STORIES2021/03/26
I am grateful to many people for helping me do both work and child-raising.
UT Connect
Saori Maeda
PROFILE
After working as a nursing caregiver and a full-time employee at a pachinko parlor, Saori joined Tight Work (now UT Connect) in 2017. After a year she went on maternity leave and returned to work 13 months later. While raising a child, she is continuing to work as an operator at a manufacturing site, which she began with no experience.
Introduction
Saori joined UT Community(now UT Connect), which is special in that it places women in workplaces where it is easy for women to work. She started the work in manufacturing with no experience and went on maternity leave one year later. What is she thinking now while working and raising a child?
When I was going to turn 30, I reviewed the way I worked.
Before I came to my current factory, I had been at three different workplaces. First, I worked at a nursing care facility as I had learned about this type of work at high school. It was fun to gradually get to know about facility users and I learned things from those great old-timer. However, I couldn’t fit in with the facility’s policy and so I resigned in two years. I wanted to carefully choose my next work but couldn’t afford to just play around in the meantime. I then saw a recruitment ad at a pachinko parlor and got a job there.
My work there was to deal with customers in the hall. There are many different customers, and I had to respond to each customer differently as I did in my previous job. I used to be shy but I developed communication skills and worked there for six years. As my 30th birthday was approaching, I felt the urge to think about the future and whether I had wanted to remain where I was.
I therefore applied for a job at Tight Work (now UT Connect) and joined the company to do sales. I started to go out with my present husband around that time. I had been acquainted with him, but when I was at the pachinko parlor, I had to work on Saturday, Sunday and even during the New Year holidays, so I had to refuse even when he asked me to go out to eat. Six months after working in the sales job, I had to move to his hometown and the company was nice to transfer me into another job in that city. It happened to be the same factory where my husband was working. Six months later, we got married. It was quite a year of rapid development for me both in work and private life.
Work and home. Switch the gear from one to another.
Now I get up at 6:30 every morning and start the day by making breakfast and packing a lunch box for my husband. After my husband leaves with our two-year-old son to take him to the nursery by car, I leave home at 8 am and go to work by bicycle.
I am assigned to be an operator of manufacturing equipment for printed circuit boards and my primary work is to replenish parts. There are nearly 200 types of parts and I have to check two or three times because if the correct parts are not fed, the machines may stop and cause trouble. I feel rewarding to meet the target production volume by handling each different part properly.
I stop work on time at 5:15 pm and my husband and I alternately pick up our son at the nursery. My husband sometimes has overtime work, so we share the pick-up responsibility.
My current work is different from working with people as I had done before, but in any case relationships are still important in the sense that I work in cooperation with my colleagues. In particular, I can’t work without the support of others as I had no experience in manufacturing and I have child-rearing too to keep me busy. I am very grateful that my colleagues teach me how to do the job politely, but also care about my family. When I came back to the office after maternity leave, my boss kindly said to me,
“Your son won’t get used to nursery so soon. You can take a leave for three more months.” Thanks to nice people such as my boss, I can switch and balance myself well between work and home, and I am now having a lot more fun every day than when I was only with my husband (laughs).
