Barry the miserable bastard
Many years ago, when I worked in London, I worked in a sales office selling spares for air conditioning and general building services equipment – stuff like bearings, electric motors, air filters, small pumps, etc. We dealt with all the major maintenance companies around London and our equipment was used in pretty much all of the big buildings in and around the city.

One thing we didn’t do though was plumbing spares – none of us had the knowledge, and there was a small plumbers outlet round the corner from us where we used to send people.

Being an amiable sort, I used to get on pretty well with most of the customers. There was one guy though, Barry his name was, who used to really piss me off. He was just a miserable git, and rude with it.

One day he phoned up and asked if we had a threaded pipe connector. Explaining that we didn’t do plumbing, I mentioned the shop round the corner and he said he’d tried them already and they didn’t have one. Miserable fucker though he was, he was still a good customer and spent quite a bit of money; he was desperate for this to finish a job, so I said I’d go and have a look to see if we had any lying around and that if we did he could have one.

I called him back a few minutes later and told him that I’d found one – he was dead chuffed and said he’d be there in a few minutes. When he arrived I presented him with the connector.

He took it in his hand and exclaimed “This is a straight one! I need a right-angle elbow!”

My protestations of “You didn’t tell me that” were met with “This is no fucking good, it won’t fit!”, getting angrier and angrier – I pointed out that I was actually doing him a favour and supplying him with something we don’t actually sell, plus I was letting him have it free, at which point he slammed it back down on the counter and walked out.


Length? A couple of inches, but apparently it wouldn’t fit unless it was bent in the middle…
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Tue 9 Sep 2008, 22:53, Reply)