Maria: a life between Family and Hemming Machines.

In my life I cannot consider work a dream come true, because I would have preferred to do something else where I could have put much more than the enthusiasm that I have in character; but this was not the case and in the end I transformed it by putting love and passion on what I do.

It all started at the age of 14, when still almost a child I wanted to continue my studies with a great project: to become an Italian teacher.

All my ideas were stopped by my father who, adamant in his ideas and perhaps also by the economic possibilities, forbade me to study and to cheer me up he gave me a new hemming machine.

Initially I was very sad to have to put away my desire; then slowly, committing myself as I always try to do, I learned to be a hemmer by putting all the passion I can to do it well.

After scrupulously learning the art of composing all the pieces that make up an upper (because this is the meaning of hemming machine), I found myself working in the upper section of a large shoe factory in which about 40 young girls, almost all of them of the same age, worked. A very pleasant atmosphere was immediately created and I established good friendships that still exist today.

Today I can say that they have been very good years, even if you worked for many hours.

Initially I carried out simple hemming jobs, but over time I specialized more and more and assigned me more and more important tasks, thus also growing professionally, until I got a career advancement becoming manager of the sample department (prototyping).

In the beginning I was a little apprehensive as it was a job of great responsibility, but in a short time I soon became good and expert.

It was a role that gave a lot of satisfaction, since I saw all the new shoe creations born under my hands, to which I always gave an extra touch to improve them together with the collaborators of the modeling department.

Then there was a stop because of the birth of my two daughters; so for several years I found myself at home doing the same type of work and with the same commitment but between baby food, diapers and various home tasks.

When the girls became girls, the owner of the company proposed to me to go back to work in the company.

At first I would not have accepted because I had managed to organize everything so well, reconciling work and family, that I was not so happy at the idea of ​​having to deprive myself of some freedoms in following the growth of my daughters; but he asked me so insistently and also offered me some concessions in the timetables, which I eventually gave up. I returned to the place where I had started my career and who had seen me as a child, then a girl until I was a woman and a mother.

I resumed the role of manager in the sample department but with a few more tasks: in addition to managing the execution of the various shoe models, I organized and distributed the work both within the company and to external collaborators and explained to them all the procedures and the processes to be performed. I had become the expert teacher of footwear.

My career continued like this until I reached my pension, between a lot of work but also many satisfactions. It was certainly not the job of my dreams but it has become it with love and passion in trying to always do the best. I am fully proud of myself in everything I have done because I have taught other people the craft of the hemmer and I have inherited all my notions concerning not only the world of footwear but also my personal experience as manager accumulated over the years .

I will not have been a teacher of Italian but I have trained figures specialized in the footwear sector and I have been a teacher of a thousand other things not less important.

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