Story:
Nikos was born in 1947 and, once he turned 13 years old, in 1960, he began going to a night school and working at the same time.
I began as an electrician’s assistant, and then I progressed to an experienced assistant and a technician in a fairly quick time. My complaint and my story is the following:
When I managed to become a technician, certain technological developments came. The electrical conduits inside the wall were filled with paper and tar and had an outward casing of lightweight sheet metal. For the curves that needed to be made when we got to an inner point of the wall that had to be curved, there was this special tool that crumpled these sheet metal pipes in such a way, along with the tar paper, that we could manage to bend the curve in a corner of the wall without twisting the gap that was in it, so that the cables could then be passed through.
This was the part of the job that, if you didn’t learn it, you couldn’t work as a craftsman. There were a lot of people that would try to learn the job and get stuck at that part, because at the same time they had to know the diameter of the pipe for the wall, to have calculated, before the cables were run, how many of them would be needed… Thus, it was a complete study, because back then there were no electrical studies, each technician had to carry out a needs study of the installation on the spot, in order for the pipe to have a specific diameter so that the cables can fit in later.
Around 1963 – 1964, nylon came. They made straight nylon pipes, spiral nylon pipes, nylon cable coating, and the job changed completely. This tool was rendered useless, in the sense that the technician no longer needed to know how to make curves, and everyone became a technician within a day. Once the contractor took the plastic materials, he would assign people to put up pipes without having the need for a special technician who would do the curves. My complaint, when I was 14, 15, 16 years old, was that I had fought to learn how to make curves and I was proud to make it. I was one of the best at that job, as a young person. And this stopped abruptly. Ultimately, I adjusted to the new state of things. That was characteristic of my career path and it radically changed my life. It was a situation that showed me that life is running on a dime.