Just periodic information with a little spice.
I stopped playing the violin almost completely. Many hours of the day were spent doing nothing. I started looking for work and with the help of a close neighbor from Emek-Hazeitim, Avraham Feller, I was accepted as an apprentice at the "Hima" shipyard in Haifa, later known as "Israel Shipyards". The year was 1958. The production engineering department at the factory included many employees. Moshe Matri was the boss and I was an assistant. The office was in a small shack next to the office building, with a tiny room for the two of us.
A small desk for him and one for me. Metry, the boss, active in the committee and the party, was frequently absent from the office. Every few days he would come to the office, assign me a task, clarify what he wanted, and disappear. Entire files containing hand-drawn drawings (sketches) of construction details for the various ships in the shipyard were illegible and carelessly edited. Entire reports, work explanations, and various time reports allocated to each stage of the ship's construction. I was tasked with copying everything over again. Rewriting, drawing, and editing each report in such a way that anyone leafing through the binder would immediately understand the subject in question. This was after ten years of study in 'classes.'
I understood the principle quickly and moved on to the crowning glory of production engineering, which is the stopwatch. Matri explains briefly and quickly gets back to his business. That's how I found myself sitting in the narrow bow of a tugboat in the middle of its construction, measuring the operating time of a welder working on site. It's hard to breathe, the smell is suffocating, the welding operation is extremely difficult and requires the skill of a craftsman of the highest degree. I give each stage double the usual rest time. The detailed drawing of the site's execution and the report are ready.
Matri goes out of his way to recommend that I go to school, to a course run by the Ministry of Labor, which graduates receive the title of Production Engineer/Technician. My ambition is that after my military service I will return to the shipyard and continue my studies. I stopped my studies at school in favor of this annual course. No one made me cry, not even my chair.
Which was new from lack of use.
At Matri's request, the management provided a letter of support and recommendation, and so they agreed to accept me for the course, which was intended for experienced managers only and opened about two months after I started working at the shipyard. The first day of classes brought me together with senior managers who had come for a concentrated year of study to get acquainted with production engineering. I am still a teenager who secretly smokes, sitting in a classroom with adults who smoke freely. I don't know what went through my mind, but for the first time, I treated these classes with great respect.
We were asked to conduct a final project that would be completely independent, both in choosing a topic and in choosing a display. The project was supposed to summarize a busy academic year intended for veteran craftsmen and sent by their workplaces. While I was looking for an idea for a final thesis, Fidel Castro took control of Cuba. On January 1959, XNUMX, the regime of the dictator Batista collapsed by a miracle, and the rebel army led by Castro controlled all of Cuba. Since this is not a history book, I will not go into detail about Che Guevara's contribution to the matter. The event did not interfere with my work. On the contrary. Now I can rest assured that Cuba is finally in "good hands," hands that have slowly eliminated the export of rich Cuban music to the West. His tyrannical regime gave birth to a music of poverty and pain that conquers continents. The undisputed ambassador is Perez Pardo's orchestra.
I wandered through the shipyard, which covers many acres, and observed the daily operations carried out by the workers. In my uneducated opinion, many of them are wrong. In the office archives, I found the factory plans, and so I began to build my thesis. I took photos, prepared reports, and attached drawings confirming my ideas. The calculations showed that if the factory were run according to my suggestions, it would save a lot of money every year. In the millions. These savings should come from several actions to correct existing procedures. Each action will save valuable time and improve performance.
I submitted the work and received a high grade and a recommendation to submit the work to the factory management. This recommendation was the highest grade for me. So I did. One morning I was urgently called to the management offices. A meeting of the senior management.
I entered sweating in the wrong places. I had never spoken to the CEO except for a brief hello when we met randomly at the entrance to the factory. He didn't let me sweat for long and immediately began with congratulations and best wishes. The report I submitted does indeed reveal a chain of omissions in the execution of the work at the shipyard, and most of my suggestions would have been implemented if it weren't for a secret idea hatched to move the shipyard to the Kishon Port and soon. For my success in the mission, I was awarded a monetary reward of two monthly salaries and a promise of my employment at the shipyard upon my discharge from the IDF. Another reward was that I shared in the secret of moving the shipyard, which passed off as just a rumor.
Eleven months of work passed quickly. In December, I still managed to register with the General Union of Hebrew Working Youth in order to protect my rights. I said goodbye to all the acquaintances and friends I had made at the shipyard, both among the workers and among the clerks. They wished me a successful journey, promising me continued fruitful work after my military service. I left the factory gates. There was little time left until conscription and there was much to do. I never returned to the shipyards. After a while, the entire shipyard was indeed moved to the Kishon Port, where it is located to this day.
I am sorry to disappoint anyone who thinks I am a decent person. It is true that I am a teenager before the army, but taking advantage of my good connections with the operator gave me the idea and I was waiting to implement it when Moshe Matri, the boss, went to the big city for a meeting. I took the bus to swim in the sea at Kiryat Haim beach in the middle of the workday. My friend, the operator, signed the card
The attendance is as if I worked a full day. I'm lucky I didn't run for prime minister and the embezzlement would have been exposed. It's even possible that I embezzled twice. Shame!