I was paid in peanuts...
...well, Pistachios actually.

I got my first job straight out of school, on an apprenticeship as an aircraft electrician. As part of the training, we were also taught to wire houses and do machinery maintenance. I was nearly at the end of my first year and was only 17 at the time, so I was a little naive in the ways of the guvvy job and didn't realise I should agree a price with a customer before starting a job. (stupid boy)

Anyway, a guy who I used to catch the bus to work with had a problem with the electronic controller on his central heating system and had asked me to take a look at it. I told him I'd check it over and if I couldn't sort it, I'd disconnect the controller and pass it to the electronics lab people.

I turned up at his house and started work, checking the connections and the battery back up unit, but couldn't find anything wrong. I suspected it was the built-in processor, so I decided that it needed an expert eye to run a diagnostic check. Just as I was about to remove the controller, the guy's wife told me that there'd been a 24hour power cut while they were on holiday the previous week, so she'd tried to reset the unit but couldn't sort it. It turns out she'd totally ballsed up the reset procedure and had got 24hr mixed up with am/pm operations. (hence the heating firing up at all sorts of odd times) I reset the system and everything was fine. Now, bearing in mind I should've at least charged a call out rate, I was too shy to ask for anything so I told th guy that it was a freebie. (even though I'd been there a good couple of hours) As I ws leaving, he followed me out to his car and threw me a bag, saying "Something for your trouble".

It was a 2lb bag of Pistachios.

The guy who I did the guvvy for was the factory "nut man". He got cheap nuts in the months coming up to Christmas and figured I'd prefer a bag of nuts to a few quid towards beer.

What a twat.

I was a bigger twat though for letting him get away with it.

Never did another guvvy again after that.

Apologies for length, just felt it was worth it to express the sense of irony in the story.
(The Graduate Adding to the confusion since 1974, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 18:10, Reply)