Working for Winners! You will be assimilated! Resistence is Futile!
One of my very first jobs was being the office admin spod for an offshoot of a large European haulage firm. We were sited two miles away from the English HQ in our own little outpost comprised of a hamster colony of portakabins built into an old corrugated iron barn.

My boss, Jon - also the MD's son - was a lovely chap, always a great source of stories about drunken nights out and he generally let me do my thing. He had won the position on merit, having run the operation single handed for a year before I was drafted in to cope with the increased workload as we were taking over the running of a haulage firm comprising some twenty odd trucks with depots in Liverpool and Crewe in addition to our own.

The working week was like this; Monday would be busy with delivery reports, Tuesday checking invoices, Wednesday payroll and invoicing for fuel, Thursday back to invoices and Friday was generally fuck about day when the drivers would come in, shoot the breeze/moan/show us a polaroid of a woman masturbating in her car whilst overtaking etc.

We turned a healthy profit too, had thirteen self employed drivers who's books we did - and who had an exclusive contract to haul for our parent company - who handed in their tachographs for us to read (some fairly amusing blatant pisstakes like the bloke who wrote "Tacho flew out of window" after driving an estimated 12 hour stint) and expenses.

Managing the haulage firm was generally an enjoyable doddle, thanks in no small part to our hilarious team of scouse drivers like "Little Billy" (all six foot seven of him) and "Steady Hand Harry" (caught wanking in his lorry, aged 64) and a number of salt of the earth types we quickly warmed to.

However our Dutch overlords summoned Jon's father to head office and retired him on the spot.

His replacement turned up. An alpha male Dutchman by the name of Georg, who prided himself on being a mountaineer. Yep, he couldn't even appreciate an amusing cliche when it presented itself.

Georg turned up and sneered at the English staff, before saying a cheery "Hello" to the other dutchman, the Swede and the German.

Georg decided that our company had three too many employees. Yep, Jon, myself and the other manager bloke called John (incidentally, guess what my middle name is). Georg was sent over to boost profits and slash costs, his managerial style verged between sneering and outright ranting. Everyone was made to feel guilty for sullying the office carpet in the mornings, except of course the other Dutchman, the Swede and the German.

Georg clearly had no idea of employment tribunals, when our female IT specialist was told that "women aren't to be trusted near computers, too complex for them". A newly married sales manager was told to "forget spending time with your wife, work harder and go to a whore at the weekend". Secretaries were harried and harassed until they resigned before having breakdowns. Georg even managed to convince our traffic planning staff to oblige our drivers to disregard traffic regulations and if the job needed doing, intimidate drivers into running bent, by ensuring the honest blokes got the shit local jobs the whole of the week.

Apparently this management style was called "being flexible", ie you could stuff a fag end into your tachograph and bypass the speed limiter to get the job done. If you got caught by the rozzers then you're bringing the company into disrepute.

Georg wanted trucks running 24 hours a day. We had to hire 2.6 drivers for each of our vehicles and both Jon and John were given stern bollockings when we failed to do this.

Our other dutchman, a tall balding bloke called Twan was first to crack. As a traffic planner, he was obliged to know the law. However, he ensured all his drivers broke it in the name of profit.

The Swede resigned and the German joined the ranks of the pissed of English in a rare moment of camaraderie, often seen goose-stepping behind Georg and making some very dry snide comments out of earshot.

Georg's moment of genius however came during negotiations with a well known motor manufacturer who rhymes with "bored". Georg didn't trust his inferior English staff to negotiate a deal to drive car parts from Dagenham to Purfleet docks. Oh no, he did it all himself.

We won the contract, beating our nearest competitor by a huge margin. Georg had pulled off a masterstroke! Holland would be very pleased with him.

However, upon investigation and the application of a calculator we discovered the flaw in the plan. In order to manage to meet the tight schedule using the vehicles we had and to make the job break even, the vehicles had to average 33mph for the journey from Dagenham to Purfleet. However, the ferries sailed at eight thirty am and six thirty pm... not a hope in hell. The timed average speed at that time of day was 15mph if you were lucky.

So it came to pass that our little outpost was summarily dismantled and we were assimilated into our head office two miles away. The office manager, who'd been given a promotion for no extra pay and ten more hours a week took a dislike to my screensaver. Every time I went to the bathroom, I'd come back and see some corporate bollocks on my screen like "Working for Winners!" (our official logo). All of a sudden, our contented workforce was being deluged with Corporate Megawank. It was all being wheeled out, in a desperate attempt to make us "feel part of a team". This enraged me, so I'd change my old screensaver back in an act of passive, but derisory defiance. The battle of wills continued for months until I had enough and changed it to a password protected "Winning and Wanking!" shortly before quitting.

I am delighted to report that my employment outlasted that of Georg. Thanks to his clumsy bludgeoning at costs with all the surgical skill of a drunken obese ranting Geordie waving a leaden claymore, the carnage of Georg's reign was there for all to see: Eight out of thirteen owner drivers we worked in partnership with went bankrupt, hauliers had to be bribed with higher rates to work for us as our reputation was so bad, good drivers resigned and were replaced with folk willing to break the rules but who ripped us off royally.

Georg was summoned to our Dutch HQ and the following statement was released

"With immediate effect, E**** C**** C*** BV and Georg ***** have reached a compromise whereby Georg ***** will have more time to devote to his leisure activities such as skiing and mountaineering."

Fuck me, let's hope the Matterhorn got him. eh?
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 24 Jan 2008, 23:58, 2 replies)

Office Fuckwit
The chap in question (whom I shall call X) was at first the nicest chap in the office when I started. He always made the effort to speak to the new starters and seemed quite an affable chap.

However, he was completely useless as a programmer. His work was so bad that we would have daily meetings to go over it. We would find 25 faults, he'd make no notes and the next day he would have fixed 2 (kind of) and introduced another 5.

He also had a habbit of coming out with the weirdest of stuff:
"I was dancing with one of my sister's bridesmades at her wedding and it was only afterwards that someone told me she was a lesbian!"
Now, I don't know any lesbians, but I'm guessing that they're neither poisonous, extremely flamable, explosive, neurotoxic or likely to attack without warning. We never did find out why he was so surprised by this.

He also decided to touch up a few rust spots on his car by sanding it down, spraying it by hand and applying laquer. Remember the episode of Father Ted where he tries to tap the dent out of the car and ends up putting dents all over it? This basically happened with his car, the paint was wrecked all over it.
He then announced he was going to spend £500 having his £900 car resprayed professionally. Everyone in the office pointed out how this didn't make an financial sense but he still did it.
And then the engine packed in a couple of months later and the car had to be scrapped.

He was eventually sacked, one of his last acts was allegedly putting the word "bollocks" on a live customer-facing web page, presumably to make sure he was editting the correct page. The company who found it also happened to be the company who owned us and they wasted no time phone our CEO.
(Hagis, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 23:30, 1 reply)

every workplace has one...
... but I can't think of any! Only possible explanation: I'm the Bastard. You'd think they'd have told me... scared? =8-/
( bnt what, me worry?, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 23:27, Reply)

The Internet Saved My Life!
Almost. Summer job from uni, an entertain the tourists while dressed up as Ye Olde Worlde people job.

The bastard was D, who by dint of doing this every summer was regarded as top of the 'dressed up like idiots' heirachy.

D felt that underwear was historically inaccurate, and would often demonstrate this to us and the tourists.

D's bowel movements took priority, even though the single tiny toilet opened on to the cupboard space we had to hide in while waiting for our cues.

But the internet saved me. D thought that because I was female and under 30 I would be good to shock. He started off with vicious sexist jokes, to which I would tell an even nastier sexist joke. After a while he realised that this wasn't working, so he moved on to the magazines. I'd be greeted in the morning with pictures of splayed women and pierced penises. Shocking? Not to someone who has seen Goatse and Tubgirl. After the final picture, of a split penis, to which I replied "Oh, I haven't seen one of those without a barbell in before" he gave up. Thank you internets.
(mw, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 23:05, Reply)

So many choices
The cokehead chef? The sharp-as-a-sack-of-balloons manager who thought the business should double as free child care for his ill-mannered offspring? The underling who, after a year, still didn't know how to work the register and kept calling the place by our main competitor's name?

I think the meth addicted colourist at the salon wins. One step up on the classy scale from Amy Winehouse, what she had in talent she squandered on drugs. Each week was the same -- she'd be fine until Thursday, when she'd blow all her tips on meth, crack and who knows what else.

Friday morning, she was nowhere to be found. Not at her apartment, not answering her phone, nowhere -- every fucking week like clockwork.

Our boss, herself being mental, not only continued to employ this girl but always expressed confusion as to why, each week, the staff at the front desk proved unwilling to drive around town checking ditches and crack houses and morgues in the hope of finding her and bringing her in to work.

Sometimes she'd wander in Friday afternoon, dazed and rambling, but just as often she wouldn't show until Saturday, if then. I always thought her absence was to her clients' benefit.

I never had anything against her until she made her drug problem everyone else's problem as well and then she was fair game. The week after I gave notice, I had no problem at all informing all her (soon to be former) clients exactly why she missed so many appointments and why this Friday would be no different.
(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 23:01, Reply)

I've always worked in the public sector...
Don't shoot me for that. But I've met my fair share of 'managers' who couldn't manage to get cunt-lashed in a brewery. I've also worked alongside some of the most gradist people imaginable - those who think that because they've worked themselves above the postroom that making their own tea is beneath them.

A few years ago now, I had the best job I've ever had. I loved the people I worked with, loved the environment, and loved the job with a passion. Ah, The Countryside Agency. Happiest 4 years of my working life... Anyway, whilst the people and atmosphere were generally fluffy and lovely, there was a fair bit of gradism amongst certain quarters. Not the head honcho - lovely guy, who would be the first to get the teas and coffees in for everyone. But one or two.

Our offices were in the centre of town, in a shared block. We occupied the 3rd and 4th floors. Admin on the third (plus the head honcho) and the technical staff on the 4th. As admin, we had to empty the post trays twice a day for our respective teams. All well and good, part of the job - no problem. Most people, if they were heading out, would bring what they had from their post trays and stick it on their admin bod's desk. However, one of the more grade conscious techies was a bit sniffy about the mundane things - making tea, wiping her own arse... that sort of thing.

One particular day, she left early, but after the final post collection time. On her way out of the building, for which she had to bypass the admin team, she stopped by her designated post monkey and informed her that there was some post in her tray that urgently needed to go that night.

Lazy, stuck up bint.

I've also experienced some incredible lack of tact. Like when I had to go all the way from Newcastle to Cheltenham and back for a job interview. It was a post I was desperate to get, having done it, and my own day to day job at the same time, for the previous 6 months. There was another person in for it - my immediate line manager (who I got on well with, and still have contact with occasionally) and we went down together.

Hours past, we had our interviews, and headed back on the train. As we were rolling out of Cheltenham, her mobile phone rang.

It was the head of department, to inform her that she had got the job, and me that I hadn't.

Longest. fucking. train. journey. ever.

I did complain, not because I hadn't got the job that I'd been doing for the last 6 months (and incidentally hitting all the targets for the first time since the programme had started), but because of the manner in which I had been informed. I did feel for the successful candidate, as she felt very uncomfortable on the way back, but even she backed me up.

Still, two years later, she was made redundant, the programme having ended, and I ended up with a double promotion and 8 grand a year more.

Not a bad result.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 22:58, Reply)

I need some new friends...
Mostly Perverts (not in quite such a bad way)
Stoners
Other various addicts
Alcoholics (obviously)
Me
General bullies
and of course the guy who likes car audio too much and sucks his own cock (probably not literally).

We love each other really, in a strange kind of way
(BrassEye, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 22:48, 1 reply)

I still go to school
An all girls school at that

Bitches, anorexics, fatties, rascists, idiots, smartarses, bullies, nerds, creeps, whores, attention seekers and that one kid who you never know if shes still alive.

We're all bastards pretty much.
(Ellytots Last thought of chocolate on, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 22:26, 5 replies)

A short one
cos if I get it in before deadline there's a huge fat one also...

We were working in a bit of a Public Sector Body that was at the time a little bit underproductive. This was largely because The Team was going to be moved out of London to ...wait for it... Gatwick. Unfortunately, most of the staff oddly enough, lived in London... but I digress...

To work out Why we were so unproductive they brought in a Management Consultant (these guys are Even More Unpopular in the public sector than everywhere else)

In short as promised, as well as being a management consultant (whatever?) he was meant to be an expert in 'Body Language'. He must have had a rare old time as everyone found him so fnckjinh creepy that they tensed up as soon as he appeared...

Having stary blue eyes, a wavy mullet and breathing in dramatically and telling my colleague what perfume she was wearing didn't help him.
(36poison, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 22:00, Reply)

Where do I start???
This is just in one job..

The Heroin Addict:(and thief)

The Terminal Dope Smoker:(no matter what time of the morning you may have to go pick him up 4am 6am 8am etc he will ALWAYS have HALF a joint in his gob when he gets in the car)

The Football Hooligan: (WBA) if you were wondering.

The Other Herion Addict:

The 'Pill Head'

Actually, none of them actually piss me off, well 3 of them have been 'released' from employment.

I will have to think a little harder on this QOTW but to be fair I do do work for CSA and DWP but fortunately the jobs only take a few hours.

I get to see the type of people in there that would really annoy me with all their PC and over the top Health and Safety bollocks and the much quoted 70's backward thinking.

I can also see the looks in some of the co-workers eyes that really envy the fact that I will be gone in a matter of minutes while they have to put up with the Twats for many many years to come.

HHHmmmm

Thank fuck for sub-contracted service industry
(never-right -getting it wrong since '78, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:58, Reply)

Donna the uber-bitch
I'm not going to mention the name of the company I work for, what with the damned confidentiality agreement and all that, however it doesn't mention bitching about dearly departed colleagues. Sorry, did I say dearly departed? I meant "Bloody glad to see the back of them" colleagues.

The one who takes the cake out of the various people I work with is a girl by the name of Donna G. A nasty piece of work if ever there was one. If you happened to have a Y chromosome and fell for her line of bullshit, she'd love you, and have you running round the office after her. If however you saw straight through her, or were worse, female, then your card was marked. She'd send snidey comments through the email, badmouth you to one of her minions, the usual kind of thing people like that do. She'd be very nice to your face though. However, it wasn't enough for our Donna to be just the office bitch. No, our Donna was a wannabe Wag. Apparently her boyfriend was in the Everton football team. I never did find out who he was, mainly because I didn't care. That didn't stop her talking about him all day long though. In fact, in the time I knew Donna there were several corkers I saw, heard about or were privy to.

My personal favourite was finding out that she was suing the Daily Mirror when they had printed something in the gossip pages saying she had slept with Jim Davidson. Naturally, everyone started taking the piss. Now, I wasn't exactly in the loop on this, and one night out she drunkenly stated that Jim Davidson had taught her all of her moves. When I asked her if she had slept with him, for the first time in several months, she blushed, went quiet and said nothing for the rest of the night. I got a few drinks bought for me because of that one.

But, moving onto Donna's demise. One day, I saw a manager I am on friendly terms with looking far more stressed than usual. Asking what was up, I was given the answer that she was dealing with a corporate espionage case. Corporate espionage? What?? I thought the world was going mad. Coincidentally, or so I thought at the time, Donna was out on her ear. Very quickly too. It didn't take too long for the rumours to fly around as to why she'd been fired, and it eventually transpired she'd been bad-mouthing the company to one of our competitors.

Later, we all found out she'd got a job working for an IT helpdesk down in Ipswich. She got fired on her first day when she turned up late, with a hangover. However, there was still more to come. One day, one of the ladies came in with a bloody huge grin on her face, clutching a women's magazine in her hand. On the front cover is our Donna. And what was she doing there? When I got to read the magazine, it turned out our dear old Donna had a rather interesting sideline. She was on the game.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:35, 6 replies)

A classic...
" Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways.

Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.

But this mood was not invariable with me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following little scene ensued:

“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare them with you.”

“I would prefer not to.”"
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:22, 2 replies)

Actually had 3 in the same job
Not so much bastards, but worth a mention.

Working part time at Woolworths between 16 and about 20. There was this one girl, maybe 5 years older than me, who worked Sundays and trained to be a primary school teacher. Trouble is she was a natural born primary school teacher. You might think this would make her nice. Nope. She was alright on the surface, as most people are, but then when something needed doing, she was instantly a teacher. A primary school teacher. A patronising, bossy, lazy woman, who would instantly take charge the minute something needed doing, despite being no higher in the company than the rest of us.

The second was a girl a couple of years older than me that had nothing in common with any of the other part timers, but for some reason could talk for hours on end with all the older staff, and used to bring the assistant manager cakes now and then because she wanted to get into his pants. And she thought "Most Haunted" was the scariest thing ever.

Last, but by no means least, was Brenda. There had to be something wrong with Brenda. I knew her daughter from school, and she was a little messed up. Meeting Brenda explained it all. She would never go on tills because she claimed that she was allergic to the nickel in 5p coins or something. The assistant manager ended up buying her a pair of marigolds to wear on the tills. She was also in charge of kids clothing, and any time she was away and someone else did it, something would always be wrong when she got back. One of the most common problems, and by far the most entertaining, was the shoes. Most people would put them on shelves with the toe facing the front of the shelf, or if they went on hooks, just whichever way they happened to be facing when they were grabbed. This made Brenda incredibly irate! Apparently the shoes all had to face the fromt of the store so that they would "welcome customers walking up the shop"!
( Styxx hates when people talk in the third person, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:22, Reply)

Doug
There was an old workmate called Doug
Who was actually a bit of a thug
He insulted my mum
It made me quite glum
So I wiped my cock round his mug
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:16, Reply)

Ms. I've started so I'll finish
I was unfortunate enough to work in a JobCentre for 2 years. It wasn't the job itself that was horrible, it was just some of the people I had to work with that made me want to smash things.
One lady I worked with, Francesca, must have done a crash course on "How to piss the customer off as quickly as possible".

Firstly she refused to deal with anyone unless they took a seat in front of her.
"Excuse me?"
"Please take a seat"
"I just wanted to ask..."
"TAKE A SEAT!"
If and when they'd eventually take a seat, they'd have to be very very quiet whilst she said :
"Hello, Sir/Madam, Welcome to *insert name of area* JobCentre, my name is Francesca how may I help you?"
If they dared to interupt her, she'd shout at them "Let me finish!" then start all over again. She'd never shorten it, she'd never skip parts. Always the same long winded and pointless greeting to every poor bastard that walked in that place.
She didn't even get the hint when one irate client took the seat, lifted it above the desk and threatened to smash it over her head.

After she was there for a couple of weeks, clients started refusing to see her. Unfortunately I was the only other person manning the front desks, so I'd end up with a queue of people going out the door whilst Francesca had nobody at all in front of her inspite of her desperately screaching "Please! Take a seat!" at random individuals. Occasionally she'd come out with "I am open!" Not entirely sure how she wanted that offer to be taken, but nobody seemed too keen to find out.

Eventually management got fed up with her, and in true civil service style, promoted her to a back office job where she wouldn't have to deal with clients anymore.

Length? Rather similar to this post - Too bloody long
( BUTT FART is currently addicted to Improbable Island, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 21:07, Reply)

nurses
Coming to the end of my mental health nurse training, i have worked with a wide variety of staff, most of whom it can be said are really nice, friendly people.
Not 'X'. When i first arrived at my practical placement, a community mental health team, (assertive outreach if anyone is interested), I was let into the building and shown to the kitchen to make myself a hot drink. Walked into the kitchen - a small group of ladies was gathered around the kettle spraffing on about their diets. cheerily introducing myself as the new student I was met with.....
silence. feeling a bit awkward I made a coffee and went to the office.
Things did not get better. my mentor 'X', a late 20's lady with ample bulges and clothes several sizes too small seemed to take an instant dislike to me from day one, mostly low level ignoring type shit(and yes she had been in the kitchen) but the rest of the team were ok, so I didn't really care. I'm a diligent student and knew I would pass - any real shit off her and I would have called in the union and the university for a complaint el pronto.
She really was a fuckwit though. Her and the admin staff, (the kitchen mafia) were all on 'diets', which seemed to mean scoff all the cakes you can, then not eat (at all) the day of flab fighters,(Thursday) being miserable cunts and generally making the place nice and cheery - not.
I very quickly decided that Thursday was the day i would buy VERY nice cakes and share them around the team, struggling to hide my amusement as I noticed the greedy glint in the eyes of 'X' and her admin buddies, (much like the look in the eye of a sailor on shore leave) as they would refuse the cakes, it being flab fighters day.
Talk about self deluding.
(bollox, not again, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:48, Reply)

Darren.

Real oddball. About 27 but dresses like a 45 year old did in 1950. Never uses one word when he can ramble (although rather eloquently) for twenty minutes. Took his mum to the xmas do. Very serious, tries to be uber-professional.

Caught him today pretending to balance along the join in the carpet with a happy grin on his face when he thought he was on his own.

Suddenly noticed me smiling and went bright red.

I like him.
(inflateable, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:39, 5 replies)

There's one guy who has duplicates at every workplace in the world.
You know who I'm talking about.

He's overweight, has a shaggy beard with hair to match (or sometimes bald), wears glasses when he wants to look intellectual, listens to opera music, and is a fucking god at art.

He'll say, "Here's a sketch I did" and present you with a fully rendered image that would make DaVinci turn green. He also rarely talks unless he has a very high-and-mighty opinion to share.

Click 'I like this' if you know the type.
( Digeridude Lord Wellington's Beef Trapeze, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:36, 2 replies)

Eggy Bob
I've been working for twenty years, so this could well be the first of many....

Eggy Bob was my first boss. We were fresh from school, keen as mustard, and terrified into silence for the first week. Eggy Bob inspired awe in each fresh clutch (for that was how he referred to us) of juniors. We did all the crap jobs, the running around to the shops, the franking of letters in a big scary machine. There were six of us at a time and we stayed juniors until admin jobs opened up. It has to be said, for ninety-odd percent of the time, Eggy Bob was easy meat for a bunch of winsome wee lassies. We wound him round our collective pinky fingers. Those were the days!

So how, then, did he qualify for this QOTW? Eggy Bob was important. He was a SUPERVISOR. It said so on the name thingy on his desk. He had a chair with wheels AND arms. But more, much more than this, he had a telephone. Odd as it seems today, back in the dim mid-eighties not every desk had a phone. Eggy Bob's did. When it rang (maybe twice a week or so) he answered it promptly and barked his surname by way of a greeting. It was invariably his wife, but still, it added to his sense of importance. He had a phone! He was SOMEONE.

Now on a very, very odd occasion, Eggy Bob's phone would ring while he was absent from his desk. Woe betide the junior who answered it if he got back before she'd completed the call and scuttled back to her own desk. Yes, we were exclusively female. For some reason, they never hired boys as juniors.

Eggy Bob's usual placid nature deserted him on these occasions, and he erupted in a manner reminiscent of Krakatoa. He'd hold his hand out for the receiver and bark "My call I believe" in the stern voice of a headmaster. When he'd completed his call, the receiver would be replaced and all hell let loose. The poor girl who'd answered the phone would be reduced to tears in minutes by the bollocking of the century. This had been the pattern for years, and no-one seemed to think anything of it. Twenty minutes after the bollocking, he'd be back to his usual jovial ebullient self. All forgotten.

Until one day, in my last week as a junior, the phone rang on Eggy Bob's desk and he was nowhere to be seen. I jumped up, head turning like a meerkat on sentry duty, praying he'd appear in time to answer it. No such luck. A nearby supervisor yelled at me to "pick up the bloody phone, girl" so I did. Took a brief message from Mrs Eggy Bob and hung up. Turned around and there he was, hand still out for the receiver. Sadly, being born without eyes in the back of my head, I hadn't known he was there. He was offended. He was angry.

The first thing he did was to yell "Why did you answer my phone?", his standard opener. At this point, most of the previous girls would have been ready to cry. Not this one! Made of tougher stuff, I pulled myself up to my full (if diminutive) height and answered "Ronnie told me to."

He was flabbergasted. I was told later that no junior had ever answered this question with the truth. God knows why not. None of them were completely stupid - but maybe terror had frozen their brains. In my case, as the youngest child, I have been accustomed all my life to answering a shouting adult with the phrase "he told me to!" It was a conditioned response, I didn't even think about it. After that day, every new junior was told to wait until another supervisor shouted at them before answering the phone, so they could safely blame someone else. No more bollockings - unless one of the juniors did something really, really stupid. In which case they deserved it!

Oh, and why Eggy Bob? Every day, out of his briefcase, came two egg sandwiches for his lunch. Monday to Friday. Without fail. Followed by two hours of the most noxious farts known to man, something akin to the breath of Satan I should imagine.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:25, 2 replies)

Ned Ludd? Is that you?
I worked for a surveying firm in the early 1990s, just about the time that CAD was starting to really become a practical alternative to manual drafting. And my immediate supervisor refused to hear anything of it.

For those of you who've never tried it: drawing a map the old fashioned way involves using a sheet of matte polyester film- mylar, to be precise- and using rulers and protractors to draw the shape first on a sheet of paper, then tracing it onto the mylar in ink. Any lettering is either done by careful printing by hand or by use of templates. Basically, it's very labor intensive and requires a very specific set of skills, as well as a lot of specialized equipment. And calculations were done with a separate coordinate geometry program with no graphics- just text.

So along comes AutoCAD, which can import info straight from the coordinate geometry package, and can automatically label the lines with bearings and distances in a nice neat font that looks like the templates we use! And if you need to change something, a few clicks will do it- then you just plot it again and you're done! I see a hell of a lot of time savings in this and during my lunch hour generate an entire map in about half the time it takes to do it by hand, and twenty minutes later I have the hard copy in my hand. How cool is that? So I take it to my supervisor.

"Hmmmph. Well, it's all right I guess... but we've been drawing maps for thirty years now by hand, and it works just fine for us."

Yah. That's really fucking sensible of you, Mike. Hey, how about a few suggestions then? You know how we keep having our survey vehicles break down and have to pay lots to get them fixed? Let's do away with them and send our crews out on horseback! And hey, that expensive and fragile EDM we use with the mirrors to measure distance? The one that keeps running out of battery at critical moments? Throw that shit away! We have steel tapes- or even better, get an old Gunter's chain! Hell, they surveyed with those for centuries and it worked just fine, didn't it? If it worked for George Washington, why should we want something different?

This was not well received.

I think they're using AutoCAD now, finally. I wonder if Mike is still bitching about it.

Fuckwit.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 20:16, 3 replies)

Bad breath and whistling
Had plenty of bad colleageus in the past, but a current colleague is near the top of the Bastard list. He whistles tunelessly and constantly, despite being told how tuneless it is, and even tried to whistle the Transformers "transform" sound effect. He is lazy, a liar, butts in to everyones conversations, and worst of all his breath smells like catpoo. Which is made worse by his annoying habit of exhaling forcefully and loudly, as if he is the most put upon person in the world at least 5 times a day, which spreads the catpoo stink.


unlurk, pop, length and all that.

EDIT - he has grown a beard which he doesnt trim properly, and won't shave off cos "it looks like Santa."
(hutchers, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:47, Reply)

when i worked as a pie man at Blackburn Rovers
we had hot water machines which dispensed a certain amount of boiling water into a cup per press of a button,
so some clever bastard decides to turn the amount up on the base unit, follow a scaulding and the fastest flying coffee you've ever seen

all good fun though :)
just not when it happens to you
( m-a-t-t -- formerly mini hasn't been on here for EVER!, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:45, Reply)

Also
A few years ago I worked at a telephone market research company whilst at uni. There was one particularly strange chap who looked like one of the mad scientists in Young Einstein: messy, curled hair, a stressed look as if recovering from a nervous breakdown. Despite most of the employees being students and dressing so, this guy - in his 40s - wore a suit, had a briefcase (we daren't guess what was in it), and spoke in a ridiculously posh voice on the phone. He spoke to no one. I always imagined he'd perhaps lost some executive management job a few years previous and to this day had kept it a secret from his wife, leaving the house in a suit and briefcase to work in a dingy North London market research call centre. A girl caught him having a wank in the girls toilets once. Maybe that was why he got the sack.
(BeardyMat, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:42, Reply)

Chef
When I was 14 I got my first job. I got hired as a kitchen help, so my work consisted of doing the dishes while the restaurant was serving and scrubbing the floors and cleaning the fridge when the kitchen was closed.

At the age of 14 I was still a relatively innocent boy. Suffice it to say little Askew hadn't enjoyed the company of anybody aside from yours truly's right hand. I had also been raised by my mum alone, so I was pretty respectful of women and girls in general.

I showed up for work the first day and was shown to the kitchen, where I met my boss. A man I would only come to know as 'Chef'. 'Chef' was the sort that seemed to prey on corrupting the minds of the young kitchen helps he employed. And he took a particular shine to me., with my innocent blue eyes and hair of blonde.

Anyway, he soon realised that my experience with the fairer sex was non-existent. So the first question upon entering the kitchen would always be: "Did you have a fucking shag yet, or what?" The mood would be set for the rest of the night.

'Chef' delighted in regailing his stories about his wholly inadequate wife. As a woman, she was a complete and utter failure. She couldn't cook. She couldn't clean. She couldn't do anything basically. He was staying with her because apparently, she "can suck a watermelon through a garden hose"

I should include at this point, that if I didn't laugh at his mysogynist and sexist jokes, he would look at me and threaten to make me stay and scrub the floor until he could see his face in it. Knowing that he wasn't fucking kidding, I squeezed out a smile everytime.

I could go into more detail about how he made my working life there miserable, but I think I painted a good picture of what this guy was like by now.

Length? He wouldn't stop talking about it.
(Askew, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:29, Reply)

Mr Majika!
I'd completely forgotten about those books! I miss being a child. (sorry for the off-topicness)
( greedyostrich Cheese is evil! Cheddar is VOODOO!, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:10, Reply)

I work on my own.
But I think I'm a right cunt, so that can get ugly sometimes.
( sir_spicious2000 Crap I've watched: www.filmplop.blogspot.com/, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:04, Reply)

Instiutional Eating Disorder
Being a poor wee student, I take on holiday work at the local supermarket to fund the term-time shenanigans. I work in a team of ladies, all some years older than me, part of the yummy mummy set and constantly competitive dieting. Come break time, after six hours at the grindstone, the hunger pangs are well and truly kicked in. As I tuck into my tasty canteen sandwich, they start.

"Ooh, someone's hungry!"
"Save some for the rest of us"
"You won't be able to pack it away like that when you've had kids"
or the most offensive:
"You'll get fat"

Well, if they are happy to survive all day on an apple and three raisins, good luck to them, but I'll be sticking to the bacon and eggs diet plan.

All size 8 of me.
(Puddle of Sugar was still wallpapering on, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 19:03, 4 replies)

When I worked as a bike monkey in a cartain orange and black high street bike shop
I had a manager whom we shall call H. He was the laziest cnut known to man. He took so many fag and coffee breaks that he stunk of both perminantly. He never put in any effort. Once he asken me to help him carry a trailer out of the back to a customer's car, and even though he made some pretence at helping, I was the one doing all the lifting any of the weight.

His interpersonal relations were even worse. When dealing with customers he was always rude. So many people complained about him and knew of his general cnutishness that the first think my ex's neighbour said when he found out where I worked was "that manager of yours is a right cnut".

H could never leave anything- he always had to have the last word, no matter what the subject. Even if he knew nothing about it. He went on a huge ramble about how bad modern music is all because I said that I couldn't do a shift because it clashed with my popular music in context lecture. And he wouldn't listen when I said that there are many good modern groups, as there is more music than just the charts.

Finally, he was a perve. Any woman he talked to, he'd be talking to her breasts. He was also caught watching one female employee on the CCTV. And after he got moved to another store, he was fired for sexual harrasment of female employees.

His temporary replacement can't read, write or spell and is increadibly sort sighted and slightly deaf in one ear, and was still a better manager. Although that says something about the quality control in manager selection than anything else.

Length? 2 years at our store before we complained enough to get him moved.
(Mr._Pickles, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 18:57, Reply)

Just a quick one
about today in the afterschools club I work in. I've been trying to hand in my notice since new year but because we've been short staffed I keep working a week for someone here and there.

Last week I forgot that I was working on a certain day and got bitched out to my face and bitched about behind my back to no end for it, especially by the guy. I was called everything from "unprofessional" to "total cunt". Thing was, I forgot because I was in hospital with my father, who is dying of liver disease. Anyway...

Today we were shortstaffed because one of the girls grandmothers died last night. The only other available member of staff, the guy, was called but refused to come in because he "was really looking forward to (his) day off. But call (him) if you really need (him)". Right. We can just about manage, I suppose. Me and the pregnant diabetic girl.

Can you fill in the blanks yourself or shall I do it for you? Just imagine a hall full of shrieking, traumatised 5 year olds, spewed tea and sugar water, an ambulance car and an ambulance just as the school lets out and muggins here trying to keep control while several other school staff members gawp and berate me for leaving the kids alone when I couldn't bring her round and ran for help.

Yes, I left 12 5 year olds alone (alone meaning several adult onlookers, but only me qualified and paid to be there) while I ran into the room next door to call an ambulance when she went into a coma. Silly me. I should have just rolled her into a corner and chucked a blanket over her, I suppose.

No less than three people tried to make her drink Diet Coke. DIET coke. While she was fitting, no less.

When the other colleague was called again "Get in here NOW, I am alone with 16 kids now, I can't do it, we're breaking several laws and health and safety regs". Cue lots of hrms and errs and then "well, I'd have to walk all the way up... can't you cope? It's my day off. I'm watching TV here..."

Utter, utter bastard.

Sorry for the lack of funny but I'm just home from all that shite and now have a wake to attend.
(posthumous mince is tiptoeing through the tulips, Thu 24 Jan 2008, 18:56, 2 replies)

Shut Up, Little Man!
I have worked with a wide variety of bastards. One, however, stands out. For the sake of this story I'll only give his name as Tim.

You know the sort of short guy who compensates for his lack of stature by becoming arrogant, obnoxious, loud and generally irritating as fuck? They'll sometimes also get into bodybuilding or something else like that to emphasize their masculinity, doing their best to become an alpha male. And all the while, if you're more than an inch taller than they are, they'll automatically hate you.

Yup, that's Tim. A human version of a Chihuahua. He was a maintenance tech in the semiconductor plant I worked in, so I had to deal with this yapping little wart on a daily basis. Every time I did so I thought of him as being a snarling little dog, the sort where you want to either step on it like a bug or piss on its head, just to see what it will do.

He has an attitude about engineers. A really bad attitude. Tim didn't go to college, he learned what he knows on the job, so if you went to college you're especially beneath contempt. Particularly if you're tall.

The little fucker even went as far as to sabotage an experiment I was running for one of the engineers. I had it fully documented- what the experiment called for him to do, what it called for me to do, what order it was to be done in, and how he had done it instead. So when the other engineer and I raised hell about it, he got even more pissy. He also once shut down a polisher in mid-cycle because he knew that it would cause me troubles- but again, I had documentation so he had to get the shit for destroying two wafers.

At the time I had to carry a radio with me, tuned to the frequency for our department, so I had to listen to the Maintenance clowns blathering back and forth over it. They were especially fond of broadcasting the Burger King Christmas Carol over it repeatedly through the shift, or something else even more obnoxious. A little bit of that goes a long way, ya know?

I found the perfect reply.

members.aol.com/leesausage/shut_up.html

I found the recordings online and cut out the relevant clips. I then took them into work with a set of headphones. And if I heard Tim blathering on needlessly, the radios all rang with the voice of Peter Haskett.

He could never prove it was me, of course. But he knew.

Heh.

(Length? I'm pretty sure he was doing steroids, so I would bet that it had shriveled away by the time I encountered him.)
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 24 Jan 2008, 18:56, 3 replies)