TO TRULY SWITCH OFF, I NEED SOME TIME ON MY OWN

In just under a year and a half at FINIDR, Patrik has held several roles and now works as a digital printing process technician. In this interview, he reflects on his journey from renovating windows to returning to the printing industry, where what he enjoys most is learning new technologies. He also speaks openly about moving house, his family and finding a balance between work and his personal life.

Silence, a podcast or an audiobook, and a walk in the woods with his headphones on…

Patrik, how did you get on over the summer?

We’ve been moving house since May, so I was refurbishing the flat right up until August. We hardly had any proper time off. We just popped over to Poland for four days because I really needed to switch off. For two and a half months, my life consisted of picking up my little one from kinder garden after work, handing him over to my wife and heading straight to the flat. I’d work there until ten or eleven in the evening. And so, it went on and on. Physically, I was completely exhausted; I came down with an infection and eventually my body just said ‘enough’. It was a bit like when we moved from Zlín last year.

Did you do the flat renovation yourself?

Yes, I did a lot of it myself – I enjoy working with my hands. Although, after keeping up this pace, I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. The important bits are done, the furniture’s been assembled, and a few minor details can wait. I’m going to take at least a month’s break for the sake of my health. It’s particularly demanding with a small child. He’s starting nursery in September, so we’ll be back into a routine, and I’ll have a bit more breathing space.

I imagine moving house was a challenging time. How do you recharge your batteries?

With peace and quiet. It’s ideal when there’s no one around me. Silence, a podcast or an audiobook, and a walk in the woods with my headphones on. That’s mental cleansing. When I’m really socially exhausted, I’ll even pop out on my own for a beer and have an hour to myself. As soon as I’m with someone, my mind is constantly racing. We chat, discuss things, philosophise. That’s fine, but to really switch off, I need solitude.

And how was your holiday in Poland?

It was more of a spur-of-the-moment thing. I texted my wife: ‘I’ve got time off, let’s go to Gdańsk for four days.’ We had a lovely time. I sat by the sea, listened to the waves and tried not to think about the moving. The weather was a bit chilly, but we visited galleries, a maritime museum and a parrot house where over a hundred species of parrots fly about freely. We simply tried to choose places that our son would enjoy too. I’m fascinated by how much energy four-year-olds have. We walked around the city all day and he was still fine.

You mentioned that you used to live in Zlín.

What did you do there?

Straight after school, I joined a company in Zlín that specialised in renovating windows in heritage areas, in churches, and on the main streets of Prague, Brno and Olomouc. Later on, we replaced the glass in plastic windows. For three and a half years, I travelled around the Czech Republic and Slovakia as a fitter. After my son was born, I didn’t want to travel so much anymore and wanted to spend more time at home. The workshop manager was just leaving, so I took over his role within a week. I was responsible for preparing materials for the fitting teams, receiving goods and checking bespoke orders.

What brought you back to Těšín?

There was nowhere else to go in my career at work. They offered me a sales role, but that would have meant travelling around the Czech Republic a lot again, and I didn’t want that. My little one was about two years old; we were 150 kilometres from our family, with no grandmothers and no reliable childcare. My parents did come to visit us, but it still wasn’t worth it. We felt that we’d be very restricted in the future. What’s more, the workload kept increasing, but it didn’t translate into better pay, so we decided to leave.

You’ve been with the company for a year and a half and have already held several roles, from printer and digital press operator to process technician. How do you feel about that?

It’s gone quickly, but it’s also down to my approach to work. I started last March on the rotary presses at FINIDR B. After three hours, I knew what I had to do. I have a visual memory. They showed me the procedure and I was able to replicate it. From the second shift onwards, I worked on my own on a machine I’d never seen before. After two months, I was offered a role as a digital press operator. The Chinese and Swiss were here to install the equipment, and as I speak English, I communicated with them a lot. I was probably the only one who wrote down a complete set of instructions from the training, translated them and redrew them. For the next two months, all the lads on the shop floor worked according to them. I didn’t want to keep it to myself; on the contrary, I wanted to share it with the team.

How did you become a process technician?

Whenever necessary, I’d stay at work longer and try to learn as much as possible. I enjoyed digital printing and really wanted to understand it properly. Gradually, I started helping my colleagues on the morning shifts and sorting out issues they didn’t know how to deal with. Since last September, I’ve taken on some responsibility for the centre’s operations and been training to become a process technician. I officially took up this post in January this year. You could say that today I’m simply continuing what I started doing before. And I still enjoy it.

You studied printing at Albrecht Secondary School. Did the school help you when you started work?

It certainly did help me. Even though it was more than ten years after I left school, I still remembered some things. At school, we mainly focused on offset printing and traditional printing technologies. I knew how cylinders, printing plates, ink and so on worked. Digital printing, however, was completely new to me, as were many aspects of book production. We did see various types of binding at school, but real-world operations are a different matter. The work experience at FINIDR wasn’t very appealing back then. We often ended up doing more menial tasks, such as cleaning the books. We didn’t get much chance to work on the machines or to really understand the whole process. That put me off the industry a bit at the time.

What is the biggest challenge for you at work?

Learning new technologies and trying to understand the machines as well as possible. I want to know how they work, why certain things happen and how to solve problems. We deal with spare parts, look for external suppliers and try out alternatives to ensure production runs as smoothly as possible. I’m also learning to work with various programmes and technologies that I hadn’t used before. Gradually, I’m also getting to grips with mechanical part replacements, such as swapping out certain machine components or print heads. I never used to think I’d be the sort of person who takes things apart and repairs them, because it seemed complicated to me and I was worried I’d break something. These are the sort of challenges I enjoy, because they help me develop further.

Has communicating in English also helped you progress in your work?

Definitely. I hadn’t actively used it for a long time; at most, I’d watch TV series or films, but I didn’t speak it. When I joined FINIDR, I suddenly needed to communicate with colleagues from abroad, and gradually my English started to come back. I realised I still had it in me. The more I use it, the more confident I become. Sometimes I don’t know the exact technical term, but I can describe things in other ways. The important thing is that the other person understands me. That, too, is a challenge for me – one that I enjoy and that helps me progress.

In my view, that’s the most important thing: a desire to learn and a willingness to try new things.

What are you most looking forward to right now?

I’m mainly looking forward to our flat being finished. When everything’s fitted, tidied up and everything’s in its place. I’m also looking forward to having more space for myself and for the things I enjoy. For example, I’ve got boxes of Lego in the garage that I haven’t got round to playing with for ages. And I love cars too. I’m looking forward to going for a drive on my own.

Thank you for the lovely chat, and above all, I hope you get plenty of rest.

Patrik Saňák

Digital Printing Technician