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MARCH 2006 - What are you?


What do you consider your self to be?  

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Whoops forgot to set this months poll!

 

Simple question! with many associations changing names etc and our job evolving what are you?

 

this is mainly geared to shoe repairers/engravers/key cutters, rather than specialists in one field, if your answer is something else post what you are!

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Well, indeed I am a shoe repairer, but I've opted to describe myself as 'something else' because shoe repairs only equates to 25% of my business. Like many others, there's just so much more to it than that.

 

Am I a key cutter then, trophy retailer? Or an engraver? Or one of a multitude of other possible titles?

 

Well, yes I guess I'm all of the above and a bit more.

 

My business cards used to say 'proprietor' and now have me as 'director', but that's a bit dull.

When applying for credit cards, bank accounts etc I've been known tocall myself a retail entrepreneur!

Anybody got any more ideas?

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Hugh, does this mean you only use glue?

 

(When I first started, I was told 'It's not glue, it's adhesive solution')

Call it what you want, it still does the same job!

 

Steven, I have a Bee in my Bonnet about the word Solutions.

Sort of, Solutions for Compacted Waste (Bog Roll)

Solutions for Clean Air (Chimmney Sweep) etc etc etc.

It gets right up my nose does that word.

 

A Solution in our terminology is 2 or more liquids or solids in a suspension that we used to refer to to as Adhesive and before that Glue.

I just say Glue it up! It is then up to the operative, or "solutionist" to choose the correct adhesive for the task in hand, unless it is a trainee and i would then ask them which one to use and why.

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City & Guilds tells me someone can do the jobs they have been tested on.

That dont mean that they can solve problems though.

 

NVQs and company certificates are not the same as C&Gs, anyone having all levels in C&Gs is entitled to be called a Shoe Repairer as opposed to Cobbler.

 

Self Certification is better than none, customers would not know would they? not until they got their shoes back that is.

 

Me, I'm known as the King Cobbler.

Many of my customers can be heard commenting as they leave the shop.

King Cobbler that one (sounds like that anyhow). :wink:

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I think most Managers/Proprietors ran YTS courses when they were around, cant remember too much about them at the moment but were they not critisised as being a cheap way of getting labour?

 

City & Guilds! yes, I do have examiner status but not used it for many years. Still have all the test papers and sylabus though they are yellowing with age now.

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I started out on a YTS! and yes the old boss DID use it as a way of getting cheap labour!

 

Stuck one place for 6 months then got the job in a local shoe repairers (now gone) and the rest is history!

 

Lee

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It brought quite a few into the trade that otherwise would have been unemployed so i think some good came from it.

 

Many of my proteges started life as YTSs come to think of it, also a sceme for taking the long term unemployed provided me with one of my star trainees.

 

At least with YTS and the like you went through a set program, not inking shoes fro 3 months like I had too. :cry:

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