In psychology, the received understanding holds that qualitative methods have emerged in force during the last three decades. Before this time, mainstream psychology was a quantitative monolith smothering any other perspective on what psychology should be. This is not entirely a fiction but it is a creation myth rather than a precise and historically accurate account of the dark days before qualitative psychology. Probably my experience is a little different from that of most psychologists. At the end of my first year as a psychology student I was sent for six months to the factory floor (and eventually the personnel offices) of Morganite Carbon which was then in Battersea, London. The reason? Essentially to experience life as a factory worker and to write a project on my experiences.