On leaving university in 1975 I secured employment with a small pharmaceutical, veterinary and toiletry manufacturers in Lancashire, United Kingdom here I worked on the Quality Control of the finished products prior to packaging and sale and also the manufacture of hair care products...shampoos, hair-sets and hair perm solutions.
After a couple of years I obtained employment with a family run generic medicine house a few miles away within their development department. This was the time when branded ethical preparations were coming to the end of their patent protection and other companies were free to apply for licences to produce cheaper generic or non-branded products.
To obtain these licences it was neccessary to prepare trial batches of the preparations and monitor their stability over a period of time at normal room temperature and elevated temperature storage and show that our products were of similar standard to the existing products.
I started as a laboratory analyst and as time passed by undertook more responsibilities such that at the end of nine years I was a section leader supervising seven or so graduate staff.
Changing economic conditions within the company prompted my transfer to the Quality Control department where first responsibilities included testing of tablet granules and bulk parenteral solutions then responsibility for the approval of all the raw materials used in production.
This area of work was the most challenging I faced and also the most rewarding, the entire company production could come to a halt if the required material had not been tested for quality and approved so it was a "juggling act" to make sure the materials were ready for when they were required.
Six years later the company went through another difficult time and I was one of the half of the workforce they decided to try and manage without. (I have to say that the company succeeded, they are still in business !)
But there ended my career within the pharmaceutical industry.
Since that time I worked as a desk-top publishing operator preparing electronics manuals and catalogues for printing, as a stock clerk involved in the import of clothing and distribution to retail stores nationwide, in import of textiles from the Middle East and as an administrative assistant in a local government office.
My latest work involved creating webpages and establishing an online shop for a local company.
In between jobs I am, in the words of Mr Micawber in Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield"
"Waiting for something to turn up."
For more details of my career and experience check out my professional webpage
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