How Wet Wipes Brought Back My Childhood Spark

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As a little kid, I loved watching How it’s made. That’s how my love for the production industry began. I remember it like it was yesterday. I’d sprint home from school, tongue out, just to catch an episode about a toilet brush or crayons.

My second passion was the kitchen. I love eating, I love cooking, and I love watching cooking shows. By the way, I make pretty good pizza.

Speaking of cooking shows, we can complain about Netflix all we want, but I recommend Chef’s Table to everyone. It talks about food and chefs in a completely different way than most popular cooking programs. Less noise, more meaning. Less rush, more story. A style where food stops being food and becomes a tale.

For some time, I had this idea to combine both worlds and create a series called How it’s automated. I wanted to talk about our world. The world of engineers, but in a different way. Without corporate slang, without production spreadsheets. Just simple. I wanted to show the problems we deal with every day, how we solve things, and at the same time answer the question of how automated the production of everyday items really is.

And I finally made it happen. After two years, my management agreed to a pilot. Three episodes that will help us decide whether we move forward or drop the idea.

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This week, I recorded the second episode. We showed the struggles of engineers working at a plant that produces wet wipes. For me, it was almost a magical experience because I hadn’t been in such a cool factory in a long time. I could feel that childhood excitement again and watch the machinery work in perfect harmony. The sound, the rhythm, the precision. You look at it and you’re not sure what’s more impressive. The metal or the people who tame it.

The whole day of shooting was physically and mentally demanding. So many things to coordinate, arrange, record, adjust. But in the end, we made it. I’m happy with what we created. We’ll have to wait a bit for the final result, but I think it will be worth it.

But the most important part of the whole day was a conversation with one of the engineers. Mirek. A guy who knows the process inside out. A guy who talks about making wet wipes the way some people talk about their first loves. I got to interview him, and if we hadn’t been limited by time, we would have talked for hours.

And now, finally, the conclusion of today’s episode.

Do you know what’s the sexiest thing in the world and what really drives it?

Passion. The passion of people like Mirek. An engineer whose eyes lit up when he explained how wet wipes are made. The world runs on people like that. Not on corporations or strategies, but on people who care.

If you collect stamps, run, love anime, or enjoy origami, keep doing it.

Passionate people are sexy.

Cheers, Jacek!