I heard someone at a previous (one of 10) workplace say to a manager
'Oh a FIRE. I wondered what they meant by "it suffered an uncontrolled thermal event"'

shhhhh PD secrets.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 25 Aug 2011, 20:02, 1 reply)

Not so much overheard as sung out in a stream of consciousness as the fellow left the smoke shop
"Mo, mo, mo, mo, I'm gonna smoke some crack!"
(Perv With A Dog had his eyes pecked out by scrub jays on, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 19:57, Reply)

tough choice
several years ago, an old friend of mine got engaged. i hadn't seen her since school, so didn't know she'd changed from a nice girl into a complete slut. she was heavily pregnant at the time, which is why her timid boyfriend had agreed to marry her.
during the party, i went outside for a smoke. as i leaned against the wall, i heard my mate's voice coming from around the corner. she was on the phone to someone who, judging by the conversation, was clearly the baby's real father. she was telling him that there was no need to worry, of course she'd still shag him when she was married.
i was disgusted, but didn't know what to do. should i confront her? should i tell her fella? i just didn't know. eventually, i decided to confront her and give her the chance to tell him herself. if she didn't, then i would. i know this comes across as a bit holier-than-thou, but could you really stand aside and watch someone's life be ruined* because of lies? well, i couldn't. i decided to wait until after the party, so that their families and friends could avoid hearing about it.
fortunately, the decision was taken out of my hands. towards the end of the night, my mate got very pissed(despite being pregnant) and started a fight with her fella, during which she loudly told the entire club that he wasn't the real father and dumped him.
we're not friends any more.

*trust me, his life would have been ruined, she treated him like shit.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 18:33, 19 replies)

Brian from Big Brother
I was walking down Oxford Street when I heard an annoying voice talking on his mobile phone, he announced "Oh just hit her with a belt that's what I would do to the little brat"

So my overheard secret is that Brian from Big Brother advocates the use of belts to discipline young girls.
( Peej, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 18:21, 1 reply)

I work for a very large, international organization.
Most of my working life involves overseeing an organization dedicated to easing the flow of money.
A lot of the time this is a dull rubber-stamping routine which drives me up the wall.
Recently, however, I discovered a big secret about one of our members -- for years they've been claiming they have assets which do not exist and covering it up by threatening death to anyone wishing to audit them.
I lost no time in informing a close friend of this, then heading home to present the evidence.
Unfortunately, the country deceiving the rest of the world had persuaded the maid from my hotel to make a complaint about me, so I have now been forced to step down.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 18:20, Reply)

Anyway, to save you all some time;
www.overheardindublin.com/
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 18:01, 3 replies)

God I once heard a wicked awful secret
the likes of which you have never heard. Anyway, it was awesome.
(robneymcplum spiced up his life on, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 17:49, 1 reply)

Because I'm very intelligent, people often ask me questions, such as "Who was responsible for British policy in Northern Ireland at Christmas in 1984?"
It's quite simple really, the Secretary of State would have been responsible for much of the policy, though he in turn had to report to the Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher, who was over Hurd.
( Dr Preference AjcuiVd289, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 17:46, 6 replies)

Yesterday I was in a coffee shop.....
waiting to get served. I placed my order with the guy at the counter and as he turned round to make it the two other girls whispered...
"God, he's useless."
"Doesn't matter, he's getting sacked tomorrow."

Wasn't quite sure if they meant the guy serving me, but seemed a little harsh if it was. My order was exactly right and served perfectly. Maybe it was someone else?
I find out tomorrow.......
( NooShmoo It's a fantazmagorical pile of ultra bollocks, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 17:31, 4 replies)

In Quito airport about twelve years ago...
I overheard a large sweaty merkin on his phone shortly after we had had an announcement that the plane to Houston had a slight technical fault and we would be delayed whilst it was fixed. Had he called his wife to explain he would be late, no, had he called his best mate who would be picking him up from the airport, no, had he called his lawyer so that someone would have a written record of the problem in case the plane crashed and the airline tried to cover it up thus allowing said professional to 'blow this thing wide open and sue them for everything' after his untimely death...why yes, yes he had!
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 25 Aug 2011, 16:43, 1 reply)

Pea ( I think it fits the QOTW but feel free to berate me in the usual fashion if not)
Not me but...
A family member complained to the folk living in the flat above them that their noisy daytime romps were playing havoc with her sleep (shift worker). The husband chose that moment to explain..."but I'm not home during the day!"

The same could not be said for his wife. I believe that may have triggered some relationship issues.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 25 Aug 2011, 16:32, 2 replies)

I did some consultancy work a while back...
...with the Defence Science and Technology Laboratories, and anyway this one bloke said

[MoD edit: DELETED, and we've revoked your security clearance]
( prince-igor si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 16:29, Reply)

I don't know if it was a secret as such...
...but an ex talked in her sleep and spent a whole night once saying things like 'No, Dave, do me in the geography section'. I don't know if she actually knew anyone called Dave, nor do I know if the 'Geography section' was a euphamism or part of the library she worked in.

And frankly, I didn't much care, I was waiting for the right time to leave her for Tanya, who did like being done in the geography section*.


*This bit isn't true, I just wanted to say 'being done in the geography section'. Tanya wouldn't let me near her geography section.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 16:25, 4 replies)

No-one gets away clean...
Apologies the length of this story. In fact, apologies for the story full stop. It may not be, strictly speaking, an overheard secret, but it does involve secrets being found out...

When I was 7 I was somewhat of a goody-two shoes. I was diligent, hardworking and strived to get the best marks I could. One day, at school, my teacher set a test we had to do. I can't remember what the topic was but it was in a area I was weak in. Suddenly, panic set in! "Don Draper getting bad marks?! I wouldn't live it down!" What was I going to do?! Fate offered me a life-line. The girl sitting next to me WAS very strong on this subject. So strong in fact, I copied her answers. To the letter!

When the teacher handed out our results she compliments the girl on her high marks and also compliments me, too for "my" high marks. She even commented on how we both stumbled on the same question. Was I in any danger of being caught? Nope. I was such good boy I was above suspicion. But not above the suspicion of someone else.

After class was over, someone (let's call him "David") came over to me and said "I saw you copying the answers! I'm going to tell the teacher!"

"Don't do that!"

"What's it worth?"

I put my hand in my pocket and offered him a shiny £1 coin. I'd sunk to a new low in the same day. And it didn't end there. For the next 6 weeks, I had to hand over all manner of crisps, chocolate, drinks and money in order to prevent him from telling anyone (let alone the teacher). And for 6 weeks, I went home and either did one (or more) of the following):

1. Sobbed my eyes out.
2. Sit on the stairs in a catatonic state.
3. Vomit due to the stress of the situation.
4. Lie in bed with my stomach in knots.

The torture I went through those 6 weeks was akin something out of Guantanamo Bay. One day, I went home and nearly had a nervous breakdown. This was noticed by my mother.

"What's wrong, Don?"

I couldn't hold the secret in any longer and confessed to the lot. The cheating, the lying and the blackmail by David. Mum's face turned from sympathy to outright anger. I was scared I was going to be punished for my misdeeds. But she wasn't angry at me. As she put it "Those 6 weeks were punishment enough for you. You've learn your lesson." No, she was angry at David. So angry in fact, she phoned David's parents. I never heard the other side of the conversation, but I did hear raised voices. After my mum hung up, she comforted me and said "Don't worry about David. He's taken care of." She sounded like a mafia boss. "But don't you ever cheat again!" Trust me, I learnt my lesson! So did David, apparently. I'd heard that David's parents were a little less liberal than my mother. I'd heard through the grapevine that David got a beating of such epic proportions, he didn't speak about it for two days!

Now let's fast forward 20 years. I'm now 27 and working at a sweet little gig for a chemical company. I was a chemical engineer and got to do what I like doing the most (OK, what I like doing SECOND most. Possibly third...) I got to play around with chemicals. The pay was good, too. And the people I worked with were great. Well, all except for two people. The first was one of the managers. Actually, he wasn't that bad, but I didn't like him. The second was, by far, the worst. Lisa (not her real name, obviously). A simpering, stuck-up, prissy motherfucker whom I despised with a passion. My main reason for hating her was mainly how she looked down on me like I was a guest on "The Jeremy Kyle Show". Another thing I hated about her was the way she used to shoe-horn the subject of her boyfriend into every conversation (I once overheard someone talking about drinking Lucozade and she STILL managed to convert that into talking about her boyfriend! That took some skill, I grant her!).

Anyway, I generally stayed out of their way as, I've pointed out before, I don't really like confrontation. Fate had other ideas.

One day, I received a phonecall from my boss. We were on the verge of securing a contract with a new company and that could I whip up a test batch of a particular product so they had something for the customer when they came around next week. Simples enough. After 15 minutes, I'd written down the ingredients I needed to make this product. I'd managed to secure all of them except one. Potassium Dichromate. We didn't really have any knocking around. Until I remembered the Shed! The shed was an old building which kept chemicals from products which had long since been made obsolete and were awaiting disposal. There was bound to be some Potassium Dichromate there!. So, I set off towards the shed. The shed was on the other side of the plant and took a while to get there. When I arrived at the shed, I put the (supposed only) key in the lock and opened the door. I turned on the light and there standing before me was the manager I didn't and, more importanly Mrs Simpering I've-got-the-IQ-of-a-roof-slate! They both looked at me like deer in headlights. Deer in headlights with their arms around each other. Turns out, the manager had made a copy of the key to the shed and was using it with Mrs Simpering-idiot to conduct a bit of clandestine affair! I was stunned, but nowhere near as stunned as they were. I'd got them bang to rights. God (if he exists) had gifted me an opportunity to not only take down 1 but 2 of the people I really didn't like!

Suddenly, I had a very vivid flashback. I went back to when I was 7 years old. The time I was being blackmailed. This was a memory I hadn't given a second's thought since I was 7. It was now coming back to haunt me in spectacular fashion. Why now? Because my brain wanted me to remember one aspect of that incident. The utter torture I went through when I was being blackmailed. The knotted stomach. The vomiting. The anguish. The lot! It was terrifying to relive that memory again. Especially when it was compressed into a few seconds. Like a short sharp shock. I came back to the present with the philanderers firmly in my view. I now had a decision to make.

Looking at it from the manager and Lisa's point of view, one second they getting up to all sorts and the next, their marriage and relationship, respectively, was on the verge of being destroyed. It's amazing how things can change in a second. But what they didn't expect was the guy who hated them (and who caught them inflagrante) walking straight up to them, walking straight past them, picking up a tin of Potassium Dichromate, walking past them again and closing the door. But before closing the door he muttered "I didn't see anything..."

I remembered what it was like to be blackmailed. There was no way I was going to inflict that on someone else. Even those two. I don't know how long they carried on their affair, but I wasn't going to stoop to the level David stooped when I was 7. I was determined to get away clean...
(Don Draper is, indeed, mad and a man., Thu 25 Aug 2011, 15:19, 20 replies)

League Tables
I was enjoying a quiet pint with a mate, when he suddenly looked rather surprised, motioned for me to be quiet, and began scribbling notes onto a napkin. Baffling behaviour! After ten minutes or so, he indicated that we should leave quietly, and so we did.

Once outside he told me what was going on. In the next booth, completely unaware of us, happened to be a group of girls from our social circle. Now, between them these girls had shagged all of us men at one time or another, and they had been discussing us, in rich and intimate detail. My mate had heard his name, and then been even more surprised when the girls started working out the "League Table" of us blokes -- both for size and technique.

So we now had a complete list of all of our mates, and where they stood (ahem) in relation to each other.

The best part was the discovery that one very shy friend, who'd only recently broken an EIGHT YEAR dry spell, turned out to be the most well-endowed of the lot of us. That turned his life around, I can tell you!
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 15:17, 14 replies)

On a flight
Two people sat behind me were chatting, became apparent they worked in the same industry as I did.

Just as I was about to peep over the seatback and say Hi, one of them started talking about my mild mannered innofensive boss. Clearly they were ex collegues of his.

"Remember when he got prosecuted for hitting his next door neighbour with a hammer?"

"Oh yeah, that was funny. What was it about?"

"The guys tree kept dropping leaves into his garden".

Gulp . . .
(username failed moderation, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 15:14, Reply)

I bloody hate my boss
I work in customs and always get the shit jobs. There is a good reason why he and I have never got on, but that's for another QOTW. This is the tale of how I got him in some incredibly deep shit.

One thing I have to say for him, he's efficient. Everything is by the book and punctual as fuck, it's only my adherance to this doctrine that's kept me the job; he can't find grounds to fire me. This is also what made his lapse in judgement all the more damning. He was manning the front line and showing off to some new starters, who have since confided in me that they were surprised by his conduct at the time.

It is, with hindsight, unfortunate that I was unable to stop the guys I overheard talking before they got out of here; but I did the right thing by reporting the oversight to my superiors, making my twat of a supervisor look grossly incompetent in the process. All it took was eight sweet, simple words.

"Those WERE the droids you were looking for..."
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 15:02, 5 replies)

Phone tap!
My brother and I used to share a fantastically shoddy ghetto-blaster – a big grey square thing with buttons like sharp piano keys and speakers the size of dinner plates. It was seemingly fuelled by tape, for which it had a voracious appetite, but it brought the delights of Ray Parker Jnr into our bedrooms, and for that we forgave it anything.

One bored evening, around 6pm, I was twiddling about with its radio tuner trying to find, I dunno, whatever 12 year olds try to find. Poptastic trilling by long-arsed permed women. As I switched between bands and spun the dial, a single captivating phrase popped out of the garbled static:
“zzswwfutuzuwutufwiiittzzzuzuoouououuoFUCKING BASTARDzzswwfutuzuwutufwiiittzzzuzuoouououuo”

I heard it. My brother heard it. We stared at each other. This was pre-watershed, and someone was saying ‘fucking bastard’ on the radio! I slowly moved the tuner back as precisely as I could until it came to rest on 800 medium wave. Twenty years later and I still remember it. This frequency changed my life.

In our house we had a now-common device that we youngsters at the time considered the height of communications technology – a cordless phone. And it turned out that the handset broadcast to the base station on 800 MW.

We listened to what we slowly realised was a conversation between my mum and her sister. “Why’s mum on the radio?” I gormlessly asked my brother. “She’s not you div, she’s on the phone! This is the phone!”
Silently, guiltily, we listened for ten minutes to their banal chatter. It was inoffensive except for a couple more ‘bloodys’ and a handful of ‘pillocks’. We switched it off, bored but tense. The knowledge was there now. My brother and I eyed one another suspiciously. Both of us were on the cusp of adolescence. He was starting to arrange dates with girls, hang out with people and smoke. I was … well, I wanted to do all that shit too. But the game had changed now, and we knew that we could never again safely use this phone.

There followed five wretched years of stolen moments to organise our burgeoning social lives, our love lives; moments when we knew the other wasn’t around. “Hi, yeah, fancy meeting up tonight, 8’o clock, brilliant, can’t talk, bye.” But the blunders … there were so many blunders. Most significantly, like the time my brother triumphantly steamed down the stairs waving a C-90 cassette tape in in the air, after I’d just hung up on the first ever girl I’d told I loved. He insisted on playing it repeatedly to me and my friends, roaring with laughter, and consolidating the widely-held view that I was a sappy smitten prick and very possibly a bummer.

*play*

“I … er … well … ummm …. y’know I er … i wrote you a poem about flowers growing in the, er, in the sun … it’s like a, er, a metaphor for *gulp* how much I love you. I love you by the way.”

*rewind*

Cunt.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 15:00, 13 replies)

Inevitable News International reference
For those of you who don't read Private Eye, this is an absolute classic...

www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1281
(anvil, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 14:47, Reply)

since we lost my mother at christmas
we always go away as a family now. one year we were unbelievably spoiled as my dad took us all on a christmas caribbean cruise. (this was an incredible experience, and one which i was v grateful for, but it's not one i am sure i'd repeat this side of 60. but i digress.) my younger brother and i had to share a room. we were 29 and 27. when i whinged about this, my dad asked if i wanted to spunk up the several thousand pounds for my own room. i shut up.

my brother and i look nothing alike. so everyone assumed we were a couple. especially when we had our older brother's baby with us. shudder. and there is something about going on holiday with your family that makes you regress to being a manky child. i smeared fudge all over his hand when he annoyed me the following year. anyway, the lovely valet kept shoving our beds together and making our towels into heart shapes, and we kept ripping them apart and making each other's towels into "fuck you" shapes.

mobile phone reception was very erratic, as you would expect when cruising around various islands and across open sea. so on boxing day night, i headed drunkenly back to the cabin for something i'd forgotten, just as the boat neared antigua. reception kicked in. my mobile lit up and started filling with messages from the last few days. i picked it up to read through them.

and that's how i learned in one soul-searing eye-bleeding moment, before my alcohol-dulled senses could react, stop reading, and throw the phone far, far away, that my brother's lovely polite sweet girlfriend could not wait to lick his arse and ballsack before he pounded her from behind over the kitchen counter and gave her an "eargasm".

this was not the first time that having identical phones caused us a bit of a mix-up, but it was by far the worst! urrrrrgh.

oh and the next day he got fed up with me whinging from the bathroom how long it took him to get dressed, told me it was safe to come out, and waved his massive white hairy arse at me. NOT the kind of caribbean full moon that i had in mind.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 14:46, 5 replies)

Coffee shop to work place
I work in a big office block in the City.
Often you will be stood behind people in the queue for coffee shop who actually work in the same building as me but we never see each other.

Today I listended to:
1 - Man, I was so drunk I sh*t my guts up.
2 - what - not on our floor?
1 - Nah, I go to the fourth floor. Safest bet.
2 - ha ha ha.

I work on the fourth floor.

I'm coming to the second floor next time I need a dump you f*cker.
( Razor What the fuck - a sig?, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 14:43, 2 replies)

The invisibility of the pub barman
Might as well put the lead story into the mixer:

Back in the early 90s, I needed the money, so worked weekend evenings behind the bar of my regular pub. It was great, because I was now getting paid to go there, and there was an endless stream of free drinks.

Apart from the glorious charms of Carrie the barmaid, there was one other thing I never realised about bar work: The fact that unless they are ordering drinks from you, you are completely invisible to the customer.

This means that you can be standing behind the bar, pulling a pint or washing the glasses while you hear all sorts of conversations going on not more that a couple of feet away.

That is how I got to know about one couple, who'd come in every Friday night, sit on the two stools at the far end of the bar by the glass-washer, and discuss their private life in the most intimate detail.

She told him she was pregnant.

He was shocked as he swore he had taken precautions.

She asked him what he was going to do about it.

He said he would leave his wife.

Several weeks later, he had still not left his wife, but was waiting "for the right time to tell her".

And then, on Fridays, he started coming in on his own.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 14:31, 1 reply)

A snippet overheard in the street
I love those little nuggets of conversation you hear as you pass people in the street - they always make me back-fill the rest of the conversation, in my head.

My favourite was

"...so there I was, stark naked, completely covered in ice-cream..."

!
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 14:30, 1 reply)

I want you, I need you, ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you.
It's 1987, and I'm sitting on a coach in France on a school trip, just turned 13 years old. Next to me is my first ever girlfriend. The first hand I've ever held, the first girl I've ever taken to the cinema ("House II: The Second Storey", of all things and yes, I am sure that its an 18, they just didn't care at the old ABC in Brentwood High Street), The first girl ever to put her tongue in my mouth. The love of my sheltered and pathetic 13 year old life. To my right ear, I am holding half a set of headphones awkwardly while she holds the other half to her left ear as we listen to Meatloaf crooning away..."Baby we can talk all night, but that'll never change the way that I feel"...We are holding hands as the coach takes us to a Normandy Oyster Farm..."The snow is really piling up outside, I wish you wouldn't make me leave here"...I look at her, she looks at me, we smile like loves young dream..."I've poured it on and I've poured it out, but that ain't getting us nowhere"...the coach stops and Debbie's friend Natalie walks down the aisle to where we are sitting. She says she needs to speak to Debbie in private, so would I mind putting my headphones on and turning the volume up?

Of course don't mind. Anything for Debbie. So sitting there, with Meatloaf blasting full volume into my tiny youthful eardrums, I am privvy to the following conversation:

"Debbie, you won't believe this, Ian says he likes you!"

"Oh, I've liked Ian for ages, I only said I'd go out with Scarpe because I thought Ian liked you!"

"I'll tell him"

"And I'll tell Scarpe after the disco tonight"

And the worst thing is, I let her.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 14:05, 6 replies)

The couple I share a flat with
She's angry because he took money out of the joint account to pay bills, and she thinks he took out more than he needed so he could spend the rest. She also thinks he has a sexual attraction to his best mate and this is adversely effecting their sex life because he's conflicted by his bisexuality. Despite this, he has apparently also visited female prostitutes in the past, but she thinks this is because he knows he's a bit gay and was trying to cover up for it. His gayness apparently stems from deep-seated issues with his alcoholic mother.

He's angry because she'll only sleep with him when she's drunk. And when she's drunk she gets violent and hurts him during sex. She's also massively OCD and won't let him touch ANY of her things despite them sharing a bedroom.

Honestly, how they don't realise the walls are paper thin I don't know! Sometimes I don't even need to hold a glass against the wall...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 13:53, 8 replies)

I heard
that you're a cunt.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 13:49, 2 replies)

19th

( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 13:46, 1 reply)

Third?
I found out that my nephew managed to fail out of a very expensive university in his third year, having taken out over $60K in loans himself and having his mother (my sister) take out god knows how much against her retirement. He got into a fraternity and had a three year party, and was told halfway through a semester to go home and not return.

The kicker? His fraternity nickname was "Fluffer".
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 25 Aug 2011, 13:45, 4 replies)

Damn
Second....

When in my early teens I was friendly with the lad next door and we used to knock around together doing all sorts of boyish things and getting into trouble....

I managed to acquire some voice inducted telephone handsets (courtesy of a friendly British Coal fitter) which we installed in our bedrooms, via a cable along the guttering, allowing us to talk whenever we wanted to arrange our next batch of immature loutish behaviour.

One day I heard him getting a real good rollicking off his (much) older brother who then proceeded to give him a good hiding. We never spoke of this moment, I don't even know if he knew I was listening in, I felt dirty for hearing the whole exchange....
(FF_Sam is currently on call...., Thu 25 Aug 2011, 13:41, 1 reply)

first???
Will post a proper answer shortly....when I think of one
(Studentken is looking for motivation on, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 13:40, 7 replies)