Events, Maintenance & Grounds
Wood Green Animal Shelter

Jason I

00:00:03 My name’s Jason I and I work at Wood Green and I do events, maintenance and grounds. If there’s an event going on, we have to organise the events in the arena or down the bottom field. But if there’s anything that needs doing on the maintenance side, we’re there to help and just do the job basically and the same with grounds and if the grass needs strimming, we strim the grass, we cut the grass, hedge cutting and basically keeping the uptake of the grounds.

00:00:34 I always enjoyed school, I really did. The subjects I really did enjoy was geography and history and I did enjoy my games and no, I was just a happy go lad, you know, who always got on well with everyone. I don’t think I was guided enough at school really because, you know, I can remember being at school and the teacher would say, ‘what would you like to be when you grow up?’ You know, and you’re like well, in my year, it used to be like I want to be a policeman.

00:01:02 But I never really thought about it until I think when I went into the sixth form for one year and I was doing computer courses and I started to do a bit of financing on my computer, and that’s when I thought, ‘well this isn’t too bad, I think I’ll have a go’, and I went to college and that’s what I done just for one year and I passed it. But I do regret not carrying on with it really. Now I sort of think about it, but at the time I don’t think you realise what you want to do. I think you’ve got to really sit down and think what you want to be or what you want to do in your career move.

00:01:37 I went straight into college at the Huntingdon Regional College. I done business and finance for a year and straight after that, because I was working part time at Papworth Hospital, I took the money, they offered me a full time job but I took the money, it was, you know, as a sort of young lad would do. Then I went to Anglia Circuits producing circuit boards for a couple of years, and then I went to Standard Products in Huntingdon and I was there for seven years working on the moulds, until I got made redundant and then came up to Wood Green as a security guard.

00:02:10 I’ve always gone where the money was and when I think what turned me to work here, was when I was on security, you know, and at night, they used to ask me to do some days ‘cos I used to do permanent nights here, and I was working and I was doing the days and I thought, ‘this is a cracking job’, and I got to know a lot of people here and it was like, ‘well, this is not bad, you know, they’re a good bunch of people’, and when I finally heard that a maintenance job was coming up, I just applied, and I think because I knew the site, I think that’s one of the reasons why I got the job here.

00:02:39 And that’s one thing I do not regret about, you know, working here is because I just enjoy it and the people are so friendly and everyone just gets on with anyone. You know, at some workplaces, you’re like, ‘can you do us a favour?’ and they’ll say, ‘no’, blah, blah, you know, they won’t. But here, everyone just mixes in and that’s a good thing about, you know, working at the shelter because we all sort of work together.

00:03:00 I got the inspiration I think from my granddad, because when the war finished ‘cos he’s Latvian, they came straight over from Latvia to England and because he didn’t really speak very much English, he sort of found some work on the land and then what inspired me most about my granddad was that he became a chef at Papworth Hospital and I think that’s such an inspiration because of him not being, you know, talking a lot of English and I think that’s where I got it from, from my granddad really.

00:03:34 I think the problem with, you know, the different types of jobs that I’ve had, is that I think I went with the money situation, wherever the money was I sort of went, and that’s why I’ve sort of had quite a few jobs because I went for the money. But now I realise that this is the job that I like at Wood Green, so I’m just, you know, the money’s not superb but it’s, you know, it’s the job that I enjoy, and I don’t think I can probably ever change because it’s such a wonderful place to work.