pub work
Brings risks.

The three major ones being alcohol, fruit machine and pool addiction.

One and three are easily resolved by access to a) the cellar and b) the keys to the pool table.

Many a happy hour was spent drinking ‘free’ bottles of Holstein Pils while playing pool with the regulars for nothing (carefully avoiding having to use the cue that the fat lady stuffed up her chuff as per a previous QOTW answer) and, in the process, saving enough Holstein Bottle Tops to send off for two free Zippos lighters.

But the fruit machine was to be my undoing.

Now, I’m an old git, so some of you young ‘uns may not remember the days when if a Fruit Machine paid out over a certain amount (I think it may have been as low as three quid) it paid you in useless tokens. Some pubs would swap these for cash at the bar. Some wouldn’t.

I’d figured that if I refused, they would eventually all go back into the machine. So I turned into a cunt. I wouldn’t change them, I wouldn’t let people buy beer with them, I’d just watch as they eventually turned back and ploughed them unhappily back into Cops & Robbers. I’m not even sure if what I was doing was legal, but I guess it was individual pubs choice as to how they handled the tokens.
And when they’d done, I’d get a pound or so worth of tokens from the glass on the till and go and win them all back, then change them for cash for myself.

I did it for weeks, playing every hour or so and topping up my wages by anything up to sixty odd quid a shift.

It pissed off some punters, understandably, but what did I care, I wasn’t going to be working there forever. I was pretty much biding my time until I was sacked to put a fire under my arse to go get a proper job.

Trouble is, I wasn’t sacked.

Oh no.

Instead I was beaten up and mugged after closing time one night by a particularly irate customer.

I never went back.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 11 May 2009, 13:57, 3 replies)

Hmmm
Good story, bad ethics. Guess you deserved that thumping really.
(McChinaman banned, Mon 11 May 2009, 15:13, closed)

This ^

( Major Turd for tonight only, Tue 12 May 2009, 12:07, closed)

Certainly
I did.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 12 May 2009, 12:08, closed)