State-sanctioned skiving with the Mad
Years ago working in psychiatric hospitals was great for skiving, as it was actually 'work' (this was in the days when there were still such hospitals instead of 'care in the community', and the hospitals had money to make the nutter's lives relatively pleasant)

My first job was with mad old ladies. It was considered perfectly acceptable to disappear with a brace of them to the on site 'social club'. It was considered good form to be able to escort 3 patients- one in a wheelchair and one on each arm. There, we could while away large parts of the day chatting to your mates (and the odd patient), drinking all the tea you could drink, smoking fags and taking advantage of the free pool table. I used to spend entire days there, just taking them back for meals. Superb.

The same thing could be done on evening shifts when the club was closed, but there were 'disco's' in the hall. Exactly the same set up but in the dark and with music.

On Sundays, we could take them to the on-site chapel of a morning, where one of my favourite enterainments was hearing the patients screech away to some hymn or other while the stony faced chaplain looked on.

The best thing was that everyone was genuinely happy- the wards had less people in them, the patients loved it and we got to drink, smoke and chat all day long with them (always a riot)and each other.

To top it all off, as the working day was 12 hours long, we only worked 3 1/2 days a week!

Cleaning up the odd bit of shit or piss, breaking up the odd fight, and monitoring for the odd bit of sexually inappropriate behaviour seemed a fair price to pay for such halcyon days.
(clapper, Thu 28 Apr 2005, 13:27, Reply)