Watchmaker

It’s said that time heals all wounds. When you’re a Watchmaker, therefore, you’re both a Craftsman and a Doctor, doing your part to treat life’s contusions by turning abstract hours into tangible time, which makes people older, wiser, and, hopefully, happier.

That’s what it means, philosophically, to be a Watchmaker. Practically, however, the profession’s less about time and more about timepieces, as it’s your job to make, clean, and repair watches and clocks.

As the name implies, Watchmakers traditionally made their living by designing and constructing watches, which required fabricating the individual parts — including the various gears and wheels inside the watch, as well as the case, face, hands, and strap — then assembling them to make working timepieces that could be sold to consumers.

Although you may still practice this craft, most modern-day watches — many of which are digital instead of analog — are manufactured and mass-produced. Most of your work, therefore, involves cleaning and repair instead of actual watchmaking, which is now largely the work of machines. To that end, you typically spend your days cleaning, rinsing, and drying watch parts; oiling and lubricating watch gears; inspecting and “diagnosing” broken watches; repairing and replacing damaged or worn parts; disassembling and reassembling damaged timepieces; replacing batteries; and testing, then fixing, timepiece accuracy.

People often talk about the “fabric” of time. At the end of the day, that makes you a Seamstress, weaving time into timepieces so that everyone knows when to get up, when to go to work, and — most importantly — when to take their lunch!