The naughty step indeed
I was visiting my old mate Des one Saturday afternoon when all hell broke loose at a house diagonally opposite.

Des said to come and have a look at this, so over to the window I went.

A girl about ten burst around the back corner of the house going like a train followed a few moments later by a large woman in full cry. But by the time the woman made it to the front corner, the girl was back in through the front door. That slammed shut behind her.

The woman got to the door and thumped on it. It was locked. Shouting threats of slow death at "You kids", she returned to the back door, which apparently was locked as well. Over the next five minutes the shouts died away and she took to prowling around the house muttering threats.

Ten minutes later she was sitting quietly on the front door step.

Des said that when she got too much for her three children, they locked her out of the house.

"She falls for it every time" he said.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Sat 9 Feb 2013, 12:45, 1 reply)

I very seldom meted out corporal punishment to my kids.
At least not past the age of three or so- when they're having a complete meltdown, a swat across the arse with an open hand snaps them out of it.

When my son was in his early teens he had his first cell phone. One day when he was being particularly obnoxious I took it away and locked it up, resulting in a tantrum which then got him grounded besides.

I then secretly began sending SMS messages to it and calling it. He heard it and got almost hysterical at the thought of all the messages he was missing. I was firm, though, and didn't give it back until the following day.

His rage at discovering who was calling him made it even better.
( Wanderer, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 18:21, 6 replies)

The diagram
So, as a teacher, giving punishments is part and parcel of my daily grind. I don't particularly enjoy telling-off as a rule, but when it needs to be done, I do try to find some way to add amusement value, particularly when the crime deserves some special attention.

My favourite, and one of my own devising, is the punishment for a naughty boy who decided to draw a giant man-sausage on his exercise book. He wasn't a bad lad, but could step out of line rather far on occasion, and so I couldn't let it slide. I kept him behind at the end of the lesson, and his lecture went as follows.

"This is an absolutely pathetic diagram, one of the worst I have seen you produce. (*pause for blank look). You are going to finish it, at home, tonight. (Pause for more confusion.) It is going to be correctly, accurately labelled. No mistakes. No mis-spellings. No crossings-out. This diagram is going to be perfect. Do you understand? Now get out of my classroom."

He leaves, rather puzzled, and the next day, returns with a magnificently labelled version. It is accurate, detailed, and he has done more work on it than any other homework that year so far. In front of him, I tore it out of his book, placed it in an envelope and put it in my desk drawer.

"Now, the next time you muck around in my lesson, what do you think I will bring to the meeting I have with your Mum?... Clear?"

This brought, in fairly quick succession, 1) more puzzlement. 2) a moment of brief panic, and 3) a polite nod and a mumbled "sir".

He was pretty well behaved after that...
(Serotonicity was a naughty boy on..., Wed 13 Feb 2013, 17:32, 6 replies)

Might as well take the opportunity to drag this one out again:
Fans will remember that I was educated at a minor public school.

In my first term of A-Levels, the class aged 16/17, one of the bigger lads at the back thought he'd cheek up the new physics teacher:

"Oi!" cried the lad, in his posh voice, to the teacher, "Why don't you fuck off back to South Africa?!"

His sycophants laughed and beamed their approval.

The teacher - a stocky man in his early 30s, walked over slowly to the lad.

The lad - as I said, was one of the bigger ones - a stereotype of the public schoolboy: an over-privileged, arrogant shit, who's probably now in parliamentary office, MD of several failing companies, and taking back-handers from banks in exchange for signing off deals on brown-field sites. He stood up, equal to the teacher.

The teacher stood in front of him, eyeballing him, and the lad stared back defiantly.

"When I started teaching, my first lesson was in a school in Durban. I walked into the classroom, where there were two boys bigger than you beating a girl with sticks for refusing to be their whore. As I walked in one of them pulled out a gun, pointed it at me, and shouted 'OI! TEACHER! FUCK OFF!". I taught both those boys and that girl to both read and to write.

YOU smell of talcum powder, get pocket money sent to you each week from your daddy in Dubai, and think that smoking cigarettes is cool. You've already got a car waiting for you for your birthday, you'll have a job as soon as you leave school, but I know your dad will thrash you if you get a bad grade, so if you want to take your chance, be my guest, but I'M staying here."

With that he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and pushed him down hard into his seat.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 12:04, 10 replies)

Not me but my brother
When he was about 2, my brother looked like an angel. An angel wifh a mop of white blonde hair and mischievous green eyes. Unfortunately this was misleading. He was actually the goddamned devil.

One day my mum had taken him shopping at sainsbury's and he had totally misbehaved, throwing things out of the trolley and other such naughtiness. Reasoning, naughty steps, shouting - nothing worked with that child. So eventually my mother pulled out the big guns, the only thing that ever worked.

"I'm not going to smack your bottom now," she said. "But when we get home I will. And you can think about it all the way home."

Instant angelic behaviour from the little shit. So my mother promptly forgot all about it, as you do when you have a million other things to do. Until the car pulled up in the driveway and a defiant little voice piped up:

"I haven't been thinking about that smack."

Foolish child.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Tue 12 Feb 2013, 23:01, 2 replies)

Told off by landlord. BECAUSE OF FIRE
Years ago I moved into my first student house. Being situated on the corner of two overcrowded streets I was delighted to find that it had a small garage attached to the back garden. I was not so delighted to find that it contained approximately ten years worth of old Christmas trees courtesy of the previous owners. As such you would be hard pressed to fit a matchbox car in there, let alone my Nova.

I decided the best way to remove them was to cut them into small pieces and burn them slowly. For about a week I burned a enough to fill a small barbecue pit. I figured that burning a few Kilos of wood after dark would not be amiss in a suburburn neighbourhood, after all no-one had said anything to me.

Wrong. A few days later I got a Irate letter from the landlord who had been inundated with calls from my neighbours about the anti-socialness of it. Ho hum said I, I'll stop with the fires. But I was only doing so to be rid of the small dead forest that was making the garage unusable and would you be so good as to send someone round to remove them?

Two days later I came home one afternoon to find that my house was burning down. The whole street was choking in smog that seemed to be emanating from my garden. Rushing round the back I was confronted with two workmen types.

Rather than sully their pristine ford transit with a decades worth of pine needles they had decided to drag the trees into a huge pyre and burn them. In a fire that took up 80% of the back garden, that was smoking like a 1970s northern working mens club. Within about two minutes of my arrival, one chap chucked another tree on top of this flaming monstrosity and said "Right that's the lot" and proceeded to promptly fuck off along with his mate.

Leaving me alone with an empty garage, a incinerator for a back garden. And most of all the dagger eyed stare of my next door neighbour as she strode out of her house, through the smog. Silently she did not let up the evil eye the whole time as she slowly took every. last. piece. of. washing. off her clothesline and brought it inside.
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Tue 12 Feb 2013, 9:35, 2 replies)

My dad was a teacher
and was, back when it was legal, responsible for caning kids in his year.

His theory about punishment was that it was all about anticipation. The tough lads who got sent in weren't going to be scared of a little slap on the hand, so you had to use a bit of amateur dramatics to make it a more effective experience.

When someone got sent to his office by one of the other teachers for punching someone, or the like, he'd have one of the secretaries tell them to wait a minute as he'd gone to see Mr Burns at the other side of school to fetch the special cane. Knowing, now, that they were going to be caned, he'd let them stew for a bit while he had a cup of tea in the staffroom. Then, heading back to the room carrying an ominously large and knobbly looking cane, he'd say something like 'Ah, Kevin, you're here. Wait a few more minutes boy.'.

This brings us to stage two. He'd go into the office, and give the filing cabinet a good few 'practice whacks'. It made a hell of a clang, ensuring the kid outside was by now having visions of the caning being he sort of thing that happened to drunken sailors in Nelson's navy. He'd use this as the moment to shout 'Mrs. Griffiths - can you please make sure you've got some bandages in your desk just in case.'

Then, eventually, he'd invite the kid in. He'd sit on the edge of the desk with the cane in hand, and make them hold their hand out. Stage 3 was the worst. Rather than get it over with he'd lecture them for a good few minutes on their digressions, and emphasise how he hoped they'd understand that a serious offence warranted a serious punishment and it was for their own good. Quite often they'd be quaking by this point.

Finally, with a flourish, he would abruptly raise the cane, bellow, and bring it down on their palm with about as much force as someone half-heartedly swatting a fly. Then he told them to piss off and not do it again.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 13:53, 27 replies)

The opposite to grounding
As an uber computer geek back in the early 90s. Unlike most kids at the time, I wanted to do nothing but sit inside and program games on my ZX Spectrum. So when I was naughty, I would get grounded. Except for me, grounded meant the opposite. I wasn't allowed in my room, and had to go out to play.
(Miggyman, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 21:35, 10 replies)

The Plastic Thing
My parents had a reasonably old-fashioned approach to punishments. If we were naughty, we'd be told off or sent to our rooms. But if we were REALLY naughty, it would be The Plastic Thing.

The Plastic Thing was the detachable handle from a Tupperware cake box. It was about 30 inches in length, made a satisfying (for those of us not experiencing its wrath) swoosh as it was swung through the air at a repentant child, and it hurt like hell. I soon learned not to be an evil bastard, essentially because I didn't like The Plastic Thing above half. Take my word for it – people say that corporal punishment doesn't work, but that's because their parents didn't have Tupperware parties.

Here, thanks to those crafty types at Etsy is a Plastic Thing almost (but not quite) like my arch nemesis.



It also left its mark. For hours after, the culprit would walk around with the word "OOOO ЗЯAWЯЗqqUT" on their leg.

The Plastic Thing mysteriously disappeared one day. I cannot – and will not – say what happened to it.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 12:30, 7 replies)

I never hit my kids coz I'm not a fucking moron who can't control a toddler without resorting to shock and pain.
I used my DIY skills and created a cot with a lid instead.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Thu 7 Feb 2013, 20:33, 3 replies)

My mother
had a brilliant way of dishing out punishment.
It was the 80s and I was a teenager who'd given her some lip over something or other. She removed her flip-flop (or flop-flip if you're left handed)and came after me, but I out-ran her, flicking the digit as I went.
A whole 8 hours later as I sat eating my tea, she walked up behind me and whacked me round the head, knocking me off my chair.
"You may have bad memory, but I haven't" was all she said as she calmly walked away.
(Appleseed Is getting married 24/05/2014. All invited., Mon 11 Feb 2013, 14:03, 2 replies)

I went to a catholic primary school
The headmistress was a fierce nun called Sister Margaret Mary. She had a pinched up mean face and cold hard eyes.

I was about 8 and my mate John-Paul (very catholic name in the 70's that) dared me to call Sister Margaret Mary a cunt. I didn't know what it meant. I knew it was bad obviously calling any teacher a name is going to be bad but I had no idea of the sheer explosive power of the C bomb.

We were on a school trip at the time and I forget the exact details that lead up to me dropping the bomb. But as soon as it had passed my lips I knew I was in serious trouble. Sister Margaret Mary's face flashed utter shock quickly going into livid fury. I felt sick I was staring into the angriest face I have ever seen.

"what did you say?" she almost whispered through clenched teeth
"nothing"
"yes you did say it again"
"you cunt"
"I can't hear you"
"you cunt"
JP was nearly pissing himself laughing but trying not to show it.

She then dragged me off by an ear and thrashed the backs of my legs (I was wearing shorts) with a ruler till nearly bleeding(this was her normal M.O. punishment wise) She then made me sit out of the rest the activities on the trip and told my parents when we got back who also punished me ( a thrashing off my dad and a grounding off my mum)

In retrospect TOTALLY worth it for the look on that nuns face the sadistic old battleaxe.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 13:48, 2 replies)

Girls can be so cruel.
I was 16/17. We were a bunch of lads, with a bunch of girls, having high-jinx on the beach; the usual bonfire, guitar, illicit booze.

I was holding court very well - genuine laughs at my tales and jokes.

Until one beautiful girl said simply, "It's late, you're tired, and you're beginning to show off."
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 12 Feb 2013, 10:18, 9 replies)

will there be a prize ceremony?










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(King Zog of Albania lives in Kensington, Sat 9 Feb 2013, 6:36, 30 replies)

Sports coaching.
I coach my daughter's tee-ball and soccer teams.
I've done it for about 3 years now for a couple of different clubs. We have 3 more games of Tee Ball, I'm taking a week "off" then soccer training starts. It's much the same at the end of the soccer season.

We train for an hour once a week and a game on the weekend.

In both teams I have (had) a couple of hard-cases. Read: Annoying little scrotes whose parents drop them off, pay little attention at training or games other than to say "How come we lost and little Jonquil didn't get Man of the Match?". I make it very clear at the start of the season that at training & games if the kids muck up I'll deal with it and if anyone is unhappy with my methods they're welcome to take it up with me &/or the club. Never had a complaint.

Mostly it usually involves the mouthiest and most competitive kids not paying attention, being disruptive or basically fighting. After the first few times I realised I needed to get creative.

1st off they get a warning, then they have to sit on opposite sidelines for 5 min. (that usually works because they hate being left out).
Then it gets interesting.
If they've been fighting (usually the biggest 1) I get both boys (as is often the case) to skip around the oval, hand-in-hand singing "I'm a little teapot" (with the actions) or "Skip To My Lou". If they refuse to do it then they aren't welcome to train or play on that day. This is usually when the parents start to take notice. And laugh and tell their kids off.
If they continue to fight (after that humiliation) I take them out of training and in front of everyone they have to apologise to each other and the team (for being disruptive) and then they have to give each other a big, strong, manly hug.

It's only happened a couple of times for me. And each time the kids got over whatever shit they had with each other and all of the parents had a lot of problems containing their mirth. Including the parents of the kids involved.
Me I was tough as nuts, stone cold impassive.
Honestly.

Trust me when I tell you - shouting at a bunch of kids a couple of times a week is an excellent stress relief.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 8 Feb 2013, 8:56, 9 replies)

Got a bollocking a few years back from management
as I'd managed to obtain a jpeg photo of one of the guys from our team and using the skills of MS Paint stuck his head on a pic of Mr Chips from Catchphrase being fucked up the ass. Then I emailed it to the team in the guise of a training document. This wasn't the first time (see fig 1a) so a meeting was called for with my immediate manager.

As I was getting the talk-down the boss would occasionally glance back at the email with the pic on it and piss herself laughing, while I sat there quietly not helping by saying stuff like "This bollocking's not going too well, focus on me here not the evidence, there's a victim involved."

In the end, rather than me getting a disciplinary it was decided I could carry on, as long as I did the rest of the team too to keep it fair. She was a good boss :)
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 22:00, Reply)

Not really a punishment then, is it?
My sister and I have that particular sibling relationship where we love each other, but don't actually like each other very much, to the extent that any car journey we took in our teenage years would rapidly degenerate into petty bickering. As this coincided with mum reaching "a certain age", this sometimes led to mini temper explosions from her.

We were on holiday in Scotland* when we decided to go to the beach*. We all piled into the car and, sure enough, my sister and I started arguing. After twenty minutes or so, mum had had enough. "IF YOU TWO DON'T STOP BICKERING RIGHT THIS MINUTE" she bellowed "YOU CAN GET OUT OF THE BLOODY CAR AND WALK TO THE BEACH!"


After pausing a moment, I opened the car door and stepped out.

Into the beach carpark.

Where we had just parked.




*I know, I know.
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 13:56, 2 replies)

My Mum would tell you she didn't hit her kids very often
we would tell you she was like Cool Hand Luke, fire first, ask questions second.

When my younger sister made a kitchen utensil holder that had a wooden spoon in it (the utensil being held)in her first year at school, there was considerable discussion amongst the three of us (me and my two siblings) as to if we should give her such an offensive weapon. It was determined that we would give it to her but, would insert a note in the wrapping paper that specified "NOT FOR HITTING CHILDREN".
(bad_advice QOTW survivor from the first trollocost!, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 3:10, 3 replies)

David retreated,
skittering hastily away. Mrs Brain, oddly lucid in crisis, identified someone's arse wobbling in the lower estuaries, South Shields. Crimped undulating nutty turds.
(markreynolds95, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 22:59, 8 replies)

I shot a couple of people, so the police burned down my shed :(

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 13 Feb 2013, 9:05, 9 replies)

Whoever successfully nominates the winning QOTW suggestion should be a mod for that week and step anyone they damn well want.

( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Sun 10 Feb 2013, 16:20, 5 replies)

Driving down a road an hour ago
A group of seagulls were on a pavement on the left hand side of the road, and as I began passing them one of them flew out straight in front of me. Not wanting to kill the critter, I slammed on the brakes as the seagull glared at me while squeaking abuse and carried on flying past while looking back at the car. And not paying attention to the lamppost on the other side of the road, which he happily flew into and nearly knocked himself out. That'll teach the little fucker, too busy giving me a bollocking to look where he was flying lol.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Sun 10 Feb 2013, 15:35, 1 reply)

Paid to educate but got fucked up last night and really can't be arsed?
Drag yourself in a few minutes early and write "Dr. Shambolic is a cunt" on the chalk board. Roll it around to the back. When the bright young things have assembled eager and attentive, scrawl a few notes and then roll the board around to reveal the message. Blow a fuse. Insist that nobody leaves or does anything until somebody owns up to it. Have an hours kip while they sit and mumble amongst themselves.

n.b. only works if you live in the 1990s or some typhoid-ridden shithole where the poor fucks still use chalk
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 20:26, 18 replies)

I got a detention for sharpening pencils over some kid's head.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 20:19, 6 replies)

The Nearly Step
Aged 6 or 7, I lived in a cottage about a mile outside the village where I went to a tiny little village infants & juniors school (about 50 kids in total).

The road was, at the time, the main A road between South Wales and the Midlands (i.e. before they'd opened the A449 between Newport & Raglan), so it was too dangerous for me to walk on my own. My mum didn't have a car, and was a 'housewife' so she would walk me to school herself.

One day, the headmaster, a Mr Cecil Berrington, drove past in his shiny 1970s red Vauxhall Viva, and pulled in to give us a lift. As we got in, I saw one of these:

in the passenger footwell. Once we got to school, wide-eyed with terror, I told all my mates "Don't mess with Mr Berrington - he's got a cane in his car and it's made of METAL!!!!"

It was only later I found out that it was a Krooklok to stop people nicking his valuable and beloved motor.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 7 Feb 2013, 16:31, 3 replies)

Stepped for life
Mrs Moon Monkey never misses a chance to remind me that I read an entire book while she was in labour with our first child. Personally I can't see the problem - it was 36 hours, FFS, and a lot of the time - especially during the build-up to the main even - there was very little I could actually do to help. So I read. Apparently that was a crime somewhere between ethnic cleansing and selling babies on the internet.

I was delighted to find, in a book, advice to expectant fathers which included the suggestion that they take something to read in the maternity ward to pass the time... surprisingly, even this didn't placate her. Women are strange.

The "baby" is about to turn 10, and is herself a voracious reader... I wonder if there's a connection?
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 13 Feb 2013, 17:13, 5 replies)

Duffield...
Was my English teacher. A brummie bully, who if he took a dislike to you (me) would make life a living shit pile. Until one day. Listening to him reading 1984 one afternoon with his nasal drawl I made the mistake of resting my head in my hands. No sooner had I done this when a large piece of chalk flew at me, striking me directly in the eye. "WAKE UP RIPLEY!" He bellowed. "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" Came my reply. Blood was now spilling from my cut eyelid. Unnoticed until someone said "oh shit he's bleeding". Wipiing my shirt sleeve across my face only made me look worse as I continued to shout at him. "You and I will sort this once and for all after this lesson". Just as the deputy headmistress walked in. She to one look at me. The turned to Duffield and said very calmly "Get out of the classroom, then get off these premises then when you've done that resign from teaching altogether because when I'm finished with you your career will be as well".
Good old Mrs Hegaty. Not all brums are bad, there are bastards everywhere.
(Ripley isis spelt backwards is sisi, Tue 12 Feb 2013, 21:16, 5 replies)

dodgy party friday night
spent 20 minutes having a conversation with a bloke about the new die hard film. when he went to the loo, some weird shouty bitch came over to me.
"you'd better watch what you say to him, don't you know he's married?" she snarled.
"yes, he told me. we were only talking about films, what's the problem?"
"the problem is he's my brother and he's only 21, so keep your fucking hands off him!"
with that, she stormed off into the next room, presumably to yell at people for not using coasters.
when the bloke came back, i said "i really don't think you should be talking to me, your sister seems to think i'm after you or something."
"what? i haven't got a sister!"
i was perplexed, to say the least. "who's that shouty bird, then? she said she was your sister and you're only 21."
"her?" he asked, seeming stunned, "i have no idea! i only met her tonight! i wouldn't mind, but i'm 28 and she was trying to drag me into the airing cupboard half an hour ago!"
so, there you go. weird shouty bitches at parties should be avoided, especially if they think you're after the married man they're trying to snog.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Mon 11 Feb 2013, 14:13, 5 replies)

As an apprentice...
I was working with PVC pipe, and using solvent weld 'glue' to join the various fittings. One of the fittings required a reducing bush to be fitted inside. like this:

parkland-eng.co.uk/application/css/images/P20623492.jpg

You may notice the ridge inside. This is what the pipe is pushed up against.

HOWEVER if the bush is glued in the wrong way round, the pipe won't go in.

I made this mistake and was given a file and told to remove the ridge so the pipe would fit inside. I spent about 2 hours doing this, after which my boss examined it and then threw it in the bin.

Handing me a fresh set of fittings he said "you won't make that mistake again will ya?"

And I never have.
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 20:41, 12 replies)

Whoosh - splat!
I remember a teacher at school who was a committed cricket fan - and player. He was a demon bowler, and used his mad skillz in the classroom: talking, not paying attention or dozing off were likely to be met by a heavy wooden board rubber whistling past at hypersonic velocity, missing your head by a heart-stoppingly low number of angstroms, then crashing deafeningly against the back wall. The wall was covered with chalk-splats, giving testimony to the number of intercontinental ballistic board-rubbers that were launched, but I never once saw him misjudge it and actually make contact with a trangressor's cranium.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 8 Feb 2013, 11:51, 13 replies)