the more memorable examples include the following: 

Disco Pete - he once came to work in some shiny red "disco" shoes.

Morph - he was super short and very grumpy.

Jasper - he looked a lot like Jasper Carrott. 

Chippie - he was always getting food from the takeaway, although he remained very slim.

Texas Pete - he was bit of a cowboy. 

Yeti - he had exceptionally long hair.

Porn star - he had dark hair and a moustache.

Maggot - this was based on his highly disheveled appearance.

Thankfully, I didn't work there long enough to get a nickname, but I did get a sort-of promotion. One Friday afternoon I was asked to help out in the screen printing room which was the bottle neck in the production line at that moment. The main guy, Jasper, was out on vacation, and Nick, the second in command, was having a meltdown because they were busy and he didn't have the correct type of paint for whatever logo he was printing. He ended up having a big shouting match with the boss and then refusing to work overtime to get caught up. The factory needed all the covers printed before Monday morning to keep the production line going. Instead of Nick, me and another geezer pulled a 6:00 am to 2:00 pm shift on the Saturday, and then I went straight to Edgeley Park to watch Stockport County play. I only just made it there in time for the 3:00 pm kickoff, and I fell asleep in the second half. When I went back to work on Monday, Nick was on The Patch, and I was the new screen printing guy....until Jasper got back.

I actually had a great summer at Q&R. Most of the folks there were friendly, even to a Southerner, and I played five-a-side with my workmates a few times at The Pits in Ardwick. I was making decent money all Summer, which was great after a lean couple of years, and I didn't have much free time to spend it. Q&R were also super cool with me taking half days off here and there to go to job interviews. By September '95 I was working in a low-stress office job during the day, and I was enrolled at Stockport College to study 'A' levels in the evenings. But that's the next chapter...