The article won an encouragement prize in the writing contest "Dien Quang and me”, towards the 40th anniversary of the company's founding.
Twenty-six years have passed in the blink of an eye. I have no talent for writing, let alone being a writer. Yet I don’t know why I still want to open my heart so much. Perhaps thinking about the journey after twenty-six years of attachment makes me emotional and memories flood back as if it were just the day I was seventeen years old, breaking a buffalo’s horn.
I remember July 27, 1986, the first time I stepped into the Factory. I could not lift my feet because of the broken pieces of glass scattered below, but thanks to the encouragement of my aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters at that time, my steps became bolder and more confident.
The first place I worked was the Glass Workshop. I worked shift A, Uncle Hua Van Thanh was the shift leader. When I started working, he was nicknamed “the boss of clams” and Uncle Phuc, the deputy shift leader, was nicknamed “the district magistrate” in the play “Nghêu Sò Ốc Hến”. There is a little story that I still remember: One day, Uncle Thanh invited the whole group to his house to play, after bringing out the jars of yogurt to invite them, he went back to get water, when he came back, he didn’t see anyone daring to eat it all, so he asked why they didn’t eat, my whole group looked at each other, then one of us asked him if he would charge us for daring to eat, he waved his hand and laughed loudly. Uncle Thanh is like that, at work he is very serious and everyone is afraid of him, but in normal life he is very gentle and loves us.
When I worked at the glass tube workshop, I was taught by the aunts working with me in shift A to cut tubes, bundle tubes, and select seeds. Because I was still a child, I was stubborn, rebellious, and impulsive, but thanks to the hearts of the aunts who loved me like their own children, they taught me all the right things, and taught me a little femininity that a girl needs. During the shift, there was aunt Sau (Ben) who worried about me, a girl who worked at night and at night, which was very inconvenient. When it was time to work on the night shift, she told me to come up early to go with her. Shift 2 worked from 2pm to 10pm, and I went to my aunt's house to sleep. Then there was aunt Tu (Hai), who saved everything delicious and brought it to me to eat. I especially remember and liked the sweet soup she cooked, which became my favorite dish... Perhaps it was because of those sincere feelings that I quickly grasped my job. The endlessly long, transparent tubes "obediently" lay still for me to hold and pack. After a year of mastering the job, I was transferred to the glass pulling machine department. Here, I no longer had to carry glass but had to make it more perfect and more standard because of the mandatory regulations on product quality.
The rows of glass tubes in the furnace were red hot, just looking at them made me feel sick, but we, the mechanics, had to hold them tightly and follow the speed of the furnace to pull. The length, shortness, thickness, thinness, clarity, and opacity of the glass at that time were like the lives of more than a hundred people in the Enterprise because it was closely linked to the livelihood of the workers. The melting of the glass at over a thousand degrees Celsius could not compare to the toughness, flexibility, and endurance of the entire group of glass workers at that time. Eating with glass, sleeping with glass, resenting glass. Even shedding blood because of pieces of glass.
Back then, women usually wore clogs when working. One time, I was so busy pulling the tube that I slipped on my clogs and fell right on the director's feet who was standing nearby. I wasn't scolded, but from then on, he made a change: women working on tractors had to wear sneakers to ensure safety.
Then, after another year as a pipe puller, I switched to another job that made me more confused and scared than the first time. It was a medical staff job. This job, logically speaking, involved human lives. The working environment was completely different from the production place. During the shift, if you got angry with someone, you would say whatever was on your mind. But here, if you wanted to say something, you had to think carefully before you said it. As I had initially perceived: choose your words gently and speak with a moderate tone.
My job now is to hold a pen and use my head, not my strength. On the first day of work, I encountered many difficulties and obstacles, but there were no difficulties when I always had good colleagues around me who stood side by side, giving me the opportunity to learn more about culture and expertise so that I could grow over time and have the opportunity to contribute to this day.
After many ups and downs, my factory no longer produces glass tubes but is making all kinds of light bulbs and compact lamps. I now have more concurrent jobs, and all my work is close to the sun (that's the boss) the sun is very hot. When the boss is angry, I dare not sign anything, the boss is happy, the boss is happy, the boss is sad, the soldiers are sad too. Currently, I am boss Nho's soldier. Each boss has a different personality, shows his happiness and sadness differently, is angry differently, loves his soldiers differently but they have one thing in common: all for the factory, for the company, for the big Dien Quang family.
I would like to thank all my colleagues, those who have left and those who are still here. They have taught me what is good, what is bad, how to give and receive, how to share joys and sorrows, how to stop at the right time, how to choose your words. How to accept failure to gain experience for myself, to face challenges. Now that I am past the age of breaking the buffalo horn, I now have a family, a wife and a mother of a twenty-year-old child. I am extremely grateful to those who have created opportunities for me to be who I am today. That understanding has helped me and my family a lot. Every time I hear the children in the factory call me "Miss" and sometimes cry when they encounter frustrations at work, confide in me about family and love stories... I feel happy. Happy because I have grown up the way I have received, I also give with what I have. It makes me more attached to the Factory.
I wish my colleagues good health, prosperous business, prosperous company, high salary with unimaginable bonus every month.
Lower Key
– One person always remembers many people –
