Jason. Manager and pillock
Way back in time when I was starting out in working life I had the experience of being an apprentice in a security firm. Although this was only 15 years ago, the world was slightly less PC than it is now and all of the apprentices were generally treated poorly. In some ways it's a good thing, and certainly helped define my character and sharpen my wit when it came to verbal battles.

One of the managers there was a guy called Jason. Only in his mid-20s, he had a breath-taking self-confidence, backed in no small term by his cocaine addiction.

Despite his young age, Jason was old-school all the way. All three of us apprentices got a rough ride from him, from verbal bullying to being punched for wrong doing. I was fortunate in so much that Jason and I got on so badly - and publicly so - that for him to step over the line with me would probably have been viewed as taking things too far. That's my reasoning, at least, for getting less physical punishment than anyone else by far, though our verbal jousts were often quite scathing.

Ross was Jason’s apprentice, working with him every day. Ross was a couple of years older than me, and had been working with Jason for about two years. The stories he told were far-fetched at best, with the highlights being the separate times he was forced to run naked down Pall Mall for a deemed wrongdoing on his part, being made to drink cold cups of coffee that had been laced with WD40 (which Jason would happily tell Ross before making him drink it), and on several occasions being made to lay face down on the floor, in front of others, while Jason jumped on his back, yelled "cowabunga!" or some other 90s throwback catchphrase and proceeded to surf on the wriggling body of his colleague.

At least I THOUGHT these stories were farfetched, until one day I saw Jason make Ross drink a cup of coffee that had sat on the desk since the previous day. Ross, for his part, put up little resistance. He looked a broken man. And no wonder. He'd put up with Jason’s crap for years, and even though he tried to take things in good humour (such as when alopecia-suffering Ross had been sent a Gillette shaving kit as a gift by Jason), his life was Hell.

I'd like to be able to end this tale with something positive. Unfortunately I was never brave enough to stand up for Ross. I had enough trouble keeping Jason away from myself, and I knew that being employed in a small family-owned company, going down a HR route just wasn't feasible.

There were the occasional small wins. Such as the time that I picked up the office phone to hear one sentence: "It's Jason. Make sure there's a coffee there for me, I'm five minutes away." being having the phone slammed down. Those five minutes were spent stirring a full cup of coffee that had sat on the table untouched since the previous day, and holding the handle with one hand, and rotating the rest of the cup against a hot radiator, making sure that the cup felt warm, before handing it to Jason as he walked through the door. He took the biggest gulp of cold coffee before spitting most of it back out and throwing the cup across the room in temper.

But it's the simplest ones that amuse me most. The stand out one of which is from "S", who had come through the ranks with Jason at the company and hated him with a venom - a feeling that was mutual as soon as Jason realised that "S" was gay.

Jason turned up at work one day with his first tattoo - a horse’s head, with a horseshoe around it. He proudly showed it off to everyone, detailing how much is had cost, how long it had taken and how great it was. Everyone ummed and ahhhed, agreeing that it really was a fantastic piece of ink. Anything for a quiet life, it seems. Then as "S" passed by the group of employees, he said to one standing slightly away from the crowd, loudly enough for everyone to hear "Have you seen Jason’s new tattoo? He's got a My Little Pony on his arm!" before flouncing out with a massive grin on his face, the mocking laughter from everyone left in the room ringing in his ears, and several profanities coming from Jason’s mouth.

Ross, in the end, decided enough was enough, and quit before he was pushed too far. I never saw him again after that.
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Sat 12 Jun 2010, 10:29, 2 replies)

He should have said
that a tattoo of a horse is gay code for something.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 12 Jun 2010, 15:37, closed)

Ahhh
That would've been brilliant!
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Sat 12 Jun 2010, 15:49, closed)