An Ordinary Adventurer

An off-hand remark gave Grethe a chance to move to the tropics with VIKING. For a year and a half, Grethe lived in Indonesia teaching the Indonesians how to build liferafts.

Grethe Blæsbjerg

Grethe meets me wearing a red, short-sleeved VIKING T-shirt even though it is a January day and snowing outside. In her strong, thin arms, she holds a red thermos flask with coffee for our meeting. Grethe's smile and face are young, but her hands have seen many years of hard work.


Home to Esbjerg and VIKING
Twenty years ago Grethe moved back to Esbjerg as a young divorcee, mother of two. She had grown up in Esbjerg close to VIKING's headquarters. She moved away when she married and returned to a flat in Esbjerg - again close to VIKING's HQ - after her separation. She was now looking for a job that could accommodate her being a mother of two children (5 and 9 years old). Grethe got on her bike and started looking for a job at the large companies in Esbjerg.

”I was registered with many companies because I am an active, outgoing woman who cannot sit still. I prefer it when many different things are happening all of the time. I was searching for a job – at the harbour too – but VIKING was an obvious target. I registered with them and in May 1985 I started at VIKING and worked together with two other women - one of whom I still work with. Our job was to modify rafts. I remember at the end of my first working day I had sweated a great deal and my head was filled with new input. How was I to cope with all of this? I had to make so many different things”. Grethe says.

First the training…
“From the first day on VIKING’s production line you get a glue brush put in your hand. Then you have to handle everything you are given to do.” Grethe began by modifying rafts. Attaching a new type of bottom into the rafts, for example. Later on, she was transferred to the chute department and learned something new again. Each time Grethe was asked whether she would like to lend a hand in a new area she would always say, “Yes, please”.

”Already at that time, I found VIKING to be a good workplace. At the beginning, it was difficult, because things were quite new to me and I could not imagine how the finished product would be. As time goes by you realize what you are making and suddenly it becomes a kind of routine. But … it must never be such a routine to produce product like ours so that you forget both quality and what the purpose of the product is.

How can sufficient attention be ensured?

”It is the same for all of us. We do not make the same thing, i.e. boarding ramps, for ten consecutive days otherwise things go wrong. Just as they would if you stood at a machine just watching things; suddenly you do not see the small defects. Actually, we produce a raft from A to Z. From receiving the materials from the cutter, to gluing the parts together, before being transferred to the next department where they are assembled. One day we may produce liferafts for 4 persons and the next day we produce Marine Evacuation Systems for 150 persons.

Teamwork
Previously, the production work was organized differently, e.g. you worked for an individual bonus. Today the work is organised in teams and the employees get fixed hourly rates, meaning that the teams themselves plan how to produce the liferafts . Each group has a co-ordinator who is the spokesperson between the management and the team members.

”We discuss the best way to produce efficiently. For example, if we only have four small 4 persons liferafts in a series it would mean that there would be little efficiency as production time for the liferafts is so short. So two persons of the team may be set to produce them instead of the whole team. We have discussions like these whenever it is necessary and the co-ordinator makes the final decision,” Grethe explains.


...then teaching others
After the first five or six years, Grethe had taken part in most of the working processes involved in liferaft production; from conception through to delivery as a ready to use liferaft.

When VIKING wanted to start production on the Indonesian island of Batam, VIKING advertised internally for hourly paid workers who wanted to go to Indonesia and train the workforce.

"The next day I spoke with my foreman, (I had not even read the notice myself nor discussed it with my family back home) I said: ”this must be something for me”. My foreman just said: “Yes, yes”. I did not give it another thought until my foreman returned and said: ”Grethe, on Monday you will train a new person”. I said: “No, I am definitely not training a new person – it is not my turn! I have just worked evenings for several months to train people so it cannot be my turn already.” “Yes, it is your turn and the one you are going to train is the new production supervisor in Batam, Asia”, Grethe says smiling.


Travel to Indonesia
When Grethe was offered the opportunity to go to Indonesia, her 16-year-old son was still living at home. Grethe went to see her mother. Without hesitation her mother encouraged Grethe to go and assured her that she would take good care of her son when he came home from boarding school during the weekends.

Together with Ulla from VIKING, Grethe left for Batam and found facilities quite different to those in Denmark. A small island with a tropical climate and temperatures of approx. 30C and an atmospheric humidity close to 90%. A workplace within a so-called industrial estate, where houses were surrounded by barbed wire and pieces of broken glass with guards everywhere, and colleagues with whom it was difficult to communicate.

”I didn't feel sad – we were two people together who could support each other. When my Danish colleague Ulla returned to Denmark after three months, I was alone out there, but that wasn't a problem because I worked long hours. During the weekends I often went to Singapore. The Danish Seamen’s church was situated there and the manager of VIKING Singapore lived out there with his wife and children. They are incredibly nice. Each time I went to Singapore Brian phoned me and said: “Come and stay with us instead of at a hotel,” Grethe says.

Grethe became second aunt to the three children. When they needed a babysitter, Grethe came to care for them and when Grethe needed help, Brian’s family was always there for her. Since then Grethe has kept in contact with the family.

At the same time Grethe acquired a ”new family”, she shared some of the adventure with her son. He visited her while she was stationed in Batam and it was a great experience for him.

May confuse a beginner.

I'm not better than you
In the beginning Grethe and her Danish colleague were responsible for teaching about 20 women. As they were trained, more and more new people were hired. Finally, we had a real production line of VIKING liferafts. It was hard work, not without problems, and the girls we trained did not speak much English.

”Luckily products were made by hand. I made the parts and the women used their eyes. When they saw how to do it, they did the same thing. We communicated using a kind of sign language. The girls were very nervous, young, under 22 years of age, and were far away from home. Many of the girls came from Java, Sumatra, Florence and the other islands around Djakarta, and lived here away from their families.

“As time went by they became more informal with me and eventually called me Grethe, instead of Miss Grethe."

Part of a community
Some of Grethe’s colleagues in Denmark have become her personal friends. They are eight women eating breakfast and lunch together – and they have been together for many years. They know each other’s families and take part in each other’s lives. While Grethe was travelling, her colleagues sent letters and presents to her. Grethe remembers the chocolate they sent to Indonesia for her birthday. It was grey and melted together on arrival, but still a nice present. If you ask Grethe about her personal successes at VIKING she answers:

”I do not know if I have had any true independent personal successes. Knowing that orders are made ready and on time along with my colleagues, to me, that is a success.” Grethe says.

Outside VIKING, Grethe is also part of a community. For the past 16 years, she has been an active board member of the housing association where she lives. Among other things, she takes part in running a club with activities such as badminton, bingo, tennis, and an exercise room to collect money to help the children and young people in the housing area.

”I enjoy being able to help children who are often socially bad off, as everyone is not granted everything”, Grethe tells.

Handling VIKING’s products with experience and care

Adventure is not over
After about 20 years at VIKING and after several long stays first in Indonesia and later in Thailand, where VIKING’s production is now located, Grethe is still confident that she can learn something new. She still wants new challenges like when she travelled alone to Australia on a holiday trip after a stay in Indonesia.

”VIKING had paid my ticket to Singapore so I only had to pay for the rest of the trip. I saw just what I wanted to see. I went to Caines and went diving on the Great Barrier Reef, I saw the Opera House in Sydney and dug for gold in Melbourne! I had a 19 day holiday and it was a wonderful experience. In 1991 we earned a big employee bonus. On this occasion I said that when the bonus was paid and my children left home I wanted to go to Australia. I don't know why”, Grethe says.

Grethe has taken square dancing lessons, tried bungee jumping and parachuting in Thailand. And if Grethe wins a million in the lottery someday, she would like to go to Hawaii.

Nevertheless, Grethe is happy and secure with her work. If someone were to ask her if she would like to try some other function at VIKING, something in administration or in planning, the answer is clear:

”No, I have no ambitions there at all. Administration work doesn't appeal to me. I am quite fine here and I like to be a part of the daily production and to get things done.” Grethe concludes.