This town, is coming like a golf town, too many golfers on the bar floor.
The long hot summer after I left Uni was spent working in a pub near a golf course.

Golfers paid us at the bar to use the course, £8 for 18 holes, for which we gave them a blue luggage tag type thing with a handwritten number on it from a stack behind the bar. I watched as the manager sold 4 tickets, numbers 40-43, and gave them out, then took two blank tags and wrote '42' and '43' on them and put them back on top of the pile, putting half the money in the till and the other half in his pocket. Well, that looks simple, I thought. And next time it was my turn to serve people wanting to play golf I did similar, sold two tickets, pocketed all the money and wrote two new ticket for the pile. This went on for weeks, a sunny Saturday could easily earm me an extra £50 on top of my pay and I hated the place and the people enough to not even feel the slightest bit of guilt. And I never got caught. Nor did the other barman who I realised was doing the same. Nor did the manager. but we did come to an unspoken agreement that it was time to knock it on the head when at about 3pm one Saturday there were 16 people dotted around the bar in twos and threes talking about how they'd played that day and over the course of my glasses collecting rounds I found 6 different tickets numbered '78'.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 12:04, Reply)

Edenmonster reminded me of a pearost
I worked as a medic at some of the more "interesting" clubs in the Vauxhall area. One of these (not being named) was a hotbed of GHB (and GBL) use.

Now GHB is a nasty little motherfucker. Anything that is generally used as an anaesthetic agent and an ingredient in industrial cleaner falls under the category of "a bad thing" to me. Combine that with the fact that the promoter (an American cunt) would never let me call an ambulance due to the fact that it was bad publicity, left me in what can only be called "a slight predicament" on a number of occasions.

The medic room was a curtained of area of the main dancefloor. Noisy as sin, and hotter than Satan's banjo string. This is where the bouncers (good chaps, if not a little too keen on Bolivian marching powder and Special K) would drag their twitching victims.

One particular evening, somebody must have been selling some bloody potent GHB because I had 3 patients lying on the floor of my medic room all completely fucked off their nipples. 2 were completely unconscious, and 1 was twiching every now and then and vomiting.

The problem with GHB is that when mixed with alcohol, it can put you on the floor quicker than Josef Fritzl when the bailiffs come to visit. It also has a nasty habit of knocking off your respirations, especially when combined with diazepam.

Another chap was brought to me by security. This one was conscious, but had pupils like Sophie Ellis-Bextor's face and looked seriously under the influence of Teh Fear (TM).

When he was bundled into my first aid room, he looked around, shouted "lemons and cardboard" and collapsed in respiratory arrest.

One of the problems with this club was the lack of mobile reception. So any ambulance request had to go through the promotor (did I mention he was an American Cunt?) As always, he refused "oh don't worry. They aint that bad."

"No, I need an ambulance." This bloke might die."

"Leave it 10 minutes and see how he's doing."

American Cunt then wanders off to hoover up another party bag of ketamine.

I exchange a look with the security guard. One that plainly says "FUCKCUNTCOCKWANK" We need this bloke out of here. Pronto.

So we grab his arms and legs, and drag him across the dancefloor to the fire exit, where we call an ambulance to the back alley.

Of course, we tell the ambulance crew that he was "just found collapsed here. Honest." He gets rapidly removed to Tommy's, and I go back in to zombie-sit the rest of my little clan.

The end of the night comes and I go home. Just before I leave, the head of security comes over.

"Carrot, word to the wise, don't leave any personal stuff around tonight."

Err...OK, I think. I toddle off with all my stuff under my arms.

The next morning, an "anonymous" tip-off to the police leads to a raid, finding the promoter in his office with (and I quote) "a bag of crack the size of a grapefruit."

He now no longer promotes music.
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Wed 13 Jul 2011, 11:19, 8 replies)

Another insurance one I'm afraid...

About 20 yrs ago I used to work for a small high street bank that typically dealt with the type of customer that couldn't get loans anywhere else. Most of the customers we saw would sign anything if they thought they had a chance of getting the loan approved.

Once we had taken down the customer's details we would sit down at the back of the branch and 'adjust' the application to try and make sure the loan was approved.

The conversation with the customer would then go something along the lines of, "Well Mr Delinquent, I'm pleased to say that your loan for £500 for home improvements (Cheltenham races) has been approved. However before we give you the cash, yes you can have CASH Mr Delinquent, we have spotted that you are significantly underinsured as far as life / critical illness is concerned".

We would then proceed to sell (dump) a very expensive, and probably worthless, insurance policy onto the unsuspecting, salivating blob of workshy shite sat in front of us. The real killer was that we actually lent them the money to pay for the insurance up front. So Mr Delinquent walked out with his £500 cash, yes CASH, but his loan was actually for lots, lots more.

I remember one instance where the customer wanted £1000, but was 'sold' an insurance policy for £3750. He had been 'approved' for a loan of £4500, so we had to explain to him that the maximum cash, yes CASH, we could give him was £750.

It pains me to say it, but at the time I actually believed that what we were doing was of benefit to the customer.

Nasty, dirty, scummy bastards. My employers weren't much better.
( insignificantsnivellinglittleturd I Like Peas, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 10:43, 1 reply)

McDonalds
I once when i was a student and needed any sort of job, took the late shift in a Mcdonalds in the centre of town. Now i did a shift from 7pm to 3am. This involved serving chavs/neds/townies/scum for the first 2 hours, then we got all the private school kids who got knocked back from the clubs for not being 18. Finally to top the night off several hours of unbearable drunks.

Now what people do not realise is a McDonalds takes its deliverys in the mornings, and boy do neds and drunks love their burgers, thus usually by about 1am we are out of burgers and can only offer chicken meals. Yet every time you will be shouted at as it is somehow our fault that the general public that use McDonalds are greedy bastards.

Anyway the story, one time guy came it at 2am ordered a big mac meal, i told him sorry we are out of burgers. He then asks "well can you no just make it with chicken fillets?" I did not see why not so said yeah but it will cost you a tenner. Man happily obliges, it takes me 5 mins to put together, in the mean time he had promptly fucked off. That tenner came straight out of the til and into my pocket, no record of the transaction to catch me.
(elrojas69, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 10:28, 8 replies)

I employed by the McDonalds
One time, we spit in the cheeseburger. Ha ha. Oh no!
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 9:32, Reply)

I have been chronically guilty of dodgy work ethics
Except for the past two weeks.
I hope Thursday will allow me a return to my old habits!
( kila is reading clocks upside-down as usual, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 9:25, 1 reply)

The Pleasure Chest.
In sunny 1995 I worked in a place called The Pleasure Chest in Kings Cross, Sydney. It was billed as an adult entertainment centre, and consisted of a sex shop, porn cinema- that was a gay cruising area, complete with glory holes-, booths that you could put a dollar into to be shown five minutes of porn, other booths that had a small bed with a plastic mattress where you could watch an entire film chosen from the shop for ten dollars and some rooms upstairs that you could rent for thirty minutes for five dollars. These rooms were meant to be for the girls on the street to take their tricks to, but were also the local shooting gallery.

My job consisted of going out for the coffees and beers, delivering boxes of poppers, porn and dildos to other outlets in the city, mopping up the odd bit of piss and knocking on the doors of the rooms upstairs when the half hour was up, then going in with a pair of barbecue tongs to dump the needles and condoms in the bin and occasionally change the sheets.

It was a strange unbelievably seedy place, and a real eye opener for a nineteen year old green behind the ears boy from the west country.

Anyway, on to the story. I was sitting upstairs one day enjoying a sneaky bifter when a girl came out of one of the rooms and asked for an ambulance. I followed her into the room, and saw a bloke laying on the bed, he was white as sheet with blue lips, taking fast short shallow breaths. I ran downstairs and told my boss to call an ambulance as there's a bloke upstairs ODing badly. My reply, 'We don't want the hassle, drag him down the back stairs and dump him in the street.' So, I of course went outside and called an ambulance. As I was walking back to the shop I saw two policemen stood nearby so I also told them what was going on, and suggested they might want to make sure the ambulance could pull up on the busy street. They instead asked me to take them to the sick bloke. I obliged; took them upstairs showed them the bloke, and got the fuck out of dodge never to return.

Quite why my boss thought I would drag near dead men downstairs to dump them in a back alley for six dollars an hour cash in hand I will never know.

To the weirdos and freaks of Kings Cross, I salute you. You live in a world of scum and villainy I find difficult to understand.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 4:53, 4 replies)

Store-brand sherbet
I used to work at an astoundingly cheap restaurant... but the cheap was all in the owners. The place was decorated in TJ Maxx finery... customers were made to sit in the coatroom when it got busy... The most egregious, I think, was the dessert. For $4.50 one could purchase a serving of "Lemon Sorbet." It was store brand lemon sherbet.$1.99 a half gallon. Embarrassing. Oh yeah... I also had to pay out the kitchen hombres at the end of the week. All cash, all illegal.
( salamander, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 2:52, 3 replies)

I have never worked a day in my life
.
(IdlePeAcEsign if trouble were my mistress, i'd send her to them, Wed 13 Jul 2011, 0:33, 3 replies)

My boss used to work for a chemical company that was more than a little tight-fisted when it came to its employees' welfare.
To get chemicals for the lab you had to sample them from 500 lb drums in the warehouse, which were often stacked two layers high. If you wanted something on top layer, you had to clamber onto the bottom layer and manipulate the desired drum while standing on top of another drum. This was because the management didn't think the fairly small price for a much safer set of movable steps was a worthwhile expense.

One day, her boss was doing these dangerous acrobatics and a deceptively sturdy-looking drum gave way beneath him, dousing everything up to his elbows in concentrated sulphuric acid before he even had time to react. As a result, he was hospitalised with severe burns and had to spend nearly a year off work recovering.

Now this was in the days before health and safety legislation, so not only was there no legal obligation for the company to have a system of accountability and responsibility that might have helped prevent future accidents, the management's response was basically "make sure drums are safe before you climb on them" and this was legally OK. And even after this incident, movable steps were still considered to be a waste of money.

The worst thing happened a few years later when the company started making redundancies, and in that department her boss was first in line for the door and got kicked out almost straight away. The reason? He'd taken nearly a year off sick.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 23:32, 7 replies)

Insurance.....again
There have been a few stories about insurers which reminded me of this one.

My dad earned bucketloads when I was growing up so there was always the drive to become a big earner. I used to work for a Multi National insurance company specialising in corporate Ex Pat health insurance. I was fresh out of uni and was ready to climb the corporate ladder and earn the big bucks.

As a fresh young "insurance executive" they put me through some training then sent me off with another fresh face to their offices in Redhill, Surrey.

I got picked up by limo (classy long wheel base Merc, not the tacky black Lincoln efforts you see full of screaming hen and stag parties) and taken to the airport.

I was ushered to the first class lounge where my colleague and I enjoyed a complimentary breakfast and drinks and was eventually seated in a comfy first class seat.

Got to Stanstead and was picked up by an identical Merc and taken to head office. I was surrounded by the richest and friendliest people I had ever mingled with. They were all tanned, happy, friendly and drove porsches with the odd Jag thrown in for variety. Wrists were adorned with Rolex, Cartier, IWC. Suits were sharp, chit chat covered holidays which would cost the national average wage.

This was all just a couple of years over the horizon for me.

A few presentations and some meet and greets and it was time to check in at the hotel and freshen up for dinner. My boss picked us up in her 7 series BMW and we raced away to a disgustingly expensive restaurant. I was fucking loving this shit. I got my usual wage plus a hefty per diem (not that I had to put my hand in my pocket once. Whenever a bill arrived there was a flurry of company credit cards to take care of it.) This went on for 3 days. I lapped it up. I had already chosen the colour of my BMW 3 Series coupe.

Some time was spent talking about the odd tough decision that needs to be taken regarding the funding of a clients health care. I figured that most clients were huge organisations and those covered by the policies were usually company big wigs who, if push came to shove, could probably afford to pay for their own health care if we pulled the rug out from under them. It left me feeling slightly uneasy but hey, that's they capitalist way. No?

Anyhoo, on the final day the boss, Therasa, gave us a lift to the airport. On the way she was talking about how, in the wake (pun not intended) of the 2004 boxing day tsunami the company had set up a special hotline for policy holders affected by said event.

Then she told us how they had only received three calls, all of them trivial.

Instantly I replied "Yeah but it was a fantastic PR move".

That was when it happened. I had related to my boss how an event which snuffed out the lives of quarter of a million people had allowed them a minor Public Relations triumph.

I knew it was all sorts of wrong before I had even finished saying it. My boss and colleague couldn't agree enough. Big fucking grins on their faces. I just felt increasingly uncomfortable. That moment in he summer of 2005 will stay with me forever.

I left a week later.

I am a special needs teacher now.

I dont own a BMW 3 series coupe, my watch is an entry level Seiko and my last holiday was a week long trip to Berwick where I stayed in a wee cottage. I am really happy and I dont have to sell my soul to the devil.

In retrospect they were probably in debt up to their expensive haircuts.

Arseholes.
(OTT, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 23:00, 12 replies)

More an employees dodgy work ethic...
A bloke I worked with a few years ago used to have a job delivering sun beds. Usually these were for young ladies so he'd happily give them some chat, set the sun beds up, check they worked and be on his way...for about about as long as he reckoned it'd take them to get their kit off and then he'd be back knocking on the door because he'd 'forgotten' to leave the goggles. Worked quite well apparently.

Maybe I should have put this in the Top Tips section
(RTFM May your god go with you, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 22:31, 1 reply)

Salesmen
We wrote a utility for use by the salesmen of a stonking big transport refrigeration corporation that works out what type of fridge is the most efficient that will meet their customers needs. It has horrendously complicated algorithms in it and the customer enters what his trailers are made from, how thick their walls are, even what colour they are and so on, then it plugs dozens of these variables into a fiendishly complex set of fluid dynamic equations, and works out how many BTUs are needed to keep your strawberries fresh or your pies toasty or whatever. We spent weeks getting the equations right.

Unfortunately it turns out very cheap fridges are perfectly adequate for most customers needs, and that wont do at all. So at the end of the horribly complex equations that work out what fridge is best, we were told to instead spit out an answer that is basically three or four fridges larger in size in their range of fridges so they can make a few quid more. We immediately said "meh" and did it.

The same crowd fairly recently brought out a new fridge that they had been working on for years, and it's great. Works like a charm. Except the trouble is, that it works like a charm. Their dealers hate it as it never breaks down and they dont get to sell any spare parts. So they immediately stopped making it and brought out a new improved version that is fucking shit and breaks all the time, and everyones happy now.

Capitalism eh.
(mousehats, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 20:21, Reply)

One from my mum
About thirty years ago (after the health and safety act was passed, but before it was really widespread) when she was still working as a biochemist, her boss decided to get rid of some seven old drums of chemicals that had been lying around for ages - so long, in fact, their labels had fallen off. Without knowing what was in them, he rang an agency specialising in disposal of waste industrial chemicals. As the agency guy was loading them onto his truck one exploded, shortly followed by the rest. They contained white phosphorus.

The agency guy survived despite being blown a considerable distance by the blast and the boss was demoted eight grades, effectively to company tea boy.

The moral is: always know what you have lying around...
( MatJ LOOK, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 18:09, 3 replies)

I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier
I have worked in insurance for almost three years. Started part time to pay my way through my degree and went full time to save for my Masters, and a couple of weeks ago walked out on the job.

The company I worked for is one of the biggest insurers in the UK. As far as call centre work it's one of the better ones but the phrase 'Call centres are where the soul goes to die' still applies.

Now the company I worked for decided it wanted lots more car insurance customers so put out a huge marketing campaign with big discounts. Previously our clients had mainly been middle-aged, full no claims careful sorts. Now we had masses of freshly passed teenagers and serial car crashers.
'Oh Noes!' The big wigs go. Everyone is claiming on their cheap policies and we are losing money. Their solution? Something called a 'targeted renewal'. It basically means that the IT team go into certain policies and change the discount code. This four digit number changes the rating on the policy and dials it way up so as soon as the renewal gets generated the price is massive. Customer says 'Eff off I'm not paying that.' and the company gets rid of a customer it doesn't want.

This I hated with a passion because whenever you make a change on a policy it generates the standard 'Thank you for your recent request to change your policy...' letter. The IT team inevitably forgot to stop all the letters so I would have lovely people calling up asking why their policy has changed when they hadn't done anything. A very difficult thing to explain when you refuse to lie.

Another side effect was if you change a policy very close to the end of the year it stops the automatic renewal. So say you have 4 policies with us. They all renew automatically and have done for the ten or so years you have been with us. You are happy with this arrangement and the service you receive. We'll call this person Mr A who I had the pleasure of speaking to. One of his cars had the dreaded 'targeted renewal'. He was lucky in that it only went up to £400 (and I have seen much higher). His automatic renewal gets stopped and a letter is sent saying he must contact us. His problem? He is in India for 3 months while this is happening. Mr A returns from India to find his car insurance has lapsed. It's too long to accept the £400 quote so new quote it is. I feel for the guy and hunt for every discount I can give him. The price the computer gives me? Over £2000 now (once again, not that unusual).
Have you ever tried to argue with someone when you completely agree with them? It's not easy. I went to every manager I could and called anyone I could think of to try get this £400 price. Got told no as he had fair warning with the letter (which he had no chance of receiving in time). My argument of 'He's auto renewed for years and it's our fault it didn't go through.' was largely ignored.

I just wanted to scream at the guy to take his cars and leave this company. I have seen the opposite of this where people blatantly ignore their renewals or forget to tell us about their 3 speeding tickets. I have no problems being firm with someone when they are in the wrong. I struggle when an innocent person gets taken advantage of over a bullshit system error which is the companies fault.

I'm not cut out for insurance but trust me when I say there are call centre workers who are desperate to help you. I used to be one of them but am thankful every day I made it out of there, finished my degree and am now starting my Masters.

/rant
(Gherkinlasagna is probably doing something stupid on, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 18:09, 8 replies)

...and another...
When I was at school I had a weekend job working for Compass, serving fast food in the food hall of the Glades shopping centre. We were told to "sell up" obviously. However we were also told that when anyone ordered a coffee we were to ask "Would you like that in a cup or a mug?"

Some customers wouldn't realise they would be charged more for a mug of coffee as opposed to a cup. But even the customers who did notice thought they were paying more for more coffee. But they both held the same amount of coffee.

I said it once to an old lady, felt bad about it immediately and never did it again. Except to twats of course.
(CheeseyPeas, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 17:19, 14 replies)

Accidental Credit Card Theft
During my one year working holiday in Australia I had many odd jobs. This particular one came over the tannoy of the hostel I was staying at:
20 people needed for data entry. 12 hr shifts, $12 p/hr.

So about six of us arrived at 10pm in some office space hired in a shopping centre. We were told that there had been a computer error for a major credit card company and, for some convoluted reason that made sense at the time, a "test" charge of $299.99 needed to be taken from each account enabling the credit card company to identify which accounts had been affected.

The guy sat us all down in front of our own credit terminals and hundreds of credit card details and showed us the "test" procedure. After an hour he fucked off and left us there. We worked diligently all through the night and were pleased when he returned at 9am and said that we could leave early as we had worked so hard and to be back for the same time in the evening.
It was only when we got a phone call from some of our friends, who were due to start at 10am for the day shift, asking why they had been told not to come in that we became suspicious.
A couple of friends went back to the offices(less than hour after we had left) and found no trace of the guy or the equipment. They reported it and were later informed that the guy was suspected of being in hiding in South Africa, with MILLIONS of $$! that we had conscientiously and under no supervision stolen for him.
(CheeseyPeas, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 17:05, 2 replies)

I can't eat Terry's Chocolate Oranges either
That's cos I worked at Terry's of York for a couple of months about a decade ago...when there was still a Terry's factory in York.

Worst job I ever had, even given the huge amount of chocolate we were able to stuff down our clothes and smuggle out each morning as the night shift ended.

I never saw anyone washing their hands after going to the toilet, but I used to wash mine BEFORE I went for a piss, to get the gunky, shitty, chocolate residue off my hands.

We had people walk off the line every night it was so relentless, one bloke broke a finger stacking full boxes onto a pallet the pace was so fast.

The smell inside was rank.

Wish I'd got a got at Rountrees instead - or Nestles - could have been packing Polos and KitKats...
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 15:54, 4 replies)

As a member of a martial arts club
I share the upkeep of our gym with another bloke since we both live nearby, and the club is a bit light in the pocket. After a Christmas party some of the guys got into the club with the other bloke's keys and started pissing around - quite sloshed you see.

They thought it would be a great idea to see how many people could hang off one of our punchbags at once, and funnily enough it was about half a dozen before the fucking things got ripped off the ceiling.

I had to repair this due to a H&S check the next week, but because of our lack of cash I had to improvise. Basically, I found a few planks next in a nearby fly-tipping spot, tied the punchbag's rope around them and had them rest on the beams in the ceiling. I then covered the hole with some newspaper and slapped some light blue paint on, and that was my dojo worker fix.
( clockworkrat has nice pants, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 15:52, 2 replies)

Well,
I work for an insurance company.
















Nothing more to say really.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 15:40, 6 replies)

I'm the boss, so I suppose this is a confession:
I'm a 36 year old guy, about 6' tall, and 11 stone.

A quick way I've found of making money is by physically threatening old ladies until they give me their pension.

Some might say it's a little bit unethical, but I'm sorry - it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, the strong survive and the weak die, and that's just how it is - I've nothing to be ashamed of.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 15:20, 8 replies)

My dad
He used to work as a quality manager in a high tech glass components factory (making bits for fancy radar and the like) I worked a summer there as a sort of work experience type deal (i.e do the grunt work and get paid buttons)

One of the foibles of making stuff with glass is the hilarious heat treatment process it all goes through after machining - basically whack it all in a big oven preheated to gas mark something or other and leave for a few days.

One day there was a power cut which led to the big ovens shutting down (ruining all the nearly completed stuff) - quick thinking dad had us chuck all of the reject components in there along with the good stuff before submitting the insurance claim.

Dodgy as hell, it worked though.
(Parsnip No, I'm Spartacus, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 14:16, 8 replies)

Cat Murder
My first proper job was working as a labourer for my uncle, who is a builder. A few months after I’d started, he went off on holiday for two weeks but he found me some work with one of his mates, Spud. Working with Spud was interesting to say the least, with our working day interspersed with about 8 tea-breaks (whereas with my uncle we’d have one at 10am and then a break for lunch), new methods of doing things (instead of using a chainsaw to fell a small tree, he asked me to climb it and repeatedly jump on one side of it until it bent over enough for him to hand saw through the trunk), and all in all a much more laid back working environment. A little spot of rain? That meant it was time to retreat to the van for a tea-break, regardless of whether or not work was actually being affected. Run out of sand or cement? It didn’t matter, we’d drive for more supplies, but go to a builders merchants 10 miles away rather than the one down the road. It surprised me at how much work Spud actually managed to get, but he blagged it somehow, and if I’m honest I did actually like working for him.

He asked me to do all manner of things during the two weeks (and subsequent times) I worked for him, including driving a JCB and a dump truck even though I had no previous experience of doing so, he allowed me to lay the inner block course of a porch with no level, insisting that ‘the plasterers would level it up’ and of course constantly asking me to go and check out the home owners top drawer. The one time that really sticks in my mind though is when he asked me to cover up the murder of a cat. We were working on an extension on a house, and the owners had two cats on which they doted. We were under strict instructions to not let the cats out of the kitchen at any time, which was a bit of a pain in the arse as they would make a break for freedom as soon as I opened the patio doors which separated the kitchen from the extension we were working on. They escaped 2 or 3 times, but they would come casually strolling back a while later, and thankfully when the owners were still at work. One time however, I noticed that one of the cats was missing.

Spud and I were putting new flooring down , running from the kitchen through to the extension, and of course we had to have the doors open so it ran all the way through. The cats were wandering to and from the garden and not really going off too far, so we thought it safe to carry on as we were. In the afternoon, after our 6th tea-break of the day, we came back from the van to continue work. The first thing Spud had to do was nail down a few floorboards which he’d lifted so that he could get to some radiator pipes. Once done, we carried on laying the flooring. It wasn’t until an hour or so later that I saw one of the cats, come in from the garden, and I remarked that I hadn’t seen the other cat for a long while. Spud went quite pale. I heard him whisper ‘fuck fuck fuck' to himself, and then, still knelt on the floor, he turned his face to look at me.

“You know yesterday when I was emptying the bags of rubbish into the skip? Well when I tipped one of them out, one of the cats fell out. The little bugger had been snooping inside it. I didn’t even realise it was in there.”

“But I’ve seen both the cats today, Spud”, said I, starting to panic just because of the look on Spud’s face.

“Yes, but I emptied a few more earlier, and one definitely felt heavier than the others. Fuck!”

It was at this point I remembered that the skip had been collected during our tea-break. Shit!

“Right, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to rip up the flooring we’ve done so far, and we’ll shut the doors again and work in the new extension. We’ll say we haven’t been inside the kitchen at all today. Can you do that for me?”.

Before I had time to respond, Spud was already busy with a jemmy, lifting up a good few hours of work. He was actually asking me to cover up the disappearance of the cat, and I knew the owners would find it hard to believe that we hadn’t been in the kitchen at all.

“Oh, FUCK”, I heard Spud shout again. This time he was looking at the radiator which he’d disconnected earlier. “FUUCCCK!”

We sat there wondering what to do. I suggested coming clean but Spud was adamant we couldn’t and told me under no circumstance should I say what had happened. We had about an hour to decide what to do. We downed tools and sat racking our brains, the other cat seemed to be mocking us; rubbing it’s face against my knee as I sat in silence on the floor, thinking about what the owners would say when they got back from work to find their ‘baby’ missing. Spud meanwhile, was visibly sweating. Ten minutes passed and still we couldn’t come to an agreement on what to say. The cat that was mocking us did a feint ‘meow’, and then another. Only it wasn’t coming from his mouth.

“Spud, listen!” I shouted. We both waited again, and there it was, another feint meow.

“It’s a cat ghost!”, Spud exclaimed, now perking up. “Where is the little fucker?”.

It took us about 15 minutes of listening intently to work out where the noise was coming from. Spud grabbed the jemmy and lifted the floorboards under the radiator which he'd disconnected earlier that day. To our enormous relief, the most dusty looking cat I’d ever seen jumped out, looking like a massive mothball. Spud called it a furry twat, and then proceeded to lay flooring like a man possessed. It had been a lucky escape.


Despite this potential dishonesty, I did witness one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen when working with Spud. We were working on a loft conversion and Spud and I went into the loft to feed down a cable that Gary (a young electrician) had installed.
We couldn't find the hole that Gary had made in the ceiling so Spud asked him to stick his finger up through it so we could find it easier. Spud shouted, "hold on Gary, we still can't see it"
Then he asked Gary to put his finger back up through the hole. Gary did, and then recoiled slightly because he didn't like the feel of what was on the other side. That's because Spud had dropped his trousers and pants and had squatted over the hole, with his sphincter hovering ever so close to it. Gary touched his ring that day. It's the hardest I've ever had to try to stop myself howling with laughter, so that Gary never found out.
(Monkey the Chicken Twitter: death_stairs, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 14:15, 1 reply)

More funny than naughty or depressing as most of these have been.
But hey, accidental innuendo is always fun, yes?

I currently work at an internet clothing sales company. We buy customer returns and post them on our website and ebay, deeply discounted from retail.

We do, occasionally, get brand new items from the manufacturer. These may be discontinued, or poor sellers, or out of season. One time, we received a huge skid of spanking new panties. Bossman tells me he wants me to split these into lots of 6, 12 and 18, and get them posted online. No problem, says I. Our warehouse guy, who we all call Roy, cause that's what's printed on his ID, shows me where the skid is, and I get to work sorting by size and style.

The next day my daughter is sick, so I miss work. The day after I miss work again because my daughter passed her plague on to me. So I return to work after missing two days.

I get settled at my desk and head out to the warehouse to continue my panty sorting. But. My skid is missing. I look around nearby. Plenty of skids, but my skid full of panties is nowhere to be found. Now, this is a pretty big warehouse, so it's usually more expedient to yell for someone rather than hunting them down. So I yell, clearly, in a huge warehouse with about 30 people around, "ROY! WHERE THE HELL ARE MY PANTIES?"
(ladydyani, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 14:04, 6 replies)

One of my first jobs after leaving college was for a 'doorstep' credit company...
working in their office. I quickly realised that the people I worked for were one step up from your average loan sharks.

They would target council estates during the day, because their ideal customers were women who were either housewives, or single mums on benefit.

Many files that had 'do not call when husband home, wife doesn't want them to know they've had credit' written on them, and occasionally they would have things like 'husband violent, do not call after 5pm' noted on the collection file.

We charged a ridiculous amount of interest, and if even one payment were missed we would threaten the client with a 'bailiffs' who would call round when the husband was at home. We knew that this would result in a payment, usually because the client was ashamed or scared of their husband (usually both). It made me feel sick to the stomach and I think I lasted three weeks in the job before I was fired because I was too soft with people.

I feel dirty just writing about it :(

They are bastards, all of them to a man.
( Wicca'd Witch needs ideas for a new sig on..., Tue 12 Jul 2011, 12:48, 4 replies)

My mate's mum
Used to work as a tea-lady at a public school for boys. As she went around each dorm, there would at any one time be at least 40% of the boys having a crafty tug. She was told that she should stop them. After all, if they have time to wank, they have time to study - studying leads to better grades making the school look good. She soom realised it wasn't right to stop them, because everybody knows that masturbating is one of the best things about being 15.
So, in a display of true altruism, she used to finish them off before leaving them their cup of tea and an extra biscuit providing they didn't leave any evidence.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 11:35, 17 replies)

I worked a small web design company
With a total of just 8 employees. It was a shambles really. After I was given the boot, I was tempted to report them because they used software from the Microsoft Partner licence thing, where the software is only allowed to be used for testing and internal training purposes and not for commercial use. And everything else they used was hooky, kept in a folder on one of the servers complete with cracks, serials and keygens. Photoshop, Dreamweaver and a load of other odds and ends.

However, if I did report them, the business would've gone under and they would have all lost their jobs. If it was a much larger corporation then I might have done.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 11:23, 4 replies)

I worked for a company that used
bank credit lines to fund its business.

At any time we might have had up to about £100 million of goods financed. The banks would require the original negotiable documents for the goods to be sent to them, to facilitate payments to suppliers.

My boss, when things were tight, used to ask me to produce fake documents to send to the bank, to get them to pay for goods that we had already been paid for.

I used to tell him to piss off, pointing out it was fraud. He'd get someone else to do it. I used to consistently get little or no bonus, when my more compliant collegues were showered with riches.

If I were a less magnanimous person, I'd be dreaming of the day they all got 5 years in Wormwood scrubs . . . but I guess that's a nasty idea.
(username failed moderation, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 11:10, 6 replies)

I worked at McDonald's
For about 2 weeks of my gap year between 6th Form and going to Uni. The boss asked me to wank into the shakes to make them 'thick-shakes', so I put my headphones on and set about myself, and then when I opened my eyes I found out that my Mum had walked in and left a big mac on the side.
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Tue 12 Jul 2011, 10:46, 1 reply)