Oh...
...and I don't do length gags any more.


Although it is pretty girthy...

And runs faster.
(downhill without brakes . It was the worst day of my life, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 22:00, Reply)

Deglazing the pan is one thing
The shit that KFC used is another.

Whatever supplier you KFC used may be better, but we used to see crest coming through with heinous growths regulary.
( Monty Propps, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:58, Reply)

I'm an electrician...
So I've actually witnessed plumbers searching through your knicker drawers whilst you are out.

Ever notice your vibrator running faster after an electricain's been left alone in your house, though...??
(downhill without brakes . It was the worst day of my life, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:56, Reply)

re: KFC
I can't believe I'm defending KFC, but your *mum* makes gravy with the burnt bits after a roast too. Chicken fryers (high pressure, deep oil) drop and strain their oil every three fries. At least if you're a diligent cook.

And I never cooked a tumour, not in three years, sonnyjim.

I did hear about a guy who filled one of the fryers with water (to clean it), heated it (fine) and then put the lid on (getting bad) before trying to wrench the pressure-locked handle open (pretty bad). Was blown 25 feet across the room.
(broin, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:56, Reply)

I don't bother listening to travel bulletins anymore...
...because I used to read them.

it's pretty busy on shift, there's not always time to check with all the police HQs and traffic cams... and unless there's a big accident, the traffic's completely bloody predictable.

...so you develop a routine that goes something like this: (say it's 5pm)


*presenter cuts to you suddenly: spit out your mouthful of crisps into your hand*

"Good afternoon! Well, it's pretty solid through [mention lots of towns here, everyone likes hearing their town mentioned], in the usual hot-spots.

Motorways pretty busy too, especially [name motorway junction that's always busy, it'll be busy now, it's 5pm FFS].

*flick the Vs at arsehole co-worker, who's mooning against your studio window*

And those roadworks on the [insert A road number, known to approx 2% of your listeners] are still causing a few delays.

And something to watch out for tonight... "
[for 50 bonus points, invent problem on fictional B road.]

*suddenly remember that for 100 bonus points, you could try and fit in the word "buttplug" like your colleague has dared you to do*

..."If you're stuck in a jam, don't suffer in silence! Phone our Jamline on [whatever the number is], but plug in your handsfree kit first!"
*100 points! result!*

*Repeat until your shift ends. Or you lose the will to live.*

*Drive home from shift through all the troublespots you mentioned, knowing that NONE OF THEM ARE REAL*
( biscuitbiscuit is in ur garden, watering ur plantz, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:56, Reply)

Never trust someone in a white coat
Many many moons ago I worked in a few analytical chemistry labs doing everything from microbiology to toxic metal analysis. You'd think this would all be exact and such.... wrong!
I had a manager who, when presented with results for food safety exams he didn't like, would declare, "That must be wrong" and made them up. Another who's idea of testing bread (this is comersial bread for food safety and such) used to certify it as micobiologically clean by.... squeezing it. But my favorite was the lab which did a series of tests and got the samples mixed up. Result? A certain junior minister declaring all eggs have salmonella.
Not so much wrong as... well... wrong.
(DustyD, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:54, Reply)

KFC thicken the chicken gravy with
The dirtiest, filthiest crap cleaned out of the fryers at the end of the night.

This was true in 1997, at least.

Plus, if you visit KFC at least semi-regulary, you've eaten more than your fair share of chicken tumours.

Some were green.
( Monty Propps, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:52, Reply)

I worked for a popular Scottish "indie" coffeehouse. You might call it a veritable scene of beans
Despite my best efforts to improve the standards in there, those who know me can testify I'm a fucking freak when it comes to cleanliness, nothing ever improved. Understandably then, my services were no longer required once I became audibly disgusted with everything about the place.

Anyway, some of the ways our organisation made your dining experience more enjoyable:

Provided no training whatsoever in any form of drink or food preparation to new staff, you're expected to just dive in and intrinsically know how everything is done. This leads to undercooked, or just plain wrong orders being made all he time.

Toilets routinely backed up of which there was only one on a weekly basis. Solution? Febreeze and hope the problem goes away. Piss would often enter into the kitchen in such a manner that you wouldn't see it until it was way too late, hiding behind the stacked juice cartons and coke cans, which weren't thrown away because they were predominantly wrapped in plastic.

One other shop in the same area had to close because they found an entire colony of rats underneath. We only had an electric sex party of flies in the kitchen.

If pastries and what not landed on the kitchen floor, just dust 'em off and stick them back in the cabinet. Same goes for cheese, but not meat for some reason because that would be gross.

The place was so understaffed that if someone got sick, you usually still had to come in. It wasn't uncommon to see someone wiping their flooding nose with their hand before immediately going back to fixing up that day's batch of tuna melts. I had a really bad stomach flu last Christmas to the point where even turning over in bed would make me throw up (which I blame on them), this didn't go down well with my employers but they eventually conceded I might be genuinely sick so they let me stay off.

Two of the gay guys used to shag all the time in the kid's play area when they would close up together. I got in trouble for kissing my girlfriend in the shop by the more senior of those two. He was a total dick... I could probably write a few thousand words on just how fucking retarded he was.

We had to pimp downloadable music to EVERYONE who came in, regardless of the age of the customer or how busy we were. I used to feel like total shit when I was being watched to make sure I had to grill some 80 year old gran who just wanted a black coffee and scone about why she wasn't interested in downloading the music she heard in store to her ipod.

All the furniture was on sale. And not in the sense that you can buy couches LIKE the ones in the shop, no, you could buy the shit, semen and coffee stained worn out leather crap 700 people parked their arses on every day.


There's probably more, but I think you get the picture.



My cock's fucking huge.
(the_fracturedpope, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:39, Reply)

pint of drip trays
i used to work for a particularly pikey chain of pubs. well, to be fair, maybe it was just the landlord who was pikey. anyone who's ever been to stockport (i'm looking at you, ihaverunoutofcoke) will know the elizabethan...

if we poured the wrong pint, we had to decant it subtly into three new glasses. the next three unfortunates to order that beer got 1/3 manky flat shit that had been sitting under the counter for an hour or more.

i once tried to pour it into the slop bucket, but got caught and torn a second and then a third arsehole. so i gave up trying to dispense justice and just contented myself eating all the flakes for the posh coffees instead.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:32, Reply)

Turnabout...
When I was in high school, I worked at a bakery in a large, upmarket supermarket. I used to get asked questions all the time about freshness, i.e. was this made today, do you get this in every day (some items were made by large commercial bakeries and shipped in), etc. People were always incredibly suspicious about it, and wouldn't believe me (or anyone) if they were told the products were fresh.

But the thing is, they always were. We had very strict policies about disposing of baked goods, and anything made the previous day and left unsold was given to the food bank.

Shocking, I know. The food was actually not misrepresented, spat in, wanked in, or too old. But just try and tell the customers that.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:31, Reply)

Writers
I'm a freelance writer.
I make it all up.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:30, Reply)

CWB Certified? Pah!
I'm a welder, and I used to work for a company that did heavy structural welding. I'm not going to go into much detail, but we definitely made things that could fall on people and turn them into red stains on the concrete very, very easily. Everyone was supposed to be CWB (Canadian Welding Bureau)Certified. Was I? Was I fuck! Did they know that when they hired me? Absolutely. When the inspector came around, my boss told me I should try and "look like a general labourer". I no longer work there, unsurprisingly.

On the plus side, nothing I've made has ever actually crushed anyone to death (crosses fingers). And frankly, I've run across some really shit welders who are CWB certified: it's no guarantee of anything, frankly.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:06, Reply)

Pubs n Bandits
I used to work at my local, like many locals we served booze and pound coins to the bandit sex fiends who just had to put "the last one" into the slot.

So if Mr Joe Bloggs or Mrs Joe Bloggs asked for a tenner change in pound coins so they could go about giving it to the poor old (I'll never payout in a gazillion years) bandit then I would duly help them out with the transaction.

To the point, after changing two lots of 10 squid then my plan would swing into action, on the third transaction of coinage I would hold a pound back in my hand and give the said victims only 9 quid, they would always lamp the money into the bandit none the wise and come back for change 1 quid sooner than they should have.

Never got caught once and the money I made meant I could drink for free on days off.

Length, well twelve months, busted wrist couldn't pull any longer.

Oooh first post..........me scared, meh
(anal returd tickled ladies bits on, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 21:05, Reply)

Databases
I worked in a video shop for 10 years and we had handy little notes on all the customers' accounts.

Helpful things like

"never rewinds"

"will try it on"

"likes a bit of porn"

"fucking deviant"

"you know you would if she offered"

"stop looking at his ears"

"she gives me wood"

"lying bastard"

"i know she's 14, but I really would"

We had to wipe them all off when a lad with autism did work experience there because he kept reading them out loud.
(smorgasbord, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:54, Reply)

More IT Support stuff + electronics stuff
1) Quite often, I'll put people on hold whilst "checking the server out". In reality, I'm just chatting to a mate or watching a youtube video that's been IM'd to me by a colleague.

2) Do not talk down to us or generally be rude - remember you're only calling us because *you* need *our* help. I have a list of wankers on my desk and if one calls me up I'll hit random characters when I'm remote controlling their PC and they're entering in their password, and laugh as they get more frustrated wondering why they can't type it right - "I'm sure that's what I set it to". Don't worry, you *are* typing it right, but because you're a cunt, I'm adding a few keystrokes in every time for good measure.

3) No, your boss is not "too busy" to call us with his problem - like us, he's fucking around all day - and no, "his computer has an error" is not an adaquate description of the problem.

4) In previous IT support jobs I've happily disabled someone's account for being rude.

5) Yes, we can read your email. And we do - especially stuff that the content filter has picked up.

6) The more you insist your call is urgent, especially if it's clearly not, the lower the priority it'll actually get assigned is.


I also worked at a major Electronics re... fuck it, it was Maplin Electronics. Here's a few joys from when I worked there.

1) We all knew the "hidden" option in the till system to show the buy price of an item - i.e. how much Maplin paid for it. £24.99 gold-plated SCART leads cost them £1.24. £15.99 gold-plated IXOS 9-pin serial cables cost 36 pence. Profit margins like this exist throughout the catalogue. Still, if you're stupid enough to pay for a gold-plated serial cable (given their max data rate) you deserve to be ripped off.

2) Official staff policy was that you only ever need one person that knows the slightest bit about electronics working in the store. I believe PC World use this recruitment strategy too. The idea they employ "technical" staff is an utter fallacy - they come from the same recruitment pool as Tesco. And since it's highly likely that Tesco pay more, Maplin probably employ Tesco's rejects.

3) My first wage in 1996 was £2.25 an hour. To stand behind a counter in a hot shop all day, serving capacitors and LEDs to utter retards.
(d371ght back again since, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:45, Reply)

what i have learned in cronological order
1. industrial shrink wrapping machines will emit enough plastic fumes to send you to another dimension

2. never, ever, even if you are dying of starvation eat at supermarket cafe

3.the people on supermarket fish/meat/baker counters aren't on drugs, they are just retarded

4.the official line in shops for getting rid of forged/ foreign money is to "give it to someone who looks like they wont complain"

5.top tip: anyone who calls you up asking you to do a survey wont go away unless you tell them it is a business number

6.painter decorators dont give a shit.

7.the people who work on your local tip only do so in order to steal the thousands of pounds worth of copper piping that gets dumped. the rest of the time they sit around drinking tea and smoking, do they care whether or not you recycle? do they bollocks.

8.No legitimate tradespersons will EVER ask for cash up front. those people who go on watchdog are cretins eg:"i thought it was standard practice to only use cash and have a mobile number for a office"

9.the only difference between crime and legitimate business practice is whether or not you get caught.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:29, Reply)

Mwah ha ha ha
I work in pharmaceuticals. If I got caught giving out secrets I'd probably be sacked, so none from me. However, Clockworkkillbot will be pleased to know I get my own labcoat with my name on it!
( El Lazarus is calm now, Ish,, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:19, Reply)

Another
Anybody here with a gas supply? Everyone has a different provider for it, be it Powergen, Grittish Bas etc. But, as a housebuilder-in training, I know that (as someone mentioned before about OpenReach) there's only one company that can connect your gas up for you. Not naming names (begins with F, physics term for a pivot point) but they are the laziest bunch of arses there has ever been. They take 6 weeks to write up a plan for you (even though you have to tell them what to do and submit drawings) then request advance payment of a huge amount, then take another six weeks to come and do something about it.

We know the engineer who will come out, he tells us it's a days work at the most, but can't come until he gets the go ahead.

Bear in mind nationally there's about 160,000 houses built a year, and F is a giant company. What the hell do they do with the time?!
( mr_wicksy is.... old., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:13, Reply)

ugly kid battleships
im a teacher and until recently part of my job involved invigilating exams. deathly dull work until we brightened it up with ugly kid battle ships. each seat had a reference number, and myself and the two or three other staff would stroll around writing down the numbers of where we thought the 8 ugliest kids sat. we would then meet and try to guess each others numbers. Endless variations - smelly kid, geeky kid etc. We also played slow pacman, one would be pacman and the others were ghosts and we had to chase around the exam hall at slow envigilator speed, if the ghosts got to a corner spot the tide was turned for 5 mins.
There was also a chap who brought a game with him from another school but i could never play it, it was just too cruel. Idea was that you sent ugliest/smelliest/stupidist/geekiest kid from your class to another teacher with any random piece of work, and that teacher would say ..ooh tell him thats a 7 out of 10 and send them back, not realising that they had infact just been graded on the pre-agreed category. That teacher would then send their best challenger to you with another bit of random work so that you could grade them.in theory you could carry on all day. never had the heart for that one though
(bambambambambam, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 20:08, Reply)

Fecking accounts
The cheque is never in the post - and if it is - it will undoubtedly bounce.

Fuck I hate this job - anyone fancy burning down my office?
(fuzzibear, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:54, Reply)

look out of your window
good. do you see that man driving the big lawnmower/wildly swinging around that strimmer, near those kids?


he is stoned off his fucking tree.


and earning £9 per hour
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:47, Reply)

I used to work in a bar...
...in which we served a wide range of quality lagers:

Fosters (£2.70)

Fosters through a Kronenbourg tap (£2.90)

Fosters through a San Miguel tap (£3.10)

Nobody ever noticed. Not once. One guy did witness me accidentally pouring his beer out of the wrong tap, but the 6'2" dreadlocked manager menaced him into editing his memory, or at least shutting up. Washing-up consisted of me rinsing the glasses under a cold tap and the "kitchen" was, in reality, a deep-fat fryer in a dusty basement.

Every last patron of that establishment was a raging fucktard though, so I felt like I was dispensing karma rather than simply ripping people off.
(Vorlon, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:37, Reply)

Flying
I'm seeing an air hostess (I'm impressed I managed to leave it this long before bragging about that one) so I hear about a number of things that they do.

No, I won't post it here as I'm not actually supposed to know. Sufficed to say that Fire engines chasing the aircraft down the runway is NEVER a drill and it's usually quite funny. Until you realise that actually, it was rather worrying and could have been really serious....
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:34, Reply)

By Popular Demand, Funeral Directors Stories - Part 2.
During my tenure at the funeral directors I was also privvy to the following terrible and shameful events.

1) The funeral of a local civic dignitary where the bereaved relatives had requested that 'Jerusalem' sung by Kings College Choir be played during the commital to the flames.
The task of sourcing the music was given to the rookie, who - unable to find a copy of Jerusalem, had decided to substitute a 'similar song'.
It was for this reason that the dearly departed's coffin sailed through the curtain to the sound of "Achy, Breaky Heart" by Billy-Ray Cyrus, the deceased having died from a coronary

2) There was an occasion when the driver of the hearse containing the coffin saw his car driven by a car thief go through the lights ahead of him. Cue a wild 'Starsky and Hutch' style chase through the streets with a 1989 Vauxhall Cavalier being chased by a coffin-bearing 1998 Ford Scorpio Hearse.
As he rounded a particularly tight bend, tooting his horn for all he was worth, the coffin slid back, hit the boot door, opening it and shot out of the back like a cork from a champagne bottle, straight through the window of a branch of Phones4U, much to the chagrin of its staff.

3) During one funeral at the local crematorium, the head funeral director slipped behind the main curtain (which opens for the coffin to slide through at the comittal to the flames) and disappeared.
Imagine the horror of the collected mourners when the curtains opened to reveal him being expertly fellated by one of the crematorium staff! By the look on his face he was within a hair's breadth of the vinegar strokes, his face contorted into a mix of ecstacy and anguish which changed to horror when he noticed his newly acquired audience.
Of course he was too far gone to stop now, and in full view of the crowd uttered a groan of pleasure of which Peter North would've been proud.
(Vic Flange, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:31, Reply)

Hmm
**flexes fingers**

I've got a few stories that relate here...

I'm in IT and, frankly, I'm damned good at what I do - always have been*

I used to do desktop support - you know, you call, bloke comes to your desk to fix your PC - A La "Moss" of the IT crowd. With less hair.

If we come to your PC and with a flourish of keys and blurred action and leave inside of 30 seconds, we knew what the problem was and fixed it and we've left all smug in the knowledge that, yes, "I am that good".

When we say things like "Ah, I've seen this before", we're lying. Big time. What it means is that we think we know, but we're going to click at stuff randomly and we might fix it. If we do, we'll say "Ah, I thought as much" and wander off looking pleased with ourselves, but in reality thinking "Arse, I hope I pulled that one off".

So when you're local IT guy comes and makes out he knows what he's doing, get him to explain it to you. In detail.

Watch him squirm.

Unless he's like me when he'll tell you any old crap to make you stop asking questions - I refer you to my earlier point of "we're lying". We do that. Lots.

* Well, apart from being "released from my probationary period" recently but that was because the company I worked for were hopeless and unsupportive and the guy I worked with was, frankly, a pompous ass. If you ask me, I'll tell you his name, the company's name and even give you his email address to spam him. Maybe.

(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:27, Reply)

Thanks For The Memory
Over ten years ago now my brother had a job at a large high street electronics shop that rhymed with....... oh fuck it, it was Dixons. Anyway, this was before the whole hilarious sexist bollocks of 'The Tech Guys' but they did have technical people on hand who would do repairs and upgrades to your computer for a small fee. Or that's what they told people anyway. What they actually had was whichever salesboy happnened to be passing at the time attempting to force your brand new graphics card into the computer through the floppy drive and wondering why it wasn't working. This was proved when my then 17 year old brother came home one day and said he'd installed some extra RAM in someone's computer.

"What???" I spat, knowing that on a good day this boy could honestly struggle to work a mouse.

"Yeah. It took me a while though, I don't think they gave me the right tools."

"TOOLS???" I gaped. "What the fuck did you use?"

"A hammer."
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:21, Reply)

10 x faster internet service providings...
Before I start, let me say this: Don't call 0845, 0844, 0870 or 0871 numbers...

0845, 0844, 0870 or 0871

These types of number are exactly the same as 0800 numbers, which are normally used to sell you something so of course they don't mind paying for the call. (ocean finance, claims direct, sheilas cunting wheels, admiral et al).

There is one difference: Instead of the advertiser paying (think Sky TV, all of the loan and insurance companies, banks and "free" information lines like National Rail Enquiries, Transport for London etc...) paying for the cost of you calling them, once you are a "customer" they switch you to a special "Customer Services Number" for which YOU PAY A PREMIUM TO CALL THEM AS FOLLOWS:

0845: Local Rate Call: 4ppm
0844: Local Rate Call: 6ppm
0870: National Rate Call: 7.5ppm
0871: National Rate Call: 10ppm

THIS IS PURE PROFIT YOU ARE GIVING THEM THROUGH YOUR PHONE COMPANY - CHECK YOUR PHONE BILL FOR PROOF!

Put simply; YOU pay an extra 4-10ppm to call YOUR bank/Sky/TFL/tour operator etc. THEY use this "inbound revenue" to pay the cost of and diverting your call to call centres in India and other countries (or they keep you on hold for ages and just collect the revenue as profit).

Also rather more interestingly; The company I used to work for operated sex "chat" lines over 0906 and 0909 numbers. This works in the same way but by connecting the caller of an 090 number to an available housewife/horny teen/broke ho/dominatrix/mistress etc normal home landline number... Armed with a list of the wank-chat lady's home phone numbers we were able to call them directly and tug one off for the price of a normal landline call while the dirty sex-chat ho talked utter filth thinking that they were going to get paid the normal rate when in fact I was getting cheap thrills for free!

Great days...

(PS. Length jokes are shit... especially if you only write one line)
(aroe_m0rre, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:19, Reply)

Don't eat the houmous...
Ok, about 7 months back, I worked in a factory which supplied dips to the major supermarkets. (e.g M004150n5, 45D4 e.t.c e.t.c). These dips were the sort of dips the posh people buy to impress at their fancy do's. Things like Houmous, salsa and the like.

Anyway, it was my job to work the blast chillers (These big fuck off freezers which chilled everything down when it came off the line)

Basically it was an unwritten rule that when everything came off the line it was shoved onto a cage and straight into the blast chillers by these half-wit polish guys. The product was supposed to chill below 5 degrees to prevent food poisoning, especially on Houmous as that is the most volatile product (Check the pack...it says store below 5 degrees)

But the product used to come off the line a lot faster than it chilled down, which would mean that you would eventually run out of cages, which would result in the line manager screaming their lungs, stomach and intestines out at you for being too slow.

This along with people from the dispatch side of the factory screaming at you for the product so they could build the orders and fuck off home ended up with myself bringing the product out WAY too hot. And it wasn't just me...when I wasn't scheduled to work the chiller part there was a Polish guy on there (I actually do like the Polish but this factory was full of idiots!!!) who wouldnt even test the stuff. He would just rip it straight out as soon as it went in.

In the end I admittedly got fired for it but I was a gnat's pubic hair from quitting anyway.

So basically if you buy houmous from the major supermarkets, you have about a 75% chance of contracting food poisoning as this was basically common practice for anyone working the chiller part. At times it would come out at roughly 19 degrees, which is what it comes off the line at (Polish idiot. Not me!!! :) )

I now work in a fast food restaurant...but that's for a different QOTW.
( sausagesucker just paid £5.00 for a cup of Tea!, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:18, Reply)

What can I say that you don't already know about lettings
If you're a tenant:

If money is being deducted from your deposit, the landlord generally stuck an extra £100 on top. Not so much of a worry now with law changes, but make sure you get evidence your deposit is being held by deposit protection scheme, its illegal not to.. but not unusual for it not to be.

If you have a repair needed doing, the only things that matter are: a) can we get into trouble by not doing it, or b) will it make it hard to relet if we don't do it. Anything not in these catagories will get ignored or delayed as long as possible.

Don't renew a tenancy agreement, we will charge you a chunk of cash for doing nothing more than a couple of clicks and an envelope, demand a periodic month by month agreement as you can't be charged for that as it you get that anyway unless notice has been given, and its very rare that a landlord would rather serve notice than evict you.

We are not your friends, and generally we despise you if you even attempt to make our life even slightly difficult.

Only the surface of it thou..
(NoMoreFaith can believe its not bloody butter, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 19:16, Reply)