Champion in DSSE
He returned from the Tokyo Olympics as a winner. Wikipedia reports his many successes. Discipline of sport - hammer throw he treats like a well-planned and done job. He always returns from the competition to Żarów – to home. His schedule is full from morning to evening, but he found time to accept our President's invitation.
On August 30, 2021, our company was visited by an Olympian, World Champion, and a titled athlete - Paweł Fajdek. The meeting was attended by the Mayor of Żarów, Leszek Michalak, the Management Board of Daicel and employees.
After a short introduction on the company business profile, the President Atsushi Hatomoto explained origin of special gift for Mr. Paweł – Japanese DARUMA doll. Presenter of Daruma was Tsukagawa-san, DSSE Technical Center Europe Manager, who brought it personally strait from Japan.
Daruma is a doll modelled on the founder of ZEN Buddhism. It presents a monk and has a symbolic meaning, it is a good luck charm. The doll's stubborn face expresses determination, the will to overcome difficulties, but also dedication, discipline and patience. This character is also associated with long life, good health, happiness and prosperity. In Daicel, we believe that it helps to achieve goals. We are convinced that it will bring a good luck to our guest in achieving next sport goals.
Paweł Fajdek talked about the Olympics in Tokyo: “Only the Japanese could bear the burden of organizing such event during a pandemic. It is a very disciplined nation. The sanitary regime, following rules and regulations were visible on the daily basis. Besides, they are very nice and friendly people and thanks to that I felt very well there.” – he said.
Then, as befits the HR department, the question about motivation, successes and failures was asked.
And at this point, we started to call each other by names.
Paweł said that the most important thing is to have goals, new challenges, focus on your work, be systematic. In his opinion, in sport you have to demand more and more from yourself, not fall into self-delight. He said that out of over 1000 starts he was satisfied with himself only 3 times, and it gave him motivation to work even harder. Training for over 20 years he had weaker moments, but failure always gave him a "kick", while success increased his appetite for more. Comparing the training to the workplace, he emphasized that the most important thing is the atmosphere, cooperation and "chemistry" with the trainer and associates. He said he had a cool trainer to wake him up for training.
The Olympics were delayed one year due to Covid-19. It was not clear when or if the Olympics would take place at all.
We asked how he dealt with this uncertainty. Paweł said it was a difficult time for many athletes.
He, on the other hand, took advantage of this time! He always tries to find the positive sides of every situation. He spent a lot of time with his family, which helped him recharge his batteries, recover and rest.
As an interesting fact from Japan, we found out that he liked shrimps and gyoza dumplings the most, as well as ecological beds in the Olympic village.
Paweł wanted to see our work environment closer. So we showed him production site, laboratories and offices. He liked them all very much. He especially noticed that the employees had friendly attitude and were smiling.
In DSSE, we run the Agent 0017 program, therefore we asked the Olympian for a challenge for us.
"Do 10 sit-ups when you wake up as a warm-up before work."
In turn, we promised to do it at least once at work and send him a video!
