Don't take this the wrong way, but just 'serving your time' as an apprentice gives small indication of your skills, value, honesty, ambition, cleanliness, timekeeping, trustworthyness or any of the other things a prospective employer might like to see in the perfect job applicant, any more than a couple of years flipping burgers at MacDonalds. Valuable experience gained, oh yes! Potentially better than a man without papers, indeed yes, but a qualification? I must beg humbly to differ. Plenty of Old-Etonians residing At Her Majesty's Pleasure in jail will testify that having been there ain't the same as being good.
OK. Here's three [real] ex-apprentices of yore;
1. 'A', who joined my company, [ Alfred Herbert Ltd, Machine Tools of fond memory ], when I was in year 2 or 3 of my time, [ and who co-incidentally was a relative of my future wife to be ]. In 5 years of total incompetance he wrecked 3 machines, the most infamous of which was to put the table of a Stirk Planer, c/w half a ton of castings, straight into the Works' Ablutionary Facilities, ( taking our tea-swindle and my meat pie with it for good measure- unforgivable! ). He simply 'forgot' to replace the reverse stroke cam.
2. 'B'. Me. I've already described myself in these Forums, as a young person, by the epithet "Who was that idiot?".
3. Another of our apprentices, 'C', who won a coveted City and Guilds London Institute Gold Medal for Welding.
Now, we all duly got our 'papers' at the end of out time. No mention in them of my CGLI Distinction in Craft Practice Fitting and Machining, or Famous Gold Medals or of breaking the vise and all the teeth off the crown-wheel of a shaper with a badly-set toolpost or peppering the Turning Department with segments of a large unbalanced grinding wheel and frightening the bloody living-daylights out of yours truly.
Now, don't think for one minute that I am denigrating apprentices or the system in any way, nor indeed your good-self with 2 hard-earned sets under your belt. It was a hard road to trudge, I know that, earning a pittance with all your mates earning 'good money' drilling little holes in toothbrush-handles or stamping out thousands of scaffolding fittings on piecework, "flashing the cash" up the 'Palais' on a Saturday night. It gave us brilliant opportunities to learn real trade-skills, the latest techniques, go to tech., advance one's prospects etc., but in the end it was just 'experience', since what you got out of it was entirely up to you, whether you were properly time-served or a proper time-server.
No employer bases applicant selection just on the fact that you are time-served; and I don't care if it was Pratt and Whitney Aero Engines Inc. or Fred Karno's Auto Body-Bashers. He wants to see quality of experience, exams passed to show grasp of subject, [ even MacDonalds'employees can get Certificates in Public Hygiene ], relevance to the work-in-hand and committment, intelligence and perseverance in the form of some certs or diplomas if possible.
"Qualifications", [ as I said a 'moot point' so not, I'll admit freely, something set in stone ], are , to me, those certificates, diplomas, degrees, etc., that separate the 'wheat' from the 'chaff' and have, again IMO, to be qualitative- did you get a pass, get a credit or earn a distinction or fail miserably, ungraded? I doubt if there is an ex-apprentice still alive today who didn't get some opportunity to do 'day', 'block release' or 'evening' classes to get those valued 'Certs' or earn a 'License'. I still treasure mine- earned by tears, hard work and diligence. I'm proud of my Apprenticship Papers too, but they only really show that I stuck it out and finished the term of my sentence.
The days of chaining apprentices to the bench, so they don't run off to the fleshpots, are thankfully long gone. I must have missed that epoch by a couple of years at least!
Alan
