Theatre
I spent my work experience in a theatre and lusted after a scene builder. I've had a thing about skinheads in vests ever since.

And I made someone freak out with a ventiloquists dummy. I had a great time.
(badfox1 wonders who he's played by this episode on, Thu 10 May 2007, 22:55, Reply)

What we did to them
We horrible military types used to play various tricks on the work experience kids - Like send them to tool stores for a 'Long Weight'. Some of them used to wait quite a long time before they cottoned on.

Or we'd send them to the medical centre to collect some 'Fallopian Tubing'.

Or give them an empty bag sealed with tape, and tell them it was contaminated oxygen which needed testing.

Or send them to get a new bubble for a spirit level.

Or send them to have their I.D.Ten-T photo taken whilst wearing a respirator - shortly after that we would present them with a picture of them wearing a respirator holding a board displaying the legend 'ID10T'

The best one though involved blindfolding someone, staking them to the grass and driving a Landrover very close to their head, leaving the engine running. Someone would then roll the spare wheel of the Landrover over the victims chest while the Landrover was driven slowly away making the naive youg fool think they were being run over. Hehe.
(3-hoops, Thu 10 May 2007, 22:36, Reply)

MG Over
If youve ever wondered why they went out of business allow my work experience with them at a Bradford main dealer to act as an insight:

Day one:
Turn up, my first job involves getting handed masses of cash and being told to check to see if it was real or not.
1 hour in to my placement, one of the guys asks if i want to go with them to pick up a car in lincoln - some 80 miles away. We take the top of the range demonstrator car, at one point hitting an indicated 125mph down a country road whilst queen blasted out of the stereo.

Day two: The entire day is spent aimlessly shuffling cars about on the forecourt.

Day three: Usual course of drinking pop and doing fuck all continues until the transporter arrives with a selection of brand-new factory fresh cars. I'm immediately asked by the driver if i want to drive them off the back of the lorry, might i add at this point i was 16 - looked about 14 and clearly didnt have a driving license.

Day four: More tooling about in other peoples cars/shouting at every female pedestrian to and from places picking up other cars.

This cycle of doing very very little in between bouts of mental driving continued for the entire week.

Not ONCE did i ever witness a single car being sold.

Quite the finest bunch of people ive ever had the please of not working with.
(tgt At the very forefront of cocking about with cars, Thu 10 May 2007, 22:28, Reply)

A top tip
Because my work experience was awesome and that's just too rare...

Based on you guys and my many siblings, "work experience" these days basically consists of your school forcing you to do, unpaid, the kind of work you're going to school to avoid. My brother stacked shelves!

Firstly, work experience is supposed to be actually useful, I spent a few days at a multi-million pound printing company seeing how they do things and it was really interesting, and looks good on my CV, so if your school tries to force you to work at Asda, tell them to fuck off.

Secondly, and here's the really important bit: if they're not paying you, they can't make you do anything. And there are limits on how long they can ask you to come in for. I trust this knowledge will be used exactly how it should by you guys :D (and hopefully the next time we have this QOTW it'll be much more interesting :P)

Edit: I've emailed the lecturer who told us this asking for more info, I'll keep you posted :)
(ZoFreX is cleaner than smoked trout, Thu 10 May 2007, 22:26, Reply)

Hm.
I found myself constantly bored, but my boss had great tits, wore no bra, had a loose top and was often on her knees picking things up too. I kept popping off to the toilet for a quick wank. I enjoyed working there, in hindsight.

She gave me a bad review though. Teasing bitch.
(Alexxx It wasn't me, Thu 10 May 2007, 22:22, Reply)

Very small claim to fame... praps-not.
I did 2 weeks work experience at Tyne Tees Television during my HND TV Production course in the late 80's, where I actually worked hands-on on the opening titles to "Highway" and a commercial for Yorkshire Tea. Great intro to spending all day messing about with computers and dicking about in general.
(Andy_T Go do one, you chod..., Thu 10 May 2007, 22:04, Reply)

blobs, anyone?
I gave out condoms from a council-run drop in centre in an ex-mining town in the North East with an astonishingly high teenage pregnancy rate. The script went something like this:

"Plain or flavoured?"

"Write down your age and postcode here please"

Said condoms would then mysteriously appear over car exhaust pipes and wing mirrors in the undercover car park next door.

Other highlights included holding cigarettes while people answered the phone, going to the sandwich shop with mammoth orders, attending sexual health workshops to boost the numbers, and typing their entire AGM report on Microsoft Word because no one else could use it (even seven years ago there was no excuse for that).
(littlemsbroccoli, Thu 10 May 2007, 22:02, Reply)

"Press down hard"
Back in 1992, companies filing P60s would send two copies to the tax office. One copy would then go to the DSS (or DHSS, whatever it was back then), who would photograph it for microfiche.

Unfortunately, this was back in the day when the dot-matrix ribbon printer was king, and many a P60 would be too faint to photograph. This meant that the DSS sent it back to the tax office (I never could figure that bit out), where someone had to write over the figures in green biro.

You've probably guessed who that "someone" was.

THREE. FUCKING. DAYS.

Smoking was still allowed in the office, though all the smokers were banished into one corner, and I got the desk next to them. So, not only did I have cramp, I also stank of fags.

I would never thought I could have my day brightened by the notion of spending the afternoon in the file room checking that all the files were in order (this, surprisingly, wasn't a work-experience task - they were a weekly occurrence carried out by several members of staff).

Back at school, and we were all asked what we'd learned from our time

1. Never work in an office full of smokers
2. Do well at school so you can get a decent job so you don't have to do that kind of crap for a living
3. Signing the Official Secrets Act is much less exciting than you imagine it will be
4. Don't operate a shredder while wearing a tie

Length? Nearly lost a few inches in the shredder.
( le brian, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:57, Reply)

It wasn't really work experience
But last summer i spent a day working for my dad at his publishing company, shifting roughly 50 boxes (each containing about 70 books) of adult novels from his old factory to his new one. Each one with it's own (ironically) NSFW cover, the best 20 quid i've ever earned. He does publish normal books too, but the majority of it is adult. My dad's job is fuckin awesome :p
(serge-fabrizio taught the Talk to Frank robot to call him father, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:42, Reply)

slaughter house
a went in a boy, i came out a man.




and covered in the stuff that goes into chicken dippers.
(Shpadoinkle Serious Awesomness, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:39, Reply)

Telecommunications
I did my work experience at the office of a business phone system company in chepstow. Spent the first two days building a PC and the other eight days playing UT and Quake on it.

I believe that same PC is still in use for "executive relief" purposes today, seven years later.
(McFlu, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:38, Reply)

Lordy
I started work a few months back as Group IT Manager for a pretty large local company. At 38 I have had a few jobs and couldn't really see how this one would be any different.

Anyhow, after a few weeks of general boring bollocks I unexpectedly got grabbed and fellated in the smoking room by a 4'11" 20 year old nymphomaniac.

Now thats what I call work experience. If she had an "I like this" button it would have been clicked to death.

Yours smugly, Rev LF
(Mong The Merciless Older not wiser, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:35, Reply)

work exp
I was lucky to spend a week at Aardman Animations where i made and animated a little man. Nabbed that after i pestered them for months. Still trying to crack the moview industry today!
(moronic50, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:35, Reply)

barclays bank - nat a euphemism
i had a weeks work experience working in barclays bank when i was about 16. my god it was worse than having teeth pulled. i went in on the first day and got a nice big tour around and saw all the safes ad thing and after that it was just shit. shit shit shit. i spent one day with the property section, some bloke spent an entire morning talking to me about housing deeds and the such. laughed - i almost shit.

after a couple of days of being shunted between people who didnt want to show me anything i got put on the cheque paying machine. people normally do an hour or two on this machine cos it is so mind numbing. i lasted a most of the day. to wind down they let me use the franking machine.

on the thursday i bumbed into a friend as i was killing time before i had to be there. ovbiously he asked me if i fancied a spliff and i was never going to refuse. a few* mighty tokes later i am begining to feel very mellow. it was at this point my friend uttered the immortal words "this opium is fucking awesome" for about 2 hours afterwards i was a dribbling wreck. the day passed in a blur.the only thing i can really remember is giggling like a loon as a man that looked suspiciously like jesus took money out from my counter at the bank.

they said i wasnt showing much interest so i shouldn t come in on friday. i stole the 8 ball from the staff pool table.

*may have been more than a few
( bertisfantastic bert is a sleepy bear, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:33, Reply)

Good Timing
My Work Experience begins on monday. I'll get back to you with how shite the Pizza Hut employees are.
(littlenipple hate's bad grammar, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:28, Reply)

A mate of mine...
.. got sent to work at Jollies for his work experience. Didnt really do much apart from sleep in the dog baskets
(Boon Goon, Thu 10 May 2007, 21:24, Reply)

Downfall of a Printing Empire
A few years ago, I managed to get a 2-week work experience placement at a fairly big magazine writing company, for their videogame magazine. I didn't actually get much work done there, but among other things, I was told to corect the work of the last work experience guy (it was horrid) and told to play games and review them. My work was due to be published in the next month's issue. Good times!

Then 2 weeks later, the whole place went bankrupt. Completely.

It wasn't my fault.
(GiantPooka, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:59, Reply)

Aluminium magnet
One of my fellow students at uni was doing his W.E. at the local railway workshop. Imagine a rather long stretch of railway tracks and a few buildings. One day they sent him to the store to get an aluminium magnet. So of he went for a 5 minute walk to pick up what after his return turned out to be a rather unspectecular 30kg piece of railway track.
( RedWine President of the S.C.U.M., Thu 10 May 2007, 20:59, Reply)

fed to the lions
I was well chuffed to get work experience at the safari park, I could cycle to it from my house, and I brought some new work boots and everything. I was even happy mucking out (I could pretend the zebra was the stripy horse of my childhood I never got.)
I was mainly based in the large animal enclosure. Zebras, rhinos, giraffes - brilliant. A few days in I was asked if I wanted to visit the big cat’s enclosure. Best work experience ever.

So the man explains, the cats are still in there sleeping pens, we'll drop of the meat around the enclosure, then we'll get back in the jeep and they’ll let the cats out. Sounds good, so off we went, I didn’t even mind getting covered in the cold gloopy bloodyness that was getting all over my clothes. I start walking back to the jeep and he gives the signal to let the cats out. I sit in the car, just for him to shout, "whets that, they'll choke,” pointing at a big ripped bit of rubber of a car or something. So he’s shouting, get it quick. He doesn’t look like has joking, I ask “me?” he replies, “no your fucking fairy godmother get it and get in the jeep, you have time” so I do….

And he starts driving away giggling as soon as I’m holding the rubber thingy…

My pants were an interesting colour that day.
(kola, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:51, Reply)

Signing on experience may have been more appropriate
A few years ago I had the misfortune to be a department manager at a well known chain of stores that sells poor quality bikes and car accessories. They regularly took on work experience people as it meant they could subsidise the ridiculously low staffing levels without actually having to pay any wages out.
Since it is no-ones ambition to actually work in such a shop we didn’t exactly get the cream of the crop.
The one that sticks in my memory I first encountered when I went to open the shop on a monday morning after a weeks holiday drinking heavily in northern spain, there was a mentally challenged looking boy stood outside saluting - apparently he had been told this was normal protocol for greeting a department manager, he then told me how he had spent the previous week making sure my house was clean for me when I returned - in my absence the other staff had got him to polish one of those massive metal outside storage containers after telling him I lived in it. After failing to get him to do anything with any degree of competence the manager finally gave up and told him to “just follow epipsa-g about, you might learn something”. This instruction he managed to follow to the letter - quite literally staying about two feet behind me at all times - I eventually lost my rag with him when when he continued to follow me into the toilet, so I guess he my have learnt some more inventive swearing than he was used to if nothing else.

God knows what the poor kid must have suffered at school, but he declared it the best two weeks of his life and applied for a full time job about 6 times over the next year - he would probably have had more success if he had put more than his name, address and “I like bikes” on the application forms.
(epipsa-g, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:45, Reply)

wanking for coins
I spent one summer on a work experience placement in one of the most ill-conceived tourist attractions in history – Dover’s White Cliffs Experience, a ridiculous white elephant that told the tale of the town’s rich history in a completely boring and pointless way.

There are, essentially, two interesting things about Dover – a) the castle, and b) the white cliffs. The White Cliffs Experience provided neither – to see them you had to go to a) the castle or b) the cliffs. As a result, there was nothing in the attraction that anyone would actually want to see, although there was an extremely annoying mechanical puppet show. Imagine how crappy the tourist attractions the Simpsons sometimes visit are; this place was exactly like that.

(Sidenote – if that wasn’t bad enough, when preparing the foundations for building, they discovered the remains of an actual Roman temple. Obviously this is a significant discovery that would need to be investigated, stalling construction… so they just didn’t tell anyone and built as planned anyway. As a result, half of this ancient temple was buried for no reason other than to build a terrible tourist attraction that no-one visited and lost vast sums of money. It was shut down a few years ago and turned into a library. But I digress.)

Anyway, my job from Monday to Friday was to be a tour guide and general dogsbody, man the till, move people through the awful exhibits and then listen to their complaints when they realized the tour didn’t include seeing a) the castle (“The castle’s actually that castle-y looking thing on the hill behind you, sir,”) and b) the cliffs (“They’re on the coast, madam.”) All fairly routine and generally acceptable.

Unfortunately, in a part that definitely wasn’t in the job description, on alternate Sundays I had to dress up as a Roman centurion and make coins for children.

That doesn't sound too bad, but although one might expect the costume for such a role to involve armour, a helmet, etc, budget constraints meant no such niceties were purchased. Instead, the coinmaker wore a “tunic” (actually an old sack), set off nicely by a “belt” (a piece of rope). Furthermore, as a rather lanky lad of six foot, this tunic left a lot less to the imagination than it might have, barely covering my genitals.

So – being a fairly self-effacing chap at the time - I essentially spent my Sundays in a state of abject humiliation, showing off a fair amount of leg while I attempted to convince small children to get their parents to part with a quid in return for watching me make a cheap coin out of tin for them by hitting a mould with a hammer, all for GBP 3.60 an hour. (And yes - the kids weren’t allowed to make the coin themselves. Health and Safety, obviously.)

In short, it sucked. One afternoon in particular sticks in the memory – I managed to convince a couple of pretty teenage girls to let me make a coin for them, which I made and presented. They looked at it, then at me, then one said, “Aren’t you just really embarrassed doing this?” And then they walked off.

Yes, I was.

Length? Just about covered by the tunic.
(silencer, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:12, Reply)

IT Dept
Researching Orgys for a "ice" breaker presentation! ha
((((InfraSound))) SUNN0))) > YOU!, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:12, Reply)

dont give students responsibility over impressionable kids
aged about 19, i somehow managed to aquire my very own work experience boy for my lab project. so naturally i went power mad, spent the week making him carry about half a ton of sand from one end of the lab to the other, and accidentally covered him in mud because his haz-mat suit wasnt waterproof (now wheres the point in a suit supposed to protect you from hazardous materials if its made of paper)
still, the other guy got him high gluing little plastic balls onto sheets of perspex, so i think it evened out as quite a fun two weeks for him.......
(skankgirl, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:10, Reply)

Work Experience
My experience of work is that it's rather boring.

/trumpet
Mwah mwah mwaaaaaaah

apeloverage
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Thu 10 May 2007, 20:03, Reply)

Hmm
not bad, still working there 11 years on....
maybe i should get a real job?
when i was on work experience a fellow pupil came into the shop looking for a "glass hammer" i sent her to the other branch another 5 minutes walk up the road, ha ha how thick are people?
( SkUG >_O i got a couple of stitches in my eyeball... ow, Thu 10 May 2007, 20:01, Reply)

Don't know yet
Can I get back to you after I actually start work experience on Monday?
( St. Defenestration The REAL one, Thu 10 May 2007, 19:46, Reply)

Best job ever!
My very first venture into employment was work experience. The only good point about my dad being a deputy headteacher at my school was that he got me the cushy top job on the list - quality control at the local brewery.

I got to play around with chemicals, fill tiny phials with beer and whack them through mass spectrometers, grow bacteria and yeast cultures and (of course) drink lots of beer out of pyrex beakers (which was the best bit, especially for my immature 15-year-old liver).

The only bad bits were when a co-worker accidentally tipped over a vat of caramel on my feet, and when I accidentally set fire to the sink.
(Mrs Lawofnations, Thu 10 May 2007, 19:42, Reply)

Cheeky bastards
Because I was a lazy shit, I didn't bother sorting my work experience until the very last minute. I ended up doing 2 weeks at the garden centre I worked for on Saturdays anyway.

Not only did I have to still go in on Saturdays (15 years-old and doing 6 days a week, illegal?), the cheeky fucks didn't pay me for any of it because it was work experience! I didn't even get paid for my usual Saturday shift!

I also handed in my notice whilst I was on my work experience and made sure that at least £2000 worth of garden furniture didn't get rung through the till.
(A Good Egg, Thu 10 May 2007, 19:38, Reply)

Well, I was in the right place...
Well, I was in the right place...
I did two weeks of work experience. I did a week at a geriatric hospital, and a week at the place I work at weekends anyway.
The hospital was quite interesting. I did some office work (which is probably a standard requirement of work experience) and also "Observed" a lot, which is basically another name for standing around looking awkward and trying not to get in the way. One morning, I was observing the outpatients physiotherapy, which was quite interesting. I had been watching a back examination, and when I stepped out of the cubicle, I felt everything going black. I woke up to find myself on the floor, with people standing around me looking worried.
It wasn't the first time I'd fainted - I have a rather annoying habit of doing it every so often, and probably would have been fine in about ten minutes or so, but I was almost forced to go home, which meant that I missed seeing pins being stuck into somebody. I did get lots of sympathy hugs, which almost made up for it, but I think I am probably one of the few people who has been sent home from hospital for being ill.
The second week wasn't very interesting, mainly sitting around drinking coffee. I was visited by one of my teachers during the week, who just about put a stop to any work that was happening, as almost all the women present gathered around to gaze into his eyes. Never seen anything in him myself, but my boss was having palpitations for the rest of the day.

lah lah lah, length etc.
(Pretty strangers and promises, Thu 10 May 2007, 19:21, Reply)

Buggering Kunts
When I was in six-form college my parents decided to spring the surprise on me that I needed a part time job. The knew the manager of a well-known fast food chain on the pier who had complained of being short-staffed. So they offered up their eldest son.

Well, it was about as fun as can be imagined in a place where none of your co-workers could speak enough English to have a decent conversation and the manager wouldn't even lift a finger when there were only 2 staff around to make burgers and serve customers AND you'd had no training so I decided to not do very well and maybe get fired (I obviously couldn't quit).

Depressingly, most of my mistakes weren't deliberate. The most memorable one goes as follows -
The burgers were all flame-grilled and there was a special machine that does it. There are two conveyer-belts going in, a lower one that goes through the flames (for the meat to go on) and a higher one that goes above them to toast the bread.

So of course I mixed them up. The meat got toasted. The bread came out on fire.

Oops.

I also managed to nearly injure people on several occasions (like when I cleaned all the tables with toxic chemicals) and the icing on the cake was when some bastard took a shit in the middle of the floor (got home that day to my mum having found my gay porn, woohoo).

Would you believe I was still one of their better employees?

I can't wreak as much havoc now I'm doing a PhD.
(red_jon, Thu 10 May 2007, 19:13, Reply)