My first big job wasn't construction drafting

Around 2001 I was lent out to a big assignment: converting Super de Boer supermarkets to the Konmar format, part of the large Laurus operation. It sounded like a great first job. In practice, sadly, it wasn't construction drafting at all — mostly store layout.

Still, I did learn something about drafting in AutoCAD: tweaking menus and functions so the work went faster. Before long I was saving myself many clicks a day. But this wasn't what I'd retrained for. I'd become a construction draftsman, and this wasn't that trade. So I chose to leave; it simply wasn't the work I was after. That the project later stalled anyway, for far more people than me, I only heard long after I'd gone.

In hindsight, a good call. On to work that actually suited me.

Next: where it did click — five years at an architect's office in Deventer.