my work experience as a mighty Pharoah

didn't go too well. Firstly my statue broke, then I accidentally turned most of my kingdom into a desert. My supervisor looked upon my works and despaired.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 15 May 2007, 1:42, Reply)

Work Experience
I did it at an Electrician's. They had a contract with Nissan to test out the car radios so I spent one day doing that with one of the blokes. We tested about 5 which were working ok, so he goes "Well if the first 5 are working then the other 295 must be". We spent the rest of the day playing cards with his nudie deck. I think that was one of the first times I'd seen a fanny. Oh, those were the days.
(Fatima Whitbread's hardon drugs and the causes of drugs, Tue 15 May 2007, 1:03, Reply)

Ghastly
Work. A horrible nasty experience. Got to go through it all again tomorrow, and the day after, and then Thursday, and Friday

Length? Until I'm 75 at least :-(
(Biff..., Tue 15 May 2007, 0:19, Reply)

A life of grime
Somehow I ended up doing my work experience with the environmental health department of the local council. The first day started well: our mission for the day was to "sample ice cream" which sounded ridiculous, but I could live with it. Apparently the only case of typhoid the county had seen came from a dirty Mr. Whippy van. Fair enough then.

And then it went bad. Firstly in delivering the ice cream samples to the local public health lab I got lost and blundered into the Level 3 lab. Basically where they do all the TB and HIV work. Ooops

The next day was with trading standards. A farmer had bought a 4x4 with about 20,000 miles knocked off the clock. So we traipsed off to the dirtiest and stinkiest farm I'd ever seen, knee deep in assorted shit and corruption, and then took witness statements while drinking tea made with stale milk in mugs with bite marks on the edge and trying to politely remove the horny pet dog from my leg. At the end of that I just wanted a bath, but we had to go interview the second hand car dealer. The TS officer reverse parking the car "for a quick escape" while recounting the times he'd been stabbed on the job was not a good omen. Once in the office, with the dealer's brick shithouse of a son stood blocking the door, and the dealer having established that he "knew exactly where I live" it got nasty. John "Scientology and Me" Sweeney nasty. It's the only time I've ever considered throwing myself out of a window to escape. Until he got put away for putting aforementioned son in intensive care after he drunk drove a Subaru Impreza from his showroom through the middle of roundabouts and finally into someone's living room a few weeks later I was bricking it that psycho car dealer would hunt me down and cut me up into little pieces.

The final day was probably the worst. I got sent out with the animal welfare officer. That day he was on a one-man crackdown of illegal puppy farms. The day started out with comedy when he ignored a gate plastered with "beware of the dog" signs only to be chased by a pack of Alsatians big enough to be called thou. He got licked to death.

But we ended up in a run down country house waiting for the RSPCA to come help us as the whiff of piss, shit and death had led us to find a shed full of puppies and bitches. Some had died. Some were dying. Two puppies were floating in a trough nearby, quite possibly where the owner had drowned them. They were all mangy, malnourished and flearidden to fuck. Rats were scurrying around feeding on the dead dogs and eyeing us up as if to wonder whether we'd taste nice with ketchup. The owner finally turned up, a charming old lady with a medal for firefighting during the blitz and an utter disregard for the animals she flogged for hundreds of quid each. The Great British public can be honourable and horrible in the same breath.

Which is why I now prefer working with deadly raspberry shaped mutant murder fungi to people.
(mochyn, Mon 14 May 2007, 23:09, Reply)

Loved my work experience
as a Physiotherapist's Assistant in a well known Sheffield hospital. Exercising with the out-patients on the biggest beach balls ever, warming my hands in the 'limb warming wax bath', playing in the hydrotherapy pool, weaving my own basket in Occupational Therapy, playing 'guess the stain' whilst cleaning wheelchairs, access to enough 'extra care' vasaline to keep my hand soft all day and spending the last day being 'potted up' in the plaster room to get all my mates to sign/draw on my arm when I got back to school. Jeez, I enjoyed being 15 years old!
( Grem was invited out to smoke cigars in the pub tonight, Mon 14 May 2007, 22:33, Reply)

IT guys suck ass
In year 10 we had to do a week's work experience. Being a budding journalist (!) I wanted to work for the local paper but I was too young for editorial, so they shoved me in IT. I was fairly advanced at IT but being a quiet 15 yr old girl I think they must've thought I was a bit thick, cos the first task they gave me was to draw a room plan on MS Paint. I went back to him 5 minutes later with the printout and he looked mightily fooked off that I hadn't taken the whole morning to do it. By the second day I was so bored I got myself transferred up to advertising, which was basically just faxing stuff all day, but the archive was up there and I spent a fair bit of time looking up old embarassing pics of my friends.

My first Saturday job was in a well known catalogue chain store. If you've ever wondered why you have to wait for your stuff longer at the weekend/school hols, here's why. We discovered the art of trolley jousting. Two people in trolleys armed with curtain poles being shove towards each other - hours of entertainment!
( El Lazarus is calm now, Ish,, Mon 14 May 2007, 22:00, Reply)

Bit boring...
Eons ago, when I was 15, I worked in a restaurant a few nights a week for some dosh to help pay for my schooldays smoking and drinking. On my first night, Chef sent me to the storeroom to get a can of sparrows milk, he said it was a really tiny tin, so I had to look hard for it.

Ha! I shown them - I found one!

Oooh, think my panities are too tight. Just felt something 'pop!'
(Not now Darling I liked it until, Mon 14 May 2007, 19:47, Reply)

first works experiance
I wanted to be a vet back then, that was until i did works experiance on a farm; preparing bottles for the lambs etc was alright, but one of my first jobs? Cleaning out the pig pens. Not only did the piglets escape so i had to go on a wild goose chase after them, i had to do it all under the eyes of some random visitor who decided to stand and watch me.
I only worked 5 days of the 2 weeks

....i'm now doing performing arts at university
(icely05 suggests killing the frosties kid, Mon 14 May 2007, 19:32, Reply)

till rolls
I did my first work experience in a small independent shop selling luxury items.
I worked on the till and asked one of the others what to do with the till roll when it was full (a record of all the sales before computers were in charge).
She said "Oh I dunno I think you throw them away".
So we chucked them all out, until one day the Inland Revenue came round with some accountants..
Anyway I came back the following Saturday and the owner was sitting on the floor with no stock. He wrote to a magazine and blamed it on us, but he should have payed his taxes innit. And he had silly hair so whatever.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Mon 14 May 2007, 19:09, Reply)

Work Experience
I did my work experience bug testing at Lionhead studios. If only my day-to-day job was anywhere near as exciting. Now I sit on a helpdesk changing passwords all day long, and trying to overcaffienate myself into an early heart attack. :(
(DrSoloManiac, Mon 14 May 2007, 17:36, Reply)

Now I know this story may not be believed...
...but I shall share anyway. I once worked with someone who previously worked in the world of football agents, and I was told this tale from one of the players she dealt with.

Go back a few years into the mid-90s, and a certain team from the North-West who play in red were in Oslo in Norway for a friendly. The agency in Norway who were there to look after the players decided, in their wisdom, to send a very pretty young 18-year-old work experience girl to look after the team. Oh dear.

So the team go to a bar and start drinking, and of course are buying the pretty young Norwegian lots of drinks, and it quickly becomes clear that she is not used to this volume of drink. Of course she is still the centre of attention, but soon appears very worse-for-wear... until the players notice a strange smell... the poor girl has shat herself in front of them!

At this point the poor girl gets swiftly taken away by one of the players. When he is asked what happened the following morning, he tells that he took her back to her flat, cleaned her (and apparentally the phrase used was 'scooped the shit out'), showered her and fucked her. Very gentlemanly eh?

Now that was quite a bad work experience don't you think?

(Oh, and if you are wondering who the player was, he was an England international, had a high-profile wedding just a few months later, and is still on TV a lot)

(Insert cock joke here)
(hit me with your jesus stick, Mon 14 May 2007, 17:28, Reply)

Just got back from my first day of work experience
Pizza Hut in Swindon. I now know how to make a Stuffed Crust Pizza and also that blood doesn't necessarily make a tasty topping. My fingers hurt :-(
(littlenipple hate's bad grammar, Mon 14 May 2007, 17:22, Reply)

Not exactly MY first experience of work, but...
This young chap started at my dad's work, and he obviously got the mandatory stick that he rightfully deserved. My dad sent the kid to the other side of their massive building to ask a co-worker for some "clagnuts". Needless to say, the young chap soon learnt something that took me 21 years to figure out: don't listen to my dad.
(Roll Fizzlebeef enjoys a good Cleveland Steamer, Mon 14 May 2007, 16:33, Reply)

had to share with you
I know its meant to be about my work exerience but since mine was stuck in a lawnmower repair place it would make a bit of a crap story.

On the other hand we have a workie in with us just now how made life a tad more interesting last week. We had sent him down to the canteen to put a new PC in the office there. He was bored waiting for the PC to load so as you do started looking about. He found a button on the desk and thought he would give it a press. Nothing happened. He pressed again and a couple more times for luck. Just over five minutes passed and then the door was flung open and the room filled with burly police officers. The cheeky wee workie scamp had only been battering away on the silent alarm. Canteen ladies took pity on him and talked the large men out of battering him to a pulp.

Not seen him press to much this week.

Size - his shrunk with fear!
(Billy Sastard, Mon 14 May 2007, 16:33, Reply)

work experience
I have done amazing voluntary things in my home village eg, boatbuilding, building a school, and building the community center What do you think they call me "Dennis the Boatbuilder" or "Dennis the Schoolbuilder". Honestly, you suck one fucking cock...
(amy crackpipe firing up Camden, Mon 14 May 2007, 16:08, Reply)

Pubic service
I did an internship at my local electoral commission a couple of years ago, and had a lovely time. The people were very nice, there was cake for birthdays (and about six people had birthdays while I was there), on Fridays we'd get in a couple of OK bottles of wine and get tiddly, the work was interesting and rewarding and once I got to share the Parliamentary library (which looked like Hogwarts) with a former Premier of Victoria (John Cain - I'll tell you about the time I worked for Jeff some other day).

Anyway, as a result of this pleasant experience, after I graduate in about two weeks I'm going to join the public service. In light of Vipros' comment below, does anyone want to warn me off now? (Especially since I have a half-completed application to the former DIMIA in front of me. First question: "Can you tell the difference between a mentally unstable Australian citizen and a European overstayer?")
(Emily Bruce-Dickinson http://jovialfellow.blogspot.com/, Mon 14 May 2007, 15:36, Reply)

primary school
In the 'foundation stage' (ie they put the nursery and reception classes together) of a primary school for a week, one day they bring the year 1 class in to watch Words And Pictures. All about words with the 'ah' sound in the middle. At the end, the year 1 teacher asks the assorted 3-6 year olds to come up with 10 more words with the same sound in the middle. The normal 'cat' 'bat' etc come up, one smart arse comes up with 'tractor', and when they're looking for one more word, one little girl puts her hand up and shouts 'CRAP!'
Fortunately I was sat behind the class, so I could giggle guiltlessly.
(and now for someone completely different, Mon 14 May 2007, 15:12, Reply)

im a medical student
every day is like work experience. you turn up everyday, no on wants you there, they make you do horrid things like poke fingers into places that although finger sized arent for putting fingers in (usually). on the plus side it is fun to run up and down corridors pretenting you are important (Rather than less impoirtant the ward cat would be if they had one)

one such place was a secure unit for those with hideous mental problems and a predisposition to extreme violence. "so why were you sent to solitary cofinement then mr x?"

"i just flip out sometimes. i get so mad i just attack people. with no warning. i dont even know what makes me do it. i just attack. i tried to stab someone with a spoon. he had been pissing me of by looking at me funny. the fuckin spoon bent on his collarbone didnt it so i just beat him up"

said by a sociopath who i was locked in a small room with.

panic button, supervison from burly looking staff, being sat between the sociopath and the door - you'll be lucky

length - he almost beat me to death with it
( bertisfantastic bert is a sleepy bear, Mon 14 May 2007, 14:48, Reply)

GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY
GAY........ that is the only word i can use to describe my work experience. whilst all the other lads were doing bloke things like building, police work, and other non-gay activities, i was placed at a pet-grooming parlour.

which wouldnt have been so bad had i not been the school nutter/bad boy/cunt. i had a very bad reputation as a criminal,and this wasnt doing my street cred any good. i was so ashamed.

so you can imagine what is was like, when i was out the back washing shit from some dogs arse, some cunt wandered in and stole one of the girls purses, and the whole days takings. considering it was one of her busiest days, and they charge £80/£200 per dog groom, this was a lot.

prime suspect? me.

fuck it.

went back the next day aswell. with everyone giving me the cold shoulder, still stuck it out for two weeks tho, to prove it wasnt me. won an award at school for that. wow.........

should have been me that nicked that fucking money.
(mr kyle he's a silly bastard, the one who posted before me, Mon 14 May 2007, 14:37, Reply)

a message to bushman and others....
while your work experience/job may sound like it's going to be good, ultimately it will be made up of the same mundanity as most other people's jobs.

I, for example, mainly make and run hydraulic models for modelling waves and flooding and stuff like that. doesn't sound too bad right?

it actually involves a lot of pissing about with excel, a lot of swearing at the modelling software and some headaches.

Ive also done some structural design. regardless of what the thing is going to be in the end, be it a massive prestigious bridge or building, or something small and shitty, the actual work that is done is more or less the same; it leaves you feeling kind of bored and chances are you won't see the end product.

welcome to the world

apologies for cynicism
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 14 May 2007, 14:30, Reply)

Ahh - fantastic!
I thought, as we were expected to find our own place to do work experience. All the other kids were going on about how they knew Architects, Lawyers and Doctors and how they were going to have the best placement. We had to spend two days at our joint, before writing a report and preparing a presentation for the class.

So, while all the other kids were presumably coaxing a couple of days out of a lawyer/architect/doctor family friend I ambled next door to where I lived at the time. It was a lovely couple who lived there who owned their own business and were more than happy to take me on for the couple of days. My Mum and Dad were fine with it, they were an open minded bunch.

Back at School on the Wednesday, having spent a great couple of days taking photos, in the workshop, asking what certain things were for, and generally having a good time.

Presentations were due - I stepped up and cleared my throat. The title was "My Two Days at Feticular (name changed)"

Yes, I had spent my work experience at a supremely high end fetish store. Open mouths round the classroom, I doubt most of them even knew what fetish was (past whips and handcuffs) at 16, let alone electrified butt plugs and domination chairs.

I was dragged up in front of the Deputy Head, but I had done nothing wrong, so they had to let me go with a letter to my parents.
(Himjim died a little more inside on, Mon 14 May 2007, 13:50, Reply)

Zombies
Many moons ago my mate was sat in his local cinema watching the start up adverts for "Films you may enjoy".
One of the trailers was a zombie flick, saying something like "What would you do if Zombies came at YOU??".

Cue the lights to come up and show a bunch of people all zombie'd up, groaning and shuffling around the cinema.
Unfortunately for them my friend, who was in the Marines at the time, is the kind of bloke that really gets wrapped up in fiction. Really absorbs the atmosphere.

So when one of the zombies bites into a person who is obviously a plant, and fake blood start spraying everywhere, this friend of mine switches into combat mode.

All the zombies were work experience kids. All of them were sent to hospital. Most of them had something broken or dislocated. None of them have been back to that cinema yet.

(Note: not my story, but it's fairly accurate to what my house-mate told me happened.)
( Pointy Head poked another hole in my anorak on, Mon 14 May 2007, 13:00, Reply)

Tears?
Not my personal work experience but that of my old school friend "meatball." Meatball was habitually bullied throughout his school life mainly due to the fact he had a head shape very similar to that of a... Meatball.

Anyway it's year 10 and we all have to get work experience and somehow Senor Meatball is able to get a 2 week placement with a local Architect firm. Meatball has wanted to be an Architect all his life and is therefore dead chuffed. He goes on and on about how good his work experience is going to be and even tells me that they will likely offer him part time job once he has finished. As it get closer to the first week of work experience, it’s obvious that for once in his life Meatball has got something to look forward to. He struts round the school with a smile, even as the local bullies take their allotted pound of flesh.


Two days into the first week and I give meaty a call to see how everything is going and tell him how bored I am. Meatball tells me that he is now working with his mum and that his other placement "Didn't work out."


Once I get back to School I find out the full story.When Meatball had turned up to his dream work experience they had told him to wait in one of the stock rooms whilst they sorted "some admin". After 4 hours of waiting Meatball started to need the toilet and was worried that they had forgotten him and starting crying. He then proceeded to run out of the office with tears running down his overly large head where he was seen by the vast majority of the bullying elite who were working on the adjacent building site. He was then chased for the remainder of his journey and ended up begging the school receptionist to let him back in school...
(delrond, Mon 14 May 2007, 12:21, Reply)

Unpaid work - never again
When I was about 14 in the August school holidays my mother thought it would be a good idea to send me off to do some voluntary work at an institution in Newport on the Isle of Wight that catered for children with special needs. So I got the bus from Cowes to the place and saw through the window what looked like a small gym with vinyl-covered soft cushions in various different sizes and colours. I wasn't briefed for what was about to occur but on entering the hall this child came up to me covered in snot and other stuff - excrement * ? I can't describe it but on a closer inspection the cushions had been affected with something similar and equally as horrible. The place was filthy. Then I had to help feed these poor children, they were very badly affected with all sorts of different problems......what a horror story.....anyway I don't know whether it's still there but I got out as soon as possible. When I got home I cried, mostly in shock as to what I'd seen, and begged my mother not to make me go back. She told me off for running away and I had to suffer and listen to the phone call she made to the warden to explete me from my duties.

Funny really because I asked her about it the other day and she can't remember any of it. Dementia must have set in. She remembers trotting little brother off to the garlic farms though where he spent 6 weeks picking the stuff, but he earned money, the brat.

* could have been mud though
( Tiggy the diver, Mon 14 May 2007, 12:20, Reply)

First day at Handley Page
My Dad spent three years in the RAF as a conscript and was demobbed as a qualified radio operator. This led to a career in various companies designing and engineering equipment for the aircraft industry (given the total ineptitude of his DIY skills, one wonders why so few English Electric Lightning interceptors fell out of the sky), before being hired by Handley Page Aircraft Ltd.

Handley Page operated out of a ramshackle building in Radlett, Herts (so named "Fred's Shed" in honour of the company's founder, Sir Frederick Handley Page). Despite the heath robinson nature of the building, HP were tasked with manufacturing state of the art Victor nuclear bombers for the RAF. These massive planes were slightly larger than the Airbus you last flew to Barcelona in, flew twice as high and could exceed the speed of sound. In stark contrast to their clapboard factory, they looked like something out of a 1950s Dan Dare comic, with sleek and swoopy lines and four fuck off jet engines.

Anyway, on his first day Dad asks where he'll find the bathroom.

"Down the stairs, turn right and follow the corridor to the end" is the reply.

With no reason to suspect sabotage, off he goes to the gents which is in keeping with the ramshackle appearence of the rest of the office. He sits down on the seat and closes the cubicle door, noting that there seemed to be a lack of paper.


"Ker-boom! ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"

"W-what t-the f-fu???"

An apocalyptic noise shatters the peace and quiet and starts to violently shake the whole toilet block. Plaster is seen falling from the ceiling as the deafening noise reverberates around the place, which totally ruined Dad's moment of quiet contemplation sat reading the "Daily Racism" on the throne. He said later that the vibration from four Rolls Royce Conway jet engines being unexpectedly started up and given some welly shook fillings loose.

Turned out that some japester had sent him to the disused toilets which were located just behind the testing area. The test crew of a newly built Victor bomber were waiting for a signal from the drawing office to spool up all four engines which amusingly coincided with Dad's visit to the lav.

It was a traditional jape to send the new guy off to be scared witless, but amends were made much later when Dad was taken on a few low level trips round Hertfordshire in the jumpseat of a giant nuclear bomber.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 14 May 2007, 12:13, Reply)

What is work?
I am so posh i got my butler to do mine.
(turtles head is touching cloth poked a dwarf on the forehead at, Mon 14 May 2007, 11:34, Reply)

i wanted to work in the local theatre....
But I had submitted my form at the last minute - so i got the scraping out of the bottom of the barrel...

I was told to go to the local Mental ..er..Psychiatric hospital..where I would be working in the garden.

So I turned up the first day (cycled across town) in jeans, shirt and heavy work boots, and put in the poly tunnel weeding the dailias or some shit...An hour later, the boss cam over and said " Er, you b'ain't supposed to be in yere, you'm be for the rehab waaard" (did I mention it was the west country?)
So Off I troop to the rehab ward, which is a nice place where people who are deemed not quite as mental as some, as put so they can earn £1 an hour packing chalk into boxes, or scooping gelatinous slime into pots for kids (like Kids don;t generate enough on their own) .
It was hell..two old geezers started scrapping over who gets to use the mahcine to put the lids on....one bloke tried to sell me his car "Its okay, I'm just 15 mate", "Its a sweet runner, mot, the lot" "Thast great, but I am 15" "4 new tyres..." etc
And the amount of times I was asked, "What aer you in here for, have you bad thoughts like me" *rolls eyes in head like drunken Fish*

Theres more, but all you need to know is that I spent a week in a room with mentallists...proper ones...shit-your-pants scarey ones..nice.
(Rockster77, Mon 14 May 2007, 11:14, Reply)

Year 11, aged 16
I already had a Saturday job but my school insisted that I needed to spend a week on a local conservation project.

It was the coldest week of the year and we were digging snow. With specials.

No one told us the project was for adults with severe learning difficulties. I was quite scared when one of them tried dagging me into the compost loo with him. However, the guy in the fez who forgot how to stand every few minutes managed to make me smile.

Please click 'I like this' if you've had to suffer at the cruel hands of the school 'careers' advisor!
(Rachel B, Mon 14 May 2007, 9:48, Reply)

Been working as a hotel porter in Portugal all week.
God, lose one kid and I get a bad evaluation.
( __, Mon 14 May 2007, 2:46, Reply)

take that!
my dad used to run a business centre for a large cockney rhyming slang bank up in manchester. when we were about 13, my best friend and i had a day's work experience there. we were shown around the office by a rather desultory and ineffectual new young chap named mark who didn't really seem to know where anything went or what he was doing.

his full name, it turned out, was mark owen and he didn't like working in the bank but he did like singing. perhaps you can see where this is going?

sure enough, a couple of months later my dad sacked him for being crap and told him to "sod off and be a popstar then". well done dad. i'd be married to robbie by now if you hadn't fucked up that introduction for me... (and possibly if i were a bloke, according to popbitch).
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 14 May 2007, 1:44, Reply)