Petrol Stations
My first job (aside from paper rounds / Betterware / fleecing people on a fixed British Heart Foundation lottery) was working at a petrol station in the northwest.

the owner was rarely around, as he was often out of the country shooting at things, him being a very rich bloke who fancied himself as a big game hunter.

on my first day i was left to run the place for an hour while the rest of the staff went off to the pub. i was told to restock the shelves and the ice-cream fridge while they were away.

so i did the shelves and moved on to the fridge. upon opening the big freezer in the back room, i noticed that there were some strange things among the choc-ices and cornettoes. no matter, it wasn't my business.

after about half an hour they came back, and asked how i was getting on. i told them casually that the dead labrador in the freezer seemed happy enough, but the stags head was stuck to the K9 lolly box.


i already knew that the owner was an amateur taxidermist, so i wasn't really that shocked.

apparently i was the first victim not to run screaming down the road. they'd actually been sitting just round the corner waiting for me to freak out.

(he'd shot the stag, but the dog had died naturally and was being stuffed for a little old lady).
(coobeastie Used to Be in Evil Gazebo, Mon 14 May 2007, 1:20, Reply)

Freebies
I did two weeks in a McVities factory, and was responsible for putting a new "quality control system" in place (basically I moved the boxes around on the sheet people had to fill in, reprinted it and took the credit for a job well done)

Then, I got expenses for travel between the factory and salford uni, where I was studying... I lived 50 yards from the front door of the factory 8-)

The best bit was having to make three trips to home and back to pick up all the Caramels, Jaffa Cakes and Penguins they gave me.

I a now a fat cunt so I suppose they got the last laugh :-(
(mercemployee, Mon 14 May 2007, 0:39, Reply)

Dead scary. . .
I'm studying Medicine now, so for my work experience I spent a few days in hospital. Two of these days were in the pathology lab - you know, like Quincy? Or that Irish girl from Silent Witness.
Anyway, it seems they have a little ritual for such noobs as myself. I was invited to observe an autopsy, and much to delight, invited further if I'd like to mark with a pen where I thought the lungs might be on this 30something male corpse...

Much to my surprise, as soon as i touched his skin with the pen, he jumped up and yelled something along the lines of, "Boo".



... Much to his surprise, I punched him in the face and broke his nose.

I gave them all flowers and chocolates though.
(voodoo_economics, Mon 14 May 2007, 0:21, Reply)

I spent a year in Germany with a massive ammount
of disposable income.

It was great
( Neon Blue Ah ha ha haa! I feel positively capital!, Mon 14 May 2007, 0:07, Reply)

I did mine at....
Codemasters! For 2 weeks played loads of games that were in development and a few that got canned. Everyone was really cool and they have a pool room and a bowling alley at the offices. (honest! a freaking bowling alley!)
(kramit http://lpjam.blogspot.com/ woo yay, blog spam, Sun 13 May 2007, 23:44, Reply)

Not exactly work experience, but a work related story...

A friend of a friend

Him and another mate of mine once worked in a supermarket warehouse (let's call it Sainbury's distribution centre in haydock).

Said man once brought several packed lunch boxes full of cake into work and promptly offered it out as his 'wife's cakes'. Within minutes, almost all the staff had swallowed a cake or two and that was that...

Two hours later, my other mate comes into work and was greeted by a deafening silence of activity. Nobody was on the warehouse floor, all the trucks and forklift's were abandoned and silence reigned.

My mate explored further and found nearly two hundred workers all huddled in the canteen, near unconscious and asleep and pink eyed. Heads asleep on rolled up newspapers and the smoke room was filled too.
My mate decided to walk past the offices and found just one management guy inside, with a serious frown on his red face, occasionally randomly tapping the keyboard and frowning in confusion, occasionaly rubbing his pink eyes.

Turns out they were spacecakes!

Yay for drugs.

Length? Your sister wasn't complaining.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Sun 13 May 2007, 23:02, Reply)

School
Few years ago I did my w/e. Worked at a local primary school which I used to attend.
Two years after I left the headteacher was outed as a pedophile. I started around the time of the Michael Jackson hoo-hah.
Simply asking a Year 6 (9-10 years old) whether they thought that MJ did it or not got me a reprimand.

Also, I caused injuries and heartbreak.
Being an older brother, picking up smaller childs and swinging them about is second or third nature.
Some small lad called Gavin comes up "swing meeeee!"
Er, ok this is a bit awkward, but I do.
I picked him up under the arms and swung him round, he stuck his legs out and kicked 3 small onlookers in the head. Ohhh dear.
Fortunately my rousing speech of "Oh come on! I'm not crying, I'm cool, cool people don't cry! I thought you were all cool!" inspired them not to tell on me.

The next day the little bastards rushed me and stole my shoes.
There was a girl in the literacy class who fancied me (I can say that with no ego).
Every 5 steps I took I was called over "Deity! I'm stuck on this bit" etc.
After half an hour of this I ignored her... she ran out the room crying, threatening to cut herself... her older sister was a bit emo - monkey see, monkey imitate like a pillock.

Then on my final day it was P.E.
Capture the flag! It was like watching a group of dwarves re-enact the battle of the somme.
The game was called off after 5 minutes.

So after a weeks 'work' (I sat around, walked around, ran around) there were 3 concussions, 2 nosebleeds, 1 fractured wrist, 1 broken heart, 3 skinned knees and 1 bitten lip
BEAT THAT!

Length? The little girl's hands make it look bigger.
(Good Looking Deity Grew a magnificent beard on, Sun 13 May 2007, 21:59, Reply)

Paper Bag Factory
Actually a really good work experience- my uncle is one of the owners (claim to fame or what?) so i went around with him, entertaining clients! it was basically a week long intensive course on how to play golf and make appreciative noises at glasses of wine!

there was also an office bet on the horses on one of the days, and to everyones disgust, i won the best part of £50

i believe i fetched a piece of paper from the warehouse too...
(slurry apologises, Sun 13 May 2007, 21:15, Reply)

Puppy Dogs
I spent my two weeks of work experience working at the local vet clinic. Being a farm girl I was pretty set on the idea of this whole saving the life of animals thing. Aside from foul jobs like washing out the cat and dog cages, I got to do some fun things, like walking the dogs every morning.

It did baffle me a bit, these dogs. They were fit and healthy, in my mind I did wonder why they were there with us.

Question quickly answered on the second last day. They were strays, with a limited time left and it was my job to assist in putting them to sleep. The harsh reality that sometimes it's not about saving lives, but deciding between two healthy animals who will live and who will die.

I went vegetarian for 6 years.

I now work in fashion (no FUR!!!)

Least it answered my career question though.
(Soriah, Sun 13 May 2007, 20:41, Reply)

You couldn't make tea at the age of 15?!

Did you live in a cave for the first 14 years of your life?
(Son of Sam-i-am We're all as mad as hatters here, Sun 13 May 2007, 19:30, Reply)

tea mission
As everyone knows, 'work experience boy' essentially means 'tea maker'
As i was sent to an upmarket sound and vision type shop I was obviously not allowed to do any selling to customers so I was literally relegated to making the tea and watching the snooker on a 48 inch TV.

Unfortunately I was 15 and while I knew the basic ingredients of tea preparation, no one had bothered to fill me in on the *exact* procedure
cue adding 4 teabags directly to the kettle and trying to boil the mixture into tea.
well that didn't work, so I tried again with just water.
The kettle seemed to be taking absolutely AGES to boil and so I started to wonder if it switched off automatically or if it would keep on boiling til it exploded. Obviously I didn't want to risk this so I shut it off and just poured the tea, resulting in shit luke-warm tea.

Did they appreciate my efforts??! Well no, not really. I had to make it again. I did it right from then on though...honest..
(gunken 100% better than tungsten, Sun 13 May 2007, 18:59, Reply)

Sexist Blacksmith...
In grade 10 (Canadian system, age 15-16) I applied for a work experience spot with a blacksmith, who was a neighbour of my woodworking teacher and interested in getting a student helper. No one else was interested, but I didn't get it. Didn't even get a meeting or interview. Reason? I'm a girl.

Not particularly funny in itself, but there's irony there: 11 years on, I've been practicing as a welder and fitter for 7 years, and one of my hobbies is blacksmithing. There's a lesson there (for him, not me).

Stupid sexist twunt of a blacksmith.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Sun 13 May 2007, 18:41, Reply)

This didn't happen to me
but is a ye olde tale related to me by my Grandfather.

Ol' Grandpops was an engineer, and this tale relates to the probably 50s, when he worked for an firm round Leytonstone way. They had a new boy start, fresh from school, all short trousers and rickets as they were in those austere post-war years, the probably 50s.

We all know the scam - the new kid is given a list of stuff to get, tin of holes, elbow grease etc. This kid was either slightly more savvy than usual, or they'd tired of the old cliches and moved onto a new format. They sent the kid for supplies of an actual industrial lubricant, which due to my ignorance of the actual name I'll refer to by the made-up term of Bunkham's Grease.

The kid is told to get a couple of drums of the stuff. The kid is a little confused and asks where to purchase said product. The senior engineers respond with

"The Butcher's of course! Know ye naught?"

Kid shrugs and walks out.
Engineers roll around on the floor laughing. Like he'll get Bunkham's Grease in a retailer of meats. The Butcher's? Gullible boy.

About an hour later Kid strolls back in. Engineers snigger. Did you get it, they asked.

Kid looks confused.
"Yeah"
Produces requested quantity of Bunkham's Grease.

Engineers cease to snigger. They ask where. Nowhere sells Bunkham's Grease over the counter in that area.

Kid looks increasingly baffled.
"The Butcher's, like you said"

The engineers realise that their jape has produced an entirely unexpected result.

"What the f*ck is the Butcher's doing selling Bunkham's Grease?!?!?!?"

Having been let in on the fact that this was a prank, and that he was supposed to return empty handed, having been mocked by the Butcher, to recieve additional mockery from his colleagues, Kid revealed the minutae of his trip.

He had gone to the Butcher's. Asked. Butcher scratches his head and with a little surprise, said that he did. But not because he was a butcher.

Y'see, he had been letting an outbuilding to a couple of guys who did some kind of repairs. They'd shut up shop and scarpered, leaving a ton of back rent and all their gear, at least that which they couldn't carry. This included Bunkham's Grease. Tons of it. The Butcher didn't have a clue what to do with it. So, not only did the engineers get what they wanted, but the kid got it at about half price.

Shocked, they thanked him, and promptly sent him out for a can of holes.
( cs1ca, Sun 13 May 2007, 18:23, Reply)

I worked for a contract cleaner
I was disappointed, I thought it was a "contract cleaner" - not a real cleaner, where I had to bleach toilets and polish knobs
( d.r._and_quinch when will you be famous?, Sun 13 May 2007, 14:12, Reply)

The Dream Job That Wasn't.
I studied design, and my father had a friend in a really swank part of a local holiday town called Knysna who ran a vinyl business printing signs and making accessories like tarpaulins and cushions for boats.

Anyway, at the end of my second year, my father asked me if I fancied a job working as a designer in glorious Knysna. I'd met the guy who ran it before, and he was really nice and I was told I'd be staying at his place (which was also really nice).

Naturally - picturing myself designing things in the morning and waterskiing in the afternoon - I said: "Wahey!"

As this idyllic working jaunt approached, I was told that I was no longer going to be staying with the owner, because his wife had just had guests for a while and wanted privacy. My father organised me a free place to stay with some friends of his who ran a holiday farm. Mountainside chalets and so on. Quite picturesque. Well, this didn't sound so bad. The farm was nice. Nice job. Nice town.

Anyway, when I arrived, I was informed that I'd have to cycle to work (I couldn't drive at the time). Work started at 7AM and so I had to be on my bike at 4:30AM or so to get down the corrugated mountain road to be picked up by the workers' bus. When I say "down" the road, the first kilometre or so was downhill, precipitously so, prompting many moments of sheer terror as my bike shook me to bits on the corrugations and tried to hurl me from the hairpin switchback corners. This downhill was followed by a few kilometres of uphill consisting of corrugations interspersed with long stretches of lovely soft, deep sand that functioned as gravel traps and forced one to get off and push.

It was a coastal town, so the mornings that weren't bone-chillingly damp and misty were rainy. Even though it was a summer holiday in Africa, I usually waited shivering for the bus, my hands white-knuckled and cramping from rictus-gripping the brakes on the descent.

As for the job itself. I was not a designer. I was a factory lackey. Peeling the labels off bottles to prepare them for screen-printing. Painting noxious waterproofing onto fabric umbrellas. Cutting, punching and contact-gluing bits of vinyl together with a heat-gun, fuming about ten IQ points out of my brain and sowing the chemical seeds of future cancers.

When I got home, exhausted and braindead, I would pay my way by helping about the farm, working in the woodshop, inhaling sawdust, feeding animals, wandering through the lacerating bush in the icy dark to the next valley to feed their absent hippie neighbour's enormous, angry pigs heavy buckets of stinking refuse.

I adjusted, and tried to see the lighter side, and hey: money! So after the first week's grind, I received my first remuneration. A stunning total based on increments of the princely sum of 30p an hour.

No, I told myself, you're a big fellow. Chin up! Endure! It'll build character!

The second week, of course, was no better, and so I surrendered and went home.
(Ladyfingers is in your wardrobe,, Sun 13 May 2007, 13:55, Reply)

I am going
to work in a fireworks factory

lets hope I don't...

...EEEEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
(abignumber, Sun 13 May 2007, 12:47, Reply)

What were the chances?
A few years ago when I was studying Journalism in Dublin's fair city, I managed to get work experience in a famous Dublin listings magazine. My initial excitement was quashed when I realised I would not be brought along to interview rock stars. No, my 2 weeks would mainly consist of coffee runs and sorting out the back catalogue room and picture library. The usual work experience shite.
Towards the end of the two weeks, they finally gave me a brief; to write quite a long and important article about Paddy’s Day. I was gonna be paid and all, at the normal rate, so I was mad excited.

I wrote me article, handed it in, and went on my merry way, pleased that I would finally get a proper article printed in a proper paper for proper money. I waited in excitement for the issue with my article to come out.
Alas, fate was against me.

Paddy’s Day was cancelled. Fecking foot and mouth.
No article, no money, one very pissed off 17yr old Journalism student.

Insert generic joke about length here.
(Do The Whirlwind, Sun 13 May 2007, 12:46, Reply)

I did some work once
it was a horrible experience, shan't bother with that again
(StumpsForArms&NoEyebrows, Sun 13 May 2007, 11:59, Reply)

Cornish Pasties in the samples oven
I'm an A level student, doing maths, chem and phys. I want to be a chemical engineer, so last summer I got a student placement at a small, friendly engineering firm in Somerset. I was working with two other students, one from France, one from Malaysia. We had to work in the labs, testing how quickly different chemicals were filtered through a sieve like material. After filtering them, we had to dry them in a big old industrial oven.

So, it's slow work day, myself and the other two students are in the lab, browsing pron and b3ta on the company laptop. I nip down to the shop for some Ginsters pasties. I like them warm, so I stuff them into the samples oven, next to the filtered and drying samples of tin mine effluent, copper sulphate - toxic stuff.

Just so happens that day, the company are doing a Health and Safety inspection...

In walks the HS officer, who wanders around, checking bottles and stuff. She then looks at us, and says 'Can you smell something? Like pastry?' before walking off. Close call. I'm sure she was suspicious when she went in again and found three pasty wrappers on the bench, and pastry crumbs in the oven!

They paid me £6.50 per hour to eat pasties and watch porn on their laptop. Even worse, I heard they went bankrupt this March.

I'm an evil, evil person
(Pharsalus, Sun 13 May 2007, 11:46, Reply)

Fishy Carrots anyone?
not exactly work experience but i had to share this one.

When i was at college i had a part time job in a local fruit and veg store. Southport to be precise and it was right by the train station. Fantastic, everyday 1000's of fine totty specimens waltzed by, it was like fish in a barrel anyway i digress.The guy i worked with had keys to the shop and would go out on the town after work most saturdays. He was quite a good looking guy and would usually score.His party piece was to bring them back to the shop and use various vegetables in his sex acts. Worst thing was he would put them back on the shelf unwashed!
(wardicus, Sun 13 May 2007, 9:54, Reply)

Poll Tax Fun
Finished college looking for a job so off i toddled to the local job centre. I told the nice lady how much money i would like and she looked at me like i was nuts!

She went away and came back a few minutes later with a smile on her face, i have just the job, working for the local council in the poll tax department.

How popular was I?

anyway the job was easy and the office full of lame nuts that only a council could employ.

I soon found that the best skive was to work in the letter stuffing department, some machine did all the work and i just watched it.

I then hatched a plan, the letters i was stuffing were demands for payment and i actually knew a few of the people i was sending them to. After a few slight alterations with a marker pen to the bills bingo, the new penalty for not paying your poll tax was being hung drawn and quartered!

hated the job and jacked it in soon after but i would have loved to see their faces.
(wardicus, Sun 13 May 2007, 9:17, Reply)

And later I found that...
When I was 16 the only job that presented itself to me was working construction as a basic laborer.

This entailed moving piles of trash, compacting earth, digging through mud puddles, waddling in sewage to "find pipes", and jackhammering concrete that had already been thrown away.

Years later, having dinner with the owner of the company, I found that my father had intervened and asked that I be given the worst jobs on the site, things not even migrant workers laboring for almost no pay would do.

That was excellent for our relationship.
(meltthefork, Sun 13 May 2007, 7:53, Reply)

My first summer job. Cutting grass in the local cemetery.
I got issued with: A petrol driven strimmer. A pair of steel toecapped boots so as not to cut my toes off. A boiler suit. Heavy duty gloves. And a perspex face visor.
Being young and stupid, my first morning I thought "Fuck this, the boots, yes, but the boiler suit? No way man, I'll be fucking roasting with that on. So, off I wandered to the part of the cemetery I'd been told to clear, in jeans and t-shirt.
Three minutes later I was throwing up everywhere and realising just WHY I'd been given the boiler suit and visor.
There were slugs in the grass. Lots of them. and bits of a lot of them were all over me. And in my horror my jaw had dropped open so I'd even ingested bits of slug.
The rest of the summer I didn't care how hot it was. The boiler suit and visor didn't come off until they'd been thouroughly hosed down by my colleagues at the end of the shift.
Length? Those slug pieces were TINY.
( stuj (^(^;;^)^) GO TEAM SPIDERS!(^(^;;^)^), Sun 13 May 2007, 3:33, Reply)

RIGHT THEN.
Now, I could just repost THIS but I won't.

As a student nurse you get sent on many and varied 'placements' which differ from work experience in that generally you actually learn stuff and are receiving a nominal payment for your services.

One of the more memorable places I was sent was to an elderly person's psychiatric unit.

*important note - all names are changed*

It was one of the kind of psyche units where the staff are distinguished from the in mates by the fact that they wear name badges and was populated by a number of 'characters' such as Rob the unit manager, who wasn't allowed coffee as apparently he used to 'drink anything up to 30 cups a day and I went a bit mad on it'.
I later discovered that he's actually been admitted to another psyche unit a few months previously and the staff had visited him in order to get timesheets signed off.

Or Alf, one of the long term inmates.
Alf was an 87 year old gentleman with a quite magnificent form of senile dementia.
Like a cross between Father Jack and Foul Ole Ron from the discworld novels he would stride imperiously around the unit shouting things like 'WHERE'S THE FUCKING BUCKET MANGLER GONE?' or 'SOME BASTARD'S COLLATING THE AIR AGAIN', he was however on some level still aware of what was going on and, come medication time, would inevitably say to whoever was giving him medicine 'I'm not taking that unless you share it with me', eventually the staff resorted to crushing his tablets and putting it in his coffee, but this just led to him 'generously' sharing his coffee with a fellow inmate.

One of Alf's particular foibles was his dislike of trousers, particularly at visiting times and on more than one occasion, I had to remove a turd from the unit 'dayroom' that was deposisted there by a benignly grinning Alf, who would then proceed to amble around the unit, dressed in only an adult nappy and his slippers from the waist down, greeting visitors with a merry cry of 'FUCK, THE WALNUTS ARE MIGRATING'.

Another inmate, Annie was another shit terrorist, her speciality was using other patient's toilets, not a problem in itself but she would insist on barging in and sitting down and using the toilet regardless of if there was anyone in there or not.
Her final triumph came on my last day on the unit.

There was one chap on the unit, and there's always one, who was called Gerald who had been declared sane and was awaiting rehousing, that said he was a real pain in the arse, inisiting on things being 'just so' and telling staff how to do their jobs and suchlike.
Annie had disappeared for a while and we started hunting for her, no sooner had the search started then the cry emanated from Gerald's room: 'SHE'S SHIT IN MY CLEAN LAUNDRY BASKET!'

Dear old Annie, her eyesight never was the best.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Sun 13 May 2007, 3:18, Reply)

below
shame it didn't teach spelling or grammar...

!
!
!
V
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Sun 13 May 2007, 1:44, Reply)

animal lover?
Well i was the kind of kid at school who was always trying to make the others laugh and wind up the teachers.
Such exploits as getting a girl to pass out then covering her in red paint to make a woodwork teacher think we had killed her. then after he had rushed out reviving her and sitting at our desks insisting that nothing had happened when he returned with the head of woodwork and taking the school out on strike come to mind.
So maybe it was niave of me to think the head master would give me the work experiance i had asked for.
Well in a way the bar stud did and in a way he cracked a joke far far funnier then any i had made.
I asked for a placemement working with animals.
So in assembly one morning the headmaster calls my name with all the others going on work experiance and with more relish than i frankly think was needed announced. "Well Samantha i have managed to get you a placement working with animals just like you asked me to"
Oh how my little face lit up.
"Its at Barratts and Bairds"
This my friends was the areas SLAUGHTER HOUSE!!
his excuse?
"Well you didnt say they had to be LIVE animals?"
So fast forward to me in a stinky blood covered overall packaging dead cows and sheeps and piggies!
Got the barstud back by locking him in a cupboard lol!
(cornish_breeze I havnt failed! I found 1000 ways that didnt work!, Sun 13 May 2007, 1:20, Reply)

For fax sake
We had this 16 year old lad in for a week of work experience as a 'junior office assistant'. I gave him a pile of about 1000 faxes to send to clients, and he duly scurried off to the post room to start the tedious task of tapping in numbers and feeding the sheets in. We had a particularly decrepit old fax machine, which required the operator to hold the paper and manually feed it, and had a nasty habit of refusing to send more than one page at a time, so I figured this would keep him occupied for the best part of a couple of days.

Less than a day later this lad comes back looking pleased with himself as he'd done the lot. I was impressed, so I figured he was ready for a bit more responsibility. I sent him off to the stationery cupboard to count the biros and tidy the box of Post-It notes and then the phone rang. It was a client, wondering if we'd meant to fax them a blank sheet. Then another one, and another.

The little twerp had sent 1000 faxes the wrong side up.
(se8card, Sun 13 May 2007, 0:00, Reply)

Working for the local paper
As a (younger) teenager, I was told I had to do my work experience. So, since I was interested in writing I worked at the local newspaper (me mum knew the editor).

First day, I was told to turn up at the local bus depot to help someone interview the people there about a new scheme. So, I turned up 5 minutes early and waited. And waited. And then waited some more. Luckily the people at the depot noticed I was hanging around and struck up a conversation & were very nice to me. Eventually the reporter turns up (about half an hour late) and we do the interview with the nice bus people, though I remain silent as I have no clue what to do - I wasn't even told beforehand what it was about! When we go to the office, however, it turns out that they think the scheme is a waste of money and so basically slag off the nice bus people. Suddenly I get my first taste of the real world: speaking to these lovely guys then proclaiming that what they say is rubbish.

Anyway, after that I was basically stuck doing photocopying and proof-reading, though I did get to write odd tidbits about news no-one else wanted to do; "Mrs Jones' parrot said a bad word last night, police are investigating" and the like. Most of these, I noticed, never got printed (teh bastardness!). Luckily the reporters were reasonably friendly, though they obviously regarded me as a burden, giving me 2 hour lunch breaks where I'd roam around alone (it was in Hertfordshire, whereas I live in London so didn't know anywhere/anyone).

But one day, I was taken by this quite friendly chap to the police station to talk to their PR guy about what'd been going down with the perps lately and all that, and was told to take notes so I could write their usual crime report (Got my name printed - woo yay!). During the talk, a screen on the wall suddenly broke off it's fastenings and fell down to the floor with a mighty *CRASH!!!*, so we all turned our heads as the PR guy looked on in total horror.
Behind there, there were classified diagrams and mission plans for a new type of technology for identifying criminals using footprints and gaits in a new way, which was being pioneered in our borough as well as a few others! So, we were made to swear to secrecy and not tell a soul, and I was well chuffed when I saw the technique appear in the papers half a year later as a success!

After that, it was all very dull and I was back to menial tasks and tidbits of boring news, with my lunch breaks getting ever longer. I struck up quite a rapport with the canteen people over the time and passed my time eating there slowly and reading, and when back from my lunch breaks I pretended to work (i.e. sat looking bored - I didn't dare use the interweb much cos it was an open plan office and so everyone could see what I was doing!)

On my last day, after print day when activity was especially low, I was approached by a young lass in the canteen who had also been doing work experience that week at a paper that we shared the building with and had apparently noticed me around. Unfortunately, she was not exactly the most beautiful belle of the ball, but I was never one to snub conversation with a like-minded person (especially when bored).
She mentioned her school during converse, so I just said "Oh right yeah, I know quite a few people there". She then made me name every single person I knew from that school, and proceeded to slag off each one of them: "He's so lanky!", "She thinks she's soooo funny", "Oh that geekazoid" and so on, to the point where I really considered chucking this plain-looking, spoilt brat out the window.
So I made my excuses and got up to leave the canteen. She grabbed my hand and asked where I was going so quickly. Here I faced a choice: suffer the abject boredom of post print-day shite, or significantly lower my standards for this girl.

We ended up tongue-wrestling in a store cupboard for a good twenty minutes.

Result.

Apologise for length? I felt obliged to, it was pretty cramped in there.
(Adamish Time of death, Sat 12 May 2007, 23:59, Reply)

Garage porn...
When i was 16 my stint of work expirience was in a large car dealership in kidderminster. I was stuck in the spares department, which was run by 2 rough old codgers in their 60's and a "mutton dressed as lamb" assistant who was going on 90 bless her!

The work involved sitting on your arse until someone wanted a part, which you'd write the code down and venture upstairs to find in this humungus wharehouse ( only used by the old codgers & me). On day 3 on my 1st week, i discovered the garages not-so-well hidden amsterdam hard core porn stash.

Everytime i was sent for a spare part (about 3 to 5 times a day max) i'd sneak off for a crafty shuffle amongst the exhausts & brake pads.It was quite a thrill at the time.I used to look out over the garage watching everyone work, i swear that once the old biddy from the spares dept looked me in the eye whilst i was on the vinegar strokes. I'll never know. That week really flew by :)
(chop chop old boy, Sat 12 May 2007, 23:17, Reply)