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He retired a year ago after 42 years at Industrias Metalurgicas Cestari and his memory is still fresh. The company still misses him and Juan Manuel Reynoso does not forget the factory. In this note he recalls some moments of his history with Cestari.

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«I entered on the first working day of January 1977 and left at the end of June 2019, in other words, I worked for exactly 42 years of my life. I am fond of mathematics so I have worked out that exactly 60% of my life was working at Cestari», that’s how Juan Manuel Reynoso begins this interview, and adds: «So you can see how important Cestari is to me, how fundamental it has been, it has been my whole life».

Cestari marks the lives of people and collaborators, and likewise the employees have undoubtedly marked the life of our company throughout these 92 years. This is the case of Juan Manuel, who today is enjoying his retirement but is still in contact with us and today tells his story with Cestari.

What was it like when you started working in the factory?

– When I entered we were very few employees, few suppliers, and our customers were exclusively from the province of Buenos Aires, and only Nino dealt with them. At that time, I was in charge of keeping the accounts, the cash register by hand, and later on, the daily petty cash. Everything was done by us, the payment of taxes, the pension contributions, all those things were done by us. We were a small group of people, simpler than now, everything was done by hand.

Among the tasks carried out by Juan Manuel Reynoso we can name many. At times he was an administrator, at times he sold auger wagonss and even managed transport. «I have done practically everything in the factory, except buying, which was always Nino’s area and when Horacio came in, he took over the technical part, but yes I have done nearly everything. I have even delivered auger wagonss, I made trips with 12-ton auger wagonss from Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and La Pampa to Tucumán,» he says.

«Little by little I ended up doing what I was doing until the day I retired, invoicing, dispatching trailers, dealing with dealers and customers who possibly, after so many years, considered me part of Cestari, as if I had been born with the company», says Juan Manuel proudly.

How was the relationship with your colleagues?

-With regard to my colleagues, I have never really had any problems with anyone. I have always had a very good relationship with everyone, from the office to the workshop. Marcelo Giuli has always been a pillar, he has always supported me in everything from the beginning, knowing everything and knowing everyone. Then, even with the implementation of the new directives, related to the ISO standard and other market controls when he began working in management, he still continued to accompany me. Marcelo is a super capable guy, an excellent person, and I shall always treasure his friendship.

How was your relationship with the company?

-Nino always said that Cestari was a great family, and in a way everyone who works there gets to join that family. It’s a really good thing too because after 42 years if you’re not like a member of the family it isn’t always easy to hang in there. Like any family, there are good moments and others not so good. I can tell you that Nino was very strict about timetable, for example, so if he was in a bad mood you were even afraid sometimes to ask permission to go to the doctor.

But there are thousands of good moments, from the financial help I was often given to the beautiful gift I was given as a farewell. The time I shall undoubtedly remember most, was when my son fell ill with scarlet fever, and the doctor in Pergamino told us he had to go to Rosario. Without hesitating Nestor brought me his car with a full tank and insisted that I went to Rosario straight away, he almost forced me to go. Thanks to that my son was saved, I shall always be indebted to him.

Juan Manuel Reynoso was part of Industrias Metalúrgicas Cestari for the last 42 years and can tell you about all the processes from the first auger wagonss to the latest developments. He lived throughthe difficult times for the Argentinean companies where our factory had to think of strategies to keep on providing quality and efficiency in its products, while at the same time trying to think of ways to avoid lay-offs.

«That line of conduct, of honesty, of transparency always characterized the family and the company, and it was transferred to the employees, to us. For example, it was almost a guarantee, if you went to a business or a shop, take out a loan or ask for something on hire-purchase and say ‘I work at Cestari’. People knew that if you worked at Cestari, you were first a good employee because Cestari took you on, and secondly you were a good person if you were part of the factory he says proudly.

-We imagine that you have a lot of stories…

There are thousands of anecdotes, imagine in so many years of work. One that I always remember is that Don Nino didn’t like us to drink mate, he didn’t want us to. But, well, we managed to find the way to drink some now and again. We would wait for him to go out, then we would take out the yerba and mate and have some . When Nino would show up at the big gate in front, we would quickly put everything away .Nino would come in and would be very angry when he touched the kettle and found out it was hot. So we came up with a trick, after we had heated the water we cooled everything down so that he wouldn’t notice. But Nino was as sly as an old fox, he was sure we were drinking mate and wanted to prove it. So one day instead of appearing at the front gate he showed up at the back door and caught us sipping our mate… I said that Néstor ,his son, was with us and that’s how we were saved from a bigger telling off

Thousands of stories and anecdotes have been left out of this article. The fact is that Juan Manuel Reynoso was, is and will always be an important part of the company’s history. His willingness and emotion to tell us his story with Cestari shows this. And we are happy to be able to pass it on to our readers.