Many, oh so many
I've worked in many, many bars and restaurants in my time, but the best stories come from six month (count them!) at McDonalds in Barnet back in 1981 when I was 18. For the last three of these I was one of the 'night closers', i.e. we turned up at 11pm and spent the time til 6am cleaning the whole place. Some horrible jobs like emptying the recepticles for fat and bits stuck on the grills where the burger flippers scraped all the scum.

Anyway, I worked with three other guys: Pete, a West Indian burglar by trade, Dave, the laziest slob in north London (once spent four hours kipping in cupboard because he'd been on the pish all night) and Pio who was from Goa and had limited English.

Bit of background, the managers went home at around 11.30/12.00 once cashing up was done and didn't come back til 6am. Anyway, one night we were having a bit of fun, chucking stuff around etc. when nasty Dave did something to me a bit OTT, can't even remember what it was, but, as luck would have it we were in the pot wash area, and Dave was down at the end of the room. I totally lost my rag and turned the very hot, very powerful power hose on him, blasting him for a good ten seconds right in the chest.

If you want to picture the scene in your mind, think riot police using a water cannon on a poor demonstrator. That fricking showed him.

One other night, we'd spent til 4am playing cards in the staff room, leaving two hours to do a six hour job. When Roger the manager (also of W.I. origin, and thought he was something because he was McD store manager) turned up at 6am to see us hard at it, he said to Pete: "Hey man, what the hell happened?", Pete said "Oh, we just couldn't get it together", to which Roger said "O.K. man." twat.

Lastly, (for now anyway), it was a cold, cold night, snow lay thick on the ground. Pete had decided that he wanted one of the McD highchairs for his little girl. He also wanted some napkins, but these were kept in the locked storeroom. So...up he went in goods lift, which was about four foot cubed, down he came with about 5,000 napkins. Next he took apart a highchair and packed the lot in a black bin bag. Then he nipped off home to drop them off. As luck would have it he was stopped by the cops - no idea why, a young black guy with a huge black bin bag over his shoulder going up Barnet High St at 3am. Anyway, he told them he worked at McD and was taking the highchair home to fix it, as it was broken. They probably couldn't think why the fk he would want to nick one, so they let him go.

Aah, happy days. Mind you, six months spent eating McD food, 3 months virtually without seeing daylight, sleep patterns shot to cock...I got a passport photo done at the end as I was off round Europe and my complexion was green, with blothchy red bits.

Nuff for now...in a seseme seed bun.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Fri 21 Jul 2006, 10:39, Reply)