A Day in the Life of a Drawing Office

Ron made up the stairs in a hurry, grabbed the phone and said: "Who's that?". As if I hadn't told him already it was Peter. "Yeah! I know! I seem to be always puffing lately. It's a worry! What can I do for you? ... I'll get straight into it. Yeah....Oh, dear....Have been crooked myself. Had a couple of days off this week. Feel a little bit better now! ... Yeah, will do. See you."

"Steve!? Sorry to interrupt you in this job. Go and get that drawing for Peter's jig, please. We'll have to change a few things. I'll show you what. Damn, I forgot all about it! And this trip to the farm, the auctions and all that did not help either. In a way it's good he called."

It did not bother me that much anymore. Rolled up the drawings I was working with and started searching for Peter's drawing among all those unmarked rolls piled up on top of cupboards and what have you around that office.

Ron rushed downstairs. I could hear bits of swearing and yelling outdoing the noise of the presses rattling along. "Hi! Is Ron there?" The figure of the stranger at the door caught me by surprise, "Hi!", I replied visibly startled, "Just a minute, please. I'll get him downstairs for you." - Thanks, mate", answered the grey haired man as he rested a plastic bag over the chair, bits and pieces of metal tumbling over each other.

There goes Ron running up the stairs, two steps at a time.

"I'll tell you, mate, been crooked myself, getting a bit better now. But she's really slow, it's as if somebody pulled the shutter, you know what I mean? I'll prepare the quote for you, by all means. Hope she comes through too, mate. She'll be a good help to keep me guys going. I had to cut all the overtime, and have two on holidays right now."

"Things don't look good these days. We are struggling to keep the business going too. We have this can opener in the market. It sold like hot cakes for a while, then as you said, she just died down."

This is par for the course, mate! Nothing we can do about it. Ask Steve, I made a statement last week - this country needs a one year dictatorship, the problem is: how to get rid of it then."

"You're not wrong, mate. You're not wrong..."

All morning had gone past before Ron showed up to see Peter's drawings. Bags with samples for quoting sat everywhere. Sometimes, a bloke would call and ask when would he get an answer on the quotation he had asked four weeks ago.

The other day I had barely started working at 7 a.m. An aged man walked into the office. I turned away from the drawing board as he looked at me. "Hi! How are you going, mate?"

"Not bad, mate! How are you?"

All right, I suppose. Wally is my name. I am Ron's dad", he said, flexing his voice into a tone that depicted one who is telling you a well guarded secret.

"Pleased to meet you, Wally?", I raised my eyebrows, "I'm Steve".

"Ron rang me Tuesday and seemed really worried", Wally continued, and in a hushed voice, "I think he must have some big problem, you know".

I was still bewildered by that man's materialisation out of the blue, and didn't know quite what to answer to his apparent trust in telling me all these things.

Very interesting, I thought; it seems Ron has inherited his dad's business and when things got real tough he would resort to the old man's expertise.

Later in the day I had to go downstairs have a check on one of the jobs I had designed. "Steve, you've met Wally, Ron's dad, have you?" Bill went on to say: "The old man likes to make a few extra bucks on the side, and I don't blame him. It's not easy to live on retirement income these days. Ron let him do easy stuff like these pressings, whenever he thinks the old man can handle them." Wally noticed us talking and looking at him, which he acknowledged with a cheeky wink and a smile.

We were not far from knock off time when Heinz walked into the office, face drawn into a sorry-how-can-I-put-it mode, "when I realised, three punches were broken". Ron kept a firm stare at him, a guard dog on alert, ready for the kill. "So, that means someone will have to stay back for a couple of hours today to repair this and have it ready for tomorrow morning, isn't it? Now, who should that be? Any idea?"

"Eh, well, I guess, well, I hope I will be able to complete the repair."

"You hope! And you certainly don't expect to be paid to fix up your own boo-boo, do you?"

Ron cracked up laughing. "Come on, Heinz, get stuck into it first thing in the morning. She'll be right!"

© Copyright 1997, Frank Martins

1