Frickin' transits!
My work experience was in the Ford Transit assembly plant outside Southampton. Whilst the whole experience wasn't horrifically dull, it wasn't all that great. Highlights were watching a lot of robots build a lot of vans (the ones that put the windshields on are cool). Finding out how almost everything works. I was based in essential services which were the handymen/repairmen for the whole place. Upshot of this was I saw almost every department.

Other high point was finding that the other people that I worked with had an unhealthy amount of pornography. I found it all over the place. Open in the canteen and old copies of Knave from the 70s which had been left in filing cabinets with other documents.

Acquired some callouses that week. More than a 14 year old should.
( gareth_alien will be human again at, Thu 10 May 2007, 13:19, Reply)

Worked on a small island
For 2 weeks. Ran out of food end of the first week, all my clothes were soaking wet due to non stop rain in the first week. Being shit on and attacked by the huge seagull population every time you stepped out side the farm house. Digging a grave for a sheep who was put down because it had cancer, but not before it nearly gorged out one of the islands voluntary workers (why the hell they WANTED to be there for 6 months is beyond me). And getting very sea sick getting to the island and coming back again. I vowed never to go on a boat or to an island which doesn’t have central heating or running water ever again. So if you hear about a trip to Flat holme island, don’t, its like Alcatraz, but in the Bristol Channel.
Length? 2 miles wide in all directions.
( Captain Pilchard The king of B-movies!, Thu 10 May 2007, 13:13, Reply)

Work experience through school.
Ended up with me working in a window licker school known as "Tor View" the work was alright as I spent most of the day in the office on a computer (on B3ta) but there was this one kid called Jamie who seemed to have become obsessed with me, he'd stand and stare at me and if anybody interrupted him or tried to disssuade him he's react with the mandatory "MNGHH!!!" then attack whoever it was.
This I could cope with until one day he somehow got into the office and proceeded to stand right behind me almost silent, I only realised he was there when the little shit tried to kiss me, I slapped him away and got the "Nurse" (a butch german woman who was more of a riot officer than a nurse) who took him back to class.
Next day I got the sack and they sent me home, turns out Jamie had seen me on B3ta and his mum had walked in on him leering at goatse. His mum had complained and they'd found out I'd been on B3ta when I was supposed to be working.
(Mr Torture Oh no! Not the BEEEEEEEEEEES!, Thu 10 May 2007, 13:09, Reply)

Last week we had a work experience boy
He wa here to learn about the college network and PCs and all that tripe. Instead, he learned how to make clean things and make tea.
He had two weeks of that. It was great, and our work room is now spotlessly clean and tidy.
( The Duke of Prunes, Thu 10 May 2007, 13:07, Reply)

Designers
My work experience was held at a manufacturing company that made girders, then made the building out of said girders.

It was all very technical... the bosses sent me to make tea all day long, the welders told me rude words, the designers, well, wore silly clothes mostly.

However, I had two weeks at said job, and a week of which I spent with the designers. I found out that their job isn't to 'design', but more to 'count the number of drill holes and welds needed to complete the building'.

ONE WHOLE WEEK of counting holes and welds on both paper and CAD designs of nothing but girders interlocking and I cracked.

I actively changed their spreadsheet design so that any inputted numbers were replaced with 'I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave.'


I got a glowing report though, but the bastards didn't give me a penny for my trouble.
( Pointy Head poked another hole in my anorak on, Thu 10 May 2007, 13:04, Reply)

Work expirence
Company I did my work expirence for had me learning how to and then setting up two proxy servers for their off site offices in two weeks, I had hardly any expirence in that sort of thing. to mkae things better the guy who was in charge of looking after me didn't have a clue either.. anyway after 2 weeks I had set them up but didn't have enough time to test them properly (as i wasn't allowed on the network for security reasons).. I left before they sent them off so god knows if they worked as they should.. annoying thing is I didnt get sod all in the way of payment for my services... no thats a lie i got a little screw driver set...
(That Random Guy, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:54, Reply)

another tale
Asked a kid to format about 1000 3.5 disks. Took him the whole 2 weeks. we didnt care, it just got him out of the fucking way. Every year in an office i used to work in, we used to get 2 or 3 loosers in. It took more time to explain what you wanted them to do, so you may as well have done it yourself. We used to complain and tell management not to send kids to us, but the fuckers never learned. Maybe we scarred a few kids for life with some of the soul destroying tasks, but blame the management, not the workers!

but hey work experience is a traditional legal beasting of minors.
(i AM that masked man Book him Tonto, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:49, Reply)

harlow square
when i did my work experience at school, i was forced to do a 2 week stint at radio rentals (or something similar). it was toss, spent the first 4 days in a shirt and tie, cleaning their incredibly filthy stock room. i walked out on the first friday, never to return.

HOWEVER, a year or two later, i joined a 'lifeskills' course at the local college. We basically spent 5 days a week, having a good laugh with our course tutor (sarah, you rock!), learning how to be self-sustaining (i.e. how to cook, write CVs, and improve yourself). there are many stories i can tell from these days, but the best was work experience.

On this course, after doing 1 full 'term', you could choose to do work experience, anywhere you liked, as long as the employer agreed.
at the time, we did 1 day a week at the local rock venue, the square, for doing 'classes' on public performance, and how to generally just learn the courage to stand up in front of a crowd of people and perform.
Well, i asked to do some work experience there, 3 days a week. they agreed, and, to this day, i remain the only person to ever do 12 weeks work experience at said venue, which included:

- Free entry to every gig while working there, and many since
- Being put in charge of other work experience kids (who didnt have much interest being there anyway), and making them put flyers into envelopes, seal them, stick on a label and stamp. for 2500 letters. while i went and 'cleaned the beer lines' with the bar manager :D
- Working on their new website
- Booking bands, and buying their riders (i.e. cases of booze) from Tesco, then helping them dispose of it later that evening.
- Learning how to use a sound desk and lighting rig

all in all, possibly the best time of my life :D
Sadly, the local council are now, pretty much, killing the place off :(
( lo, the Greebo Warrior - Est. 2002, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:47, Reply)

work experience at school?
Had a lad work for us for a while (5 months) before we asked him to go cos he was a useless twat, and in the time he worked for us he cost more money than he made, and was useless at everything. He went from stacking a few bricks at the start (fucked up), to just being told to use a broom and 'keep the area clean' When he failed even at this simple task, we told him to fuck off. We should have read the warning on his cv, when it stated he done his work experience with the school caretaker!
What a fucking loser. Cunt couldnt even learn how to use a broom from the guy. Maybe he forgot or something....TER WAT!
(i AM that masked man Book him Tonto, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:44, Reply)

More about causality than the actual work
I've gathered from the other stories so far that Work Experience is something official that all teenagers in the UK have to do; being an American one in Holland, I rather think I'm exempt from that sort of thing, so a similar story will have to do.

Last summer (almost a year ago, that is) I finally had a good reason to get up off my ass and do some work: my girlfriend lived in Finland and plane tickets cost money. So after a few weeks of raiding temp agencies, I finally got a job just outside the place I live, a couple days' work in a mailroom belonging to the corporation my stepdad worked for at the time. It was pretty ace as far as mailrooms go- the people were friendly and the job consisted mainly of putting things in boxes in the right quantities, and they had an absolute motherload of surplus goods (corporate propaganda goodies like soccer balls, stress relief homunculi, gummy bears, et cetera, as well as some other random stuff like a huge box of apparently nice water in glass bottles) which they kept giving me, especially on my last day there.

Then, I got a job at a factory which assembled gas and water line hardware, and that one lasted a bit longer than a couple days. The job itself wasn't bad; they had me doing whatever needed doing, which provided some much-needed variety, and besides, I'm not one to fuss about the kind of work in question. Cash is cash after all, and it was me seeing my girlfriend which was on the line. (I think the worst that happened to me at the factory was a busted up hand, hip and elbow from taking a dive during a game of keep-away soccer in the lunch break, and a ruined pair of jeans due to some indelible won't-come-off-'til-you're-dead-and-then-some glue.) So it wasn't my dream job, but the people were all really friendly and it paid decently for a 17-year-old Yankee doing summer work.

Where's the catch, you ask? I'll tell you.

Around a month and a half after the summer was over (in October, do the math), after I'd accumulated something like 600 Euros, my girlfriend decided she no longer wanted to be with me. (Yes, it was as blunt as it sounds, but that's a story for another QOTW.) So I'd done all that work for nothing! *shakes fist* You cu-

Oh. Wait.

I had 600 Euros that I was no longer saving for an extended trip to Finland.

WOOHOO!

I of course abjectly refused to learn anything at all from this, so insert moral here. (Be creative.)

/coat

CK
(CK is rocking out near you (cosmologically speaking), Thu 10 May 2007, 12:38, Reply)

tales of woe,and then you learn
I worked as a graphic designer for a saturday job. Great. Got a work placement there, great doss, as i got paid too! Then second week along comes a new bloke.
"could you show (twatfacecunt) here how you use pagemaker on the mac?"
Sure i say.

After a week of telling/showing him what I do, they fired me from my saturday job, and the twatfacecunt was hired full time.

Fuckers out of business now. Cunt.

The above was when i was at school, now at college i was doing business and finance, so i thought i would get a placement in a bank. All well and good, but it was so fucking boring.

The next year, I had a word with a mate of mine, and arranged to get a placement for 'warehouse and inventory control and customer care' which translates to 'throw some cardboard boxes filled with adult incontence nappies into a van, be a drivers mate, driving round the area for the rest of the day. drinking tea and smoking. Result.
(i AM that masked man Book him Tonto, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:36, Reply)

Premiership
The 80's, Wilmslow. I wont name the company, they still do this particular job.

Day 1 - Made tea
Day 2 - Made more tea
Day 3 - Met Frank.

Franks runs the big computer on the ground floor. This computer does a lot of things, including the generation of all the fixtures for every team in the Football League.

Its a complicated task. It has to take into account a lot of variables, teams, locations (liverpool cant play at home the same day as everton for example), police schedules, TV schedules, travel considerations for the fans, etc etc, its a big job.

Oh look, someone left it logged on.

-enter option(1)team info(2)venue info..etc
OK. Hmm. "1"

-listing... 1.arsenal 2.birmi etc...
OK choose '13' Manchester City.
-Options 1. Rename. 2.Delete. 3. Replace etc...
Ok, erm, '3'.
-enter replacement.
hmm. 'Plymouth Argyll'
-replace 3. Manchester City with Plymouth Argyll? y/n
'y'

I didnt know that the next day was the day they sent it to the FA.

I didnt know it wouldnt be noticed until Late July. 2 days before the print deadlines for the notifications that go to the clubs, the TV companies, the police, the caterers, the bloodywell everyone.

I didnt know that this had been almost accepted as the final draft until the last minute.

I didnt know any of that until i met Frank nearly 20 years later - he still does the same job - he didnt recognise me but he works with some people I know now. He still tells the story. The story of the work experience kid who for a few months promoted Plymouth to League 1, and relegated Man City to the 4th (or somewhere).
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:33, Reply)

My first job: I was one of those annoying charity twunts..
...that hassle you in the street to sign up for various charities. The company I worked for told me I'd be collecting for some really worthwhile charities, Barnados, ActionAid etc, but on my first day I found out I'd be collecting for the Dog's Trust. During the height of the Make Poverty History campaign... dogs weren't really high on people's agendas.

Anyway, on my first day doing door-to-door work I:
- Was chased down the street by an old woman, who threw tins out of her recycling bin at me
- Stumbled into some domestic dispute, and had to stand at the doorway while this bastard husband compared the dogs I was trying to get sponsored to his wife.
- Had an old gentleman set his dog on me. (Oh the irony)
- Was greeted at one doorway by an extremely obese man in his vest and pants(who actually smelt like he was rotting) who promptly shat himself and carried on chatting like it was normal. It's quite difficult to sell a charity when you keep getting distracted by shit sliding down someone's legs.

Happy times.
(thants, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:32, Reply)

Supermarket Trolley Monkey
Did evenings at a local supermarket to earn beer money in my student days.

They never worked out why I was so keen to go out and scour the wino-haunted multi-storey car park for abandoned trolleys.

It was because I found I could stand on the top floor of the car park and watch some bloke in the offices opposite porking the office cleaner over his desk, every night, 6pm, without fail. That guy had some stamina, I can tell you.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:21, Reply)

The most complex prank ever played
Again - I work as an IT Tech in a school of 1500 11-18 kids and in an office of 3 other techys.
After our previous little prank we decided to raise the bar - a lot - and so our next kiddy who joined the team for two weeks we always refered to a penfold.
Now penfold was quite shy and retiring and we thought it our duty to have some fun (with him).
Throughout the time he was working with us we all handed large brown envelopes around that appeared to contain money just as he was walking in the room, then hide the packages.
We then told him that the old design and technology block was a military training unit and that we were doig deals with the military and we would like him to get in on it. To do so he would have to learn a list of ONE HUNDERED passwords and they were all OBSENE - for example 32-John Waynes Hairy Saddle Bags, 44-Pithless Satsuma, 69-Stinky Mott. He didn't seem keen at first but we soon convinced him and he spent a lot of time learning.
Weeks passed, passwords were learnt and packages still exchanged untill about a week before he was due to leave.
This is where is all really kicked off..
We got our friend Bob to come in with his MOD id, list of 100 passwords and brown package. Sat Penfold down on a chair infront of Bob and Bob - being a suberb actor - proceded to test him by calling out numbers at incredible speed.
This was all going great until Danny who I work with finally cracked up in the corner and we had to explain to penfold what was really going on. Thing is we still kept passing around the packages until the day he left, to this day I think he still belives that we were doing dodgy deals ("feels like fifties" on picking one up heehee).

Mind you to get me back about a month later he made a very convincing fake parking ticket and stuck it on my car that cause a very bizzare series of events - but thats a story for another day :)

Length? It's the best story ever so live with the pain!
( SiX and his hat, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:17, Reply)

cattery
long story short, my job was to not let the cats out. the cats got out. i got scratched very badly. then i got crap pay on christmas. so i quit.
(Poppet some assembly required., Thu 10 May 2007, 12:15, Reply)

Seven days make one weak...
From the bowels of Lincolnshire, I was the only person in my school year to get work experience down in London. Everyone was veh jealous, especially as I'd ommitted to tell them that I'd be staying with my aunt, and not in some swanky hotel.

The company shared offices based round the back of King's Cross, which has, although you may not believe me, been cleaned up significantly over the past 15 years.

Knowing nothing of London, the name "Kings Cross" meant nothing to me then, I just thought the Big Smoke was a pretty homogenous, denser, sootier version of my little village back home where they filmed Mary Poppins and Oliver - so the week's events had lasting impacts on my impressions of our fair capital.

Day 1: Arrive in King's Cross.
Mission - get to my aunt's.
"Fresh-off-the-boat", I was greeted by a charming gentleman, who offered me a place to stay, and also some money for my bottom.

Day 2: First day at work.
Mission - get back to my aunt's from work experience (which, I had soon realised, would revolve solely around a staple-gun, cooing mature PAs, and the photocopier).
A scrawnier, but rather better dressed chap than Day 1 offered me a substantial finders fee to put him back in touch with his friend Charlie, and asks me where my gear is. I don't know Charlie, and I've stashed all my gear at my aunt's, therefore really can't be of much use, and make my excuses. He wants to come with me to my aunt's, but I think it's a little forward for me, a guest myself, to bring visitors back.

Day 3:
Mission - See Day 2, minus the look of somebody offering a personalised FriendsReunited service.
A lady of limited aesthetic appeal (who seemed to have had an accident involving quite a lot of stale urine and the loss of her front teeth) offers to relieve me of a few thousand gametes in exchange for the price of a week's worth of school dinners. At this point, my gametes and their purpose built housing units retract into my abdomen, and I pray she can't run.

Day 4:
Mission - repeat Day 3, minus wee-smell exposure.
Greeted by a delightful, albeit scrawny youth, offering me his bottom in exchange for lucre. This is distinctly unappealing at a number of levels, so I politely decline, and exctract myself from the conversation after he has liberated me of 10 pence (probably needed to phone home).

Day 5:
Mission - repeat Day 3.
Two officers of the law descends upon me, enquiring into my current state of employment, address, whereabouts of family and whether I was selling premium rate access to my bottom.

Day 6: Last day of work - I swear never to work in an office again.
Mission - repeat Day 5 without attracting the attentions of the Metropolitan Transport Police.
Some chap has found the errant Charlie - so glad he's alright! I give him a full description of Charlie's other friend and hope they find each other soon - this fellow seemed really quite anxious.

Day 7: Mission - leave city, get home without re-enactments of Days 1-6.
I sit exhausted in the train that will take me home, examining my curiously black nasal discharge. As I stand up to let somebody take a seat, a rather fashionably dressed youth accidentally bumps into me.
It is only once the train has pulled away, and the ticket inspector comes calling that I realise that the youth must have accidentally knocked my wallet clean out of my pocket, seen it on the floor, and then got off the train to give it to the nice policemen at the station. However, this does render me with no money, ticket, or identification. I am collected at Peterborough station by two policemen, who spend the rest of the night on the phone with my parents.

So naturally, I moved down to an office job in London at the first opportunity and have lived here for close to 10 years now.
(jangle, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:05, Reply)

Budmouth Ranger!
we're not allowed them any more...


We had a particularly annoying little brat of a we kid who knew as much about computers as I do about why women like shoes so much - and thats not a good thing in an office where we repair computers and so we decided to get him away from the PCs.
Now working in a school we have lots of naughty kids and sometimes they need retreival and this would be an ideal job. However he was a nob and so we created the roll of the "Budmoth ranger" complete with over sized sheriffs badge and got him to walk into classrooms of students the same age as he was and declaire "I am the Budmouth Ranger and xxxxx xxxxx needs to come with me to the IT office".

and

He actually did this

For about 4 weeks



Those were the days
( SiX and his hat, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:03, Reply)

A stables...
I put on the form "working with annimals", and thats what i got.

I had to get three buses at 7 in the morning which took over 2 hours to wherever it was (i cant remember now but it was far from stockport).

The first day i got there i was handed a three pronged pitch fork and told to as they niceley put it "muck out".

So the first week i spent shoveling horse shit, theres allways plenty of shit to shovel, and the second week i mostly spent hiding in the cupboard eating my lunch as slowly as possible trying to avoid the big fat heffer of a bitch making me pick up horse poo.

There was some girls on work experience there too, they strangly enough werent given the same experience and polished riding tackle and brushed horses for the time they spent there, the wankers.
(bonzos, Thu 10 May 2007, 12:02, Reply)

Very Childish but funny at the time
At 16 my first job was at Woolworth's in Cowes on the Isle of Wight on a Saturday and School holidays. Oh the boredom - but it paid fairly well in those days and it meant I could party all weekend in the night clubs (not many there even now). I was always wrecked on the Saturday due to not going to bed until 4am, then I had to go home at 7am to get changed for work.*

To alleviate the boredom, they had ticket machines where you stamped out the prices by hand. So instead of the price, I wrote in tiny handwriting "Please Buy Me" instead and watched from behind the aisle , so when the old gits who shopped there picked up the tins of soup looking for the price, that's what they found. It was hilarious watching their faces.

Got imto trouble though :( but it was worth it.


*I couldn't take a potential shag to my place, even the stairs had a "No Entry" sign my Mum made
( Tiggy the diver, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:56, Reply)

Work Experience boy in one of me old jobs....(RP for teh QOTW)
..in this old computer shop where I used to work, we had become semi-famous in the area for being a bunch of right wind-up merchants. The customers would come by the dozen to watch us take the mick of anything, which if anything was great for business too, so the management if anything promoted it. It did go a bit too far one day though...

We had a kid who used to be one of my neighbours (we'll call him "D"). Nice enough kid, was turning 16 and wanted to do work experience with us. I did warn him beforehand what we were like, but he still wanted to come. Oh god, I wish he listened. After two weeks we had;

1 - sent him on any chore imaginable, real or fake (including going to a chemist and asking the old woman there for the really big suppositories).
2 - had him hoovering anything, ceilings included.
3 - making phonecalls to imaginary customers, who were in fact us ripping the piss into him.
4 - locked him in the shop display window and stuck a sign to the outside of it saying "Please do not feed the animals" and left him there for 1/2 an hour.
5 - this was the worst. The works toilet had a bolt on the OUTSIDE for no real reason, and we bolted him in. This toilet was approximately 20 yards into the back of the building, and we could hear him screaming from the shop floor. So could the customers. After 3/4's of an hour, I opened the door and he came out purple. He'd obviously been crying his eyes out too, and grabbed his coat and went home. I called around his house that night to see if he was ok, and found out he was highly claustrophobic and needed to rest. Oh fuck. It took an hour of grovelling to sort that out.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:52, Reply)

Mohammed Ali
We had a work experience kid called Mohammed Ali at an educational book suppliers where I worked as a holiday job during my school days . Unfortunately he saw the post it note I put on a workmates computer reminding him that "Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee" will be starting on monday. This confused him, not because he thought he was being teased but more because he in no way got the famous Mohammed Ali reference. He had in fact never heard of him. As a result, we knew we had a bit of a dickhead on our hands and decided to have some fun. Here's a run down of the best of them:

• We convinced him that Rob, the smiliest, happiest and nicest person I have ever met used to work in an abattoir but had to quit as he liked the killing to much. We told him that was the reason for Robs constant smile. Rob has only ever worked at the book suppliers we were at. He has, to my knowledge, never killed a thing in his life.

• Will, the 65 year old man who worked with us just to keep his mind busy was actually a pirate radio DJ called DJ Glass. He was called this because his beats were so clear (wtf does that even mean!?!). Will to his credit kept the joke going by explaining how he liked hard house and garage music - how he used to hang out with his crew and bitches and finally how he loved cruising around Croydon in his slammed nova. Will actually collected Gretsch Guitars and hung out with his wife. He loved Country and Western. He also drove a Rover 214 with factory suspension and a halfords job of a stereo.

• We convinced him that Sue, who looked like her face had been dipped in Copydex and then had cornflakes thrown at it used to be a porno star and was also having an affair with the bosses wife. That was all bollocks. She was having an affair with the boss.

• Lastly myself and another disgruntled employee told him that if he couldn't fit all of the books we were posting to schools in one box it was ok to fold them or cut them in whatever way he needed to to make them fit. This led to a few hundred quids worth of returns.

On his last day, we explained how all of the above was just a "jape" and how we'd been winding him up. After looking at us for a few seconds then slowly looking angry, Mohammed looked like a light bulb had gone off in his head... he offered to make us all a tea. Funny enough, we said no.
( jon_tanner, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:51, Reply)

hmmm best evening job..
...putting together old fashioned kitchen scales. Basically sit on a production line screw on your alloted part send on to the next person. You sat there with a cup of coffee and a ciggie and when it got boring you could race round the factory on pallet trucks. They also had the best Xmas party. They just wheeled in a trolley full of alchohol and said help yourselves...the pallet truck racing got quite competitive after that.

Oh yes, Publishing...don't do it kids, a world full of bitter pedants with nothing better to do than scrutinise your work for mistakes. It doesn't pay that well either.

Oops did I make a grammatical error ....Really, who cares!
(cmouse is pondering about life in other jobs, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:49, Reply)

I'm afraid I'll have to go against the tone of the question...
And say that my work experience as a kid was fantastic!

1. I had to sign some version of the Official Secrets Act beforehand because it was all MoD technology they were working on. That's usually an indication of potential boredom through sod's law but most of the week all the great stuff was prefixed with "well, we shouldn't really be showing you this but..." followed usually by the chance to play in a tank.

2. People kept passing me on and it would always be just before their fag break, which seemed to be spent looking very grey and depressed and pasty while smoking. My presence there seemed to alter the proceedings by depressing them about how many of them actually did work experience at the same company as a teenager...

3. I got to play with solder! I had to solder together a cable from the diagram I'd tidied up myself and transferred from ancient MacDraw to the server's FileMaker Pro database. This cable then went from the air conditioning unit in a tank to the testing box. I'm still waiting for the day in the news where some people have died because my shoddily soldered cable malfunctioned and they died in some desert...

When I told my father about my work experience he immediately suggested that I get a job at the local supermarket part time to "get a taste of the real world". I dutily did so, and discovered ignorance, apathy, downright stupidity and intentional malice. I frequently wanted to throw a brick onto people's heads. I then explained this to my father, who said "ah, you're cured."

Wise man :-)
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:46, Reply)

2 weeks in a branch of HSBC
I spent 2 weeks flicking elastics into the main safe. After a few days they had me processing cheques upto the region of about £750,000. Should've just dumped them into my account, come to think of it. HSBC owe me a fortune.

The women who worked there were nice though, kept buying cakes for everyone every day. No wonder they were all fat cunts.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:40, Reply)

I busted a drugs / suicide pact
Feeling perverse when the school asked me what work experience I wanted to do, I told them I'd like to work in an old peoples home.

It wasn't so bad - the staff didn't make me clean up any shit and I spent most of the two weeks playing dominos with some doddery WW1 veteran called Ralf. I won every time, not suffering from Alzheimer's could be considered an advantage.

Anyway, to the point: one day I overheard two inmates discussing how they'd been saving up their pills for a suicide attempt.

I told the staff.

In retrospect I've never been quite sure if I did the right thing.
( rob, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:38, Reply)

Rave On Rob...
Was sent to Dillon's bookshop as a fresh faced 15 year old in the summer of 1989...and immediately packed off to the stock room upstairs to put 30% off stickers on a room full of books. A couple of dreary hours passed, wondering if I'd be condemned to 2 weeks of this turgid existence. About midday, the door opens and in saunters Rob. Most large stores have backroom staff...they're usually lacking in the hygiene/interpersonal relationship/any fucking clue whatsoever departments. Rob was a bit different, though.
We spent the next two weeks in a ganja fuelled haze, occasionally pausing from our stoned reveries to stick some more Stone Roses/Happy Mondays/A Guy Called Gerald on the tape player and hang out of the window with another spliff. Lunchtimes were spent in a shady boozer getting merry on cider with Rob's crew of borderline psychotic pillheads.
On my last day, the store manager gave me a proof copy of the latest Laurie Lee. Rob gave me an E, a sixteenth of squidgy black and a tape of what he described as "fucking on one tracks, kidda".
It was truly a worthwhile insight into the world of waged employment.
( wotofco pissing in your swimming pool, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:30, Reply)

The best IT job in the world
It was a university gap year placement rather than school work experience but back in the younger days of the Internet, a manager of the company became aware that there were people in the office surfing porn sites and asked did I know of any way they could block it?

Back then they didn't have filtering programs, so I told him the only thing I could do was manually blacklist the individual URLs on the proxy server. Hence I was paid to spend three days checking if likely looking URLs in the cache really were porn sites.

Of course being a diligent employee I felt I had to make a thorough evaluation of each one to ensure it really did contain pornographic content. It was amazing how many colleagues found reasons to stop by my desk that week.
(Ravenous Bugblatter Beast This content may not be working. Please try again., Thu 10 May 2007, 11:23, Reply)

Not all me,'cos I'm too kind, but
A colleague sent an apprentice seven miles across Edinburgh for a long stand. Needless to say they were expecting him when he got there. Similarly a friend, when an apprentice car mechanic, spent most of an afternoon being sent from department to department in a quest for a tin of compression.

I only told a WE kid that the MIG welder was for welding wood and that if we didn't have fluorescent tubes of the right length in stock we could always shorten some longer ones to fit.

Sorry if this is all a bit blue-collar for all you aspiring academics . . .
(The Jannie, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:22, Reply)

Pointless
When I used to manage a hotel restaurant in ugh, *shudder*, Bradford, some five years ago, the powers that be (general managers) told me I would be taking on two local schoolchildren for a fortnight's 'work experience'.

The first one was a regular little scamp, a lot like Tucker out of Grange Hill. He was so scruffy that I was told he was not to go near the customers. Or go in the kitchen.

The second, a young, er, lady, looked about 30 (whilst only being 14). She was covered in scabies or eczema, she was bloody flaky. As such I was told that she too was on a strict 'no guests, no kitchen' rule.

So. There I was, sitting in the restaurant bar and trying to work out what the hell to do with two waiting staff who could not go near the guests nor enter the kitchen.

Two weeks of polishing cutlery, candlesticks, light fittings, trays, anything remotely shiny, the poor buggers.

I rewarded their efforts with the finest referral letters and the pick of the complimentary mints. I'm a great boss!
(Northern Lovely, Thu 10 May 2007, 11:18, Reply)