“They were working like machines”

A woman describes her first job experience in the factories.

P.Ε.: I was employed in a job in the same factory, I went to a factory. My brother-in-law had a girlfriend from Sparta and we all lived in the same... he had an apartment and we were renting a room, I was renting a room with… and the girlfriend of my brother-in-law we were in one house and she took me in the factory… they were making blouses. Not in the machine, I… they had me in the folding. Yes, I was folding blouses. There was a German supervisor, I remember, who showed me. A very good lady and another Greek woman from Sparta whom I still know and we’re friends. The first I met, when I went. But it was kind of difficult on the first day of course, I didn’t know the way, the husband took me there, the factory wasn’t very far, he took me there and because I was near the… to… ironing machines which emanated steam, steam was coming out and that steam had bothered me and I say “Here they’re working like machines, they don’t even go to the toilet, they don’t even drink water” because I hadn’t worked in such before. And I had a fainting and they caught me there and therefore that day I felt like this that I didn’t know anything, they showed me but it was… I was pressured and I somehow fainted. And they told me, they brought me water, they told me, I asked about the toilet… I could go but I didn’t know because I was seeing everyone working like machines, for this reason I sometimes say when they complain in Greece that they work hard “We worked very hard here”…