Peters Pies in Caerphilly
Worst job in the world. Ever. Started in the sausage meat area, cleaning bins with a steam hose. First day somthing hits the wall behind me and as I turn to look a lump of sausage meat hits me on the side of my head and fills up my ear. Fuckin neandertal cunts. Oh and this was for the princely sum of £2.78 an hour. Cunts.
( DumbMonkey The penis mightier than the sword, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:35, Reply)

Want a lolly?
When I was in Year 8, I broke my ankle and was off school for several weeks owing to the impracticality of my school being five miles away and on several floors. During this time I got so bored that I volunteered to go to work with my mum, who is a primary school teacher, and listen to thick kids read. Generally it was a good laugh - the teachers all made a massive fuss of me, and the eldest kids were only two years younger so they were fun to hang around with.

There was one child in particular who sticks in my memory though. Thomas. He was in Year 4, had a particular reputation as a bit of a troublemaker and, having heard him read, I can testify to his lack of intellectual prowess. Sweet kid though.

One day after school, I was sitting in the foyer minding my own business when Thomas sidled up to me. He wiped his nose on his hand. Then he put same hand into his pocket and pulled out some old tissues, which he placed on the table next to me. Out came some miniature action figures, more snotty tissues, pencil shavings, some sort of long-dead insect, and a few half-eaten, stuck-together lollipops. Thomas then proceeded to prise one of these lollipops from the sticky bundle and hold it out to me. "Want a lolly?"

No thanks, Thomas.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:14, Reply)

Lubricant!
I work for a large tool company similar to Screwfix and a couple of weeks ago I had to feel sorry for one kid obviously on work experience.

He was sent into our shop and unluckily ended up being served by one of the girls in the shop, Tracey.

The item he'd been sent in to purchase....
"Clitoris Cream".

Worse though was that Tracey obviously wasn't on form either and said "Err... I'm not sure if we sell that. It sounds familiar." and with that she grabbed one of our catalogues and starts looking through the lubricants section!

Fortunately another customer had heard it all and said to the lad, "who are you here with mate?" the lad pointed to a van load of builders who appeared to be in absolute hysterics, the other customer said "They might be winding you up mate".

Meanwhile Tracey asked one of her colleagues "Do we sell Clitoris Cream?", the look on the other shop assistants face was the trigger and the penny dropped for Tracey who went bright red, almost as red faced as the work experience lad who now realised what he'd done.

Clitoris Cream, it's in the lubricants section ;-)
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:11, Reply)

Work Experiance Feacal Explosion
Not my work Experiance, our school didn't do it for some reason.
This is what happened to my brothers now wife known as Sally (t'was her name blah blah length? etc)
Sally had WE in the Faecal Sample and Testing dept of a famous cancer hospital in the north west of england, where samples of poo from people with and without cancer's were stored, labelled, tested, cultured and so on. all the things you can do with poo were done there, strictly for medical experimentation of course.
The dept was based in the celler/basement and had a very large refridgeration unit for keeping the brown trouts in pre and post poke/smear and was pretty much state of the art.
Sally enjoyed this WE, it was interesting and not really smelly (according to her anyway).
Where does the horror come in?

Well, this was a very hot summer and when combined over a weekend with a major power failure at the hospital and the breakdown of the poo depts backup generator which was not spotted due to a disaster recovery system failure, you can imagine the fridge on the monday morning.

If you cant let me paint a (rather brown) picture. Several thousand tubs of poo & cultures etc all heating up to around 80-90 degrees. Each tub has a sealed lid.
Each sample had methane and other gases....

The walls were brown..Guess who had to clean this?

Yep, WE girl!

Apologies about length.. bollocks not really
;-)
(markov1723 Annoying Bavarians since, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:10, Reply)

I did work experience at a games shop

it was a bit strange. I killed the security guard and took all the shop's money, then next day when I asked how many Work Experience Points I'd get they went psycho at me!
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:08, Reply)

In a Hospital
My second bit of work experience (my first being boots, very boring) Was in my local hospital on a stroke ward (i was trying to do medicine at Uni, i failed that). It was all very boring (and depressing talking to vegtables and an old lady with altzimer's who kept trying to escape) until i blagged my way into theatre. There i saw a Hernia operation on a women who was very very fat. She had had a stomach stapling to reduce her weight but then she simply liquidized her meals to get more in. The surgeon had to cut through about 4 inches of rancid yellow fat to get to the problem. After seeing that I now really look after my diet and feel you should too.
(Orangeygoodness clicks cartoons hard, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:06, Reply)

Car testing
Not about me but about my cousin, Nick from the good ol' US of A. He was over for a few months and decided to get some WE at any company he could. His Dad is very well connected and managed to get him WE at a certain car magazine. Cue 2 months of him getting free test cars every weekend, which he dutifully tested with me and chilling at trackdays with racers and general coolness.

However, he wasn't really au fait with UK traffic laws and thought that, like Germany, the motorways are derestricted. After about a month he arrives after a blistering 200 mile trip from London and complains that everyone drives so slowly in England.

"How fast were they going?" I ask.

"About 80, 90 MPH."

"The speed limit's 70, Nick." I reply.

Long pause followed by another long pause.

"Then I'm in alot of trouble"

It turns out he had been travelling back and forth at about 140 mph for the last two weeks and a few days later the first of many, MANY tickets start to arrive.

Deep trouble? Not a bit of it. The boss calls him in and asks why the tickets seem to be piling up. Nick 'fesses up and the boss cracks up. Turns out they just tell the authorities that the person driving the car was a foreign correspondant and that they have been since gone back to their own country like Greece or Albania.

This sort of thing was an almost daily occurence at that place.

Length? About 2000 miles that month.
(71 hour Ahmed wasn't working at, Fri 11 May 2007, 11:00, Reply)

I did my work experience at Sky Television.

Unfortunately, after a few days they sent me home when they found out I was spending my lunch break reading a book.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 11 May 2007, 10:57, Reply)

Deaf Tests..
I worked at a resource center helping work shy layabouts fill in benefit claims to ensure they got the maximum benefits they could, all paid for by the local council tax.

One of these benefits was a payout for industrial deafness.

All was OK, lots of deaf pensioners, and unemployed people getting paid for losing their hearing.

In comes this old boy, and he goes for his test which I was administering.
"can you hear that sir?" I said, "what" says he.
so I up it a level, "how about now", reply - "what". This goes on for a while until i could hear the tones through his headphones.

So I write on his form, severe deafness.
Thank him for coming in, he turns and heads for the door, I say, in a normal tone of voice, you've forgotten your forms, he immediately turns round, picks them up, winks and says thanks and leaves, old bastard on the con, nice one.

Must have hurt listening to the high pitched mega loud tones though.
(hudster, Fri 11 May 2007, 10:57, Reply)

Mine was surprisingly good....
Although the fat cow who set it up attempted to make it hell.
I had a friend who managed to get a placement at a high-profile guitar shop and he told me they still had a slot open. Being a budding little shredder I gave them a ring and actually scored myself a placement. Mrs. Thompson (that would be the fat cow) had different ideas. She stopped me from attending my 6 stringed nirvana as she had got me her own placement. My protests went unheard and so I was doomed to spend 1 week in a folk music shop and another week watching ponces recite Shakespear in a college theater. I hated Thompson already, she never did any work yet always claimed to be busy in a shrill voice. I happen to know (through looking through the window in her door) that she spent these moments of busyness scoffing her lardy face with digestive biscuits! But this was the icing on the cake.
I had no choice but to arrive at the Folk music shop on my first day. They must have been chuffed to see that the school sent them their only Black Metal kid. My duties for the day involved tuning all the instuments. The guitars were a piece of cake but harps?? You have to do the bastards twice as the tuning doesn't stick first time. Besides this initial boredom at the mundane tasks I realised that the owner and his subordinate were actually very nice people. I became of aware of some intriguing instruments through that week and spent most of my days in the corner jamming on the small range of electric guitars that they had on offer. My favourite was a Les Paul made of transparent blue acrylic.
Long week short, I had a pretty good time and I now get a hefty discount from the awesome bloke who runs the shop. Stick that you gellatinous blob!
The second, and , final week was yet another attempt to bring a brother down. I was to work in the drama department of the local college. Oh joy. The tasks in this job were mundane to the extreme (sorting out lenses in order of colour anyone?). The biggest highpoint was being taught how to rig up and control the lighting. Focusing it into peoples eyes when they're trying to rehearse lines became a favourite pastime. I think my boss sensed my immense boredom and for the final two days I was transferred to the recording studio! I had no problem with setting up amps and mics and I definately had no problem with sitting on a leather chair and watching Metal bands record. The second day was by far the best. A young band by the name of Polaris were recording their demo and they quite simply blew me away. (They later split up and the frontman went on to found Deadfall who have played with Exodus and are quickly becoming Thrash legends). Anyway, what was a meager attempt to belittle me turned into 2 weeks of sitting down and playing guitar. I had the time of my frickin' life. Thanks Mrs. Thompson, you despicaple abomination :)

No apologies for length. I'm quite satisfied with it.
(Badgers wear Corpsepaint it's true, I've seen them..., Fri 11 May 2007, 10:53, Reply)

Pharmacy
I wanted to be Forensic Scientist as a kid, so work experience was at a pharmacy. Near enough I suppose.

I was demoted to filling the shelves after trying to poison my biology teacher's daughter with the wrong anti-biotics.

Didn't mean it....
(Jugular, Fri 11 May 2007, 10:48, Reply)

Pick on the Work Experience kids...
Have these been done yet? it's the obvious ones...

"Go ask 'X' for a long stand"
"Go ask 'X' for a left handed screw driver"

etc..etc..etc...

Oh, when i worked for a certain chain of Sport Stores ( 2 initials in the name, not 3 ) we used to have mannequins dressed in tracksuits with amusing masks on (think 'Spitting Image' type tony blair, arnie masks) hanging from the ceiling. Anyways, 1 of the lads would dress in a tracksuit, don the mask and go lay out in the loading bay, motionless, pretending to be a dummy. We'd then send the unexperienced spotty urk to collect the 'mannequin' - within seconds of them disappearing out back we'd hear a shrill 'SSSHHRRRIIIEEEEKKKKKKK' as they were assaulted by the tony-blair-in-tracksuit coming to life....

Awesome.
(TheManofScience, Fri 11 May 2007, 10:12, Reply)

magazines
"Or the fact that I found out this magazine WRITES ITS OWN LETTERS TO THE EDITOR? And not particularly good ones!"

I sympathize, but they pretty much all do that. Partly because if they get real letters it's safer to morph together a bunch of requests on the same theme ("My stepfather comes into my room at night and molests me, what should I do?"), and partly because it's just fucking easier.

I once worked for a bridal magazine as an advertising writer. It was fun for a while, including the bit where I got to write fake letters to the editor. I managed to sneak through references to Pulp Fiction and Moby Dick because let's face it, no-one reads the fucking text in a bridal mag - they're too busy flicking their beans to the gowns and jewellery.
(Emily Bruce-Dickinson http://jovialfellow.blogspot.com/, Fri 11 May 2007, 9:02, Reply)

They made me wash dishes.
That wouldn't have been too ridiculous a request if it hadn't been for the fact that I was working at A MAGAZINE. In the EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT. This was when I was finishing up my degree and actually had useful skills to offer, and if you want to get anywhere in media you have to get on a scheme as early as possible because the competition is so fierce. I thought I had it made at this place...yeah, right.

I quit on the spot, but that was just the last in a long list of ridiculous features. "Unpaid internship, editorial department" - I expected I'd be doing some meaningless work like opening mail, but did I mention that all such mailings had to be stacked in size order or else the poor little assistant editor might shit his pants with shock?

...Or the fact that I found out this magazine WRITES ITS OWN LETTERS TO THE EDITOR? And not particularly good ones!

...Or how it still uses only half-functional 1970s-era tape recorders for celebrity interviews, then asks us work experience kids to type everything up verbatim and god forbid there's one error? Because, after all, when you're working with a crap recording full of background noise and static, where you can barely hear a word being said, plus the only place in the office you can have space to work is right next to a very loud printer, getting one word wrong means you're clearly not trying hard enough!

...Or how you're not allowed to close any doors? Seriously. I was told to transcribe one of the above poorly-recorded interviews, but the room I was in was right next to the freight elevators and bathrooms with loud slamming doors. I figured, hey, I might as well shut the door so I can actually hear this shit recording...only to be chastized for doing so, and directed to never shut the door again or else the editor-in-chief would have a conniption. If it's between actually being able to get the work done, or keeping a door open, they'd rather I keep the door open. And then bitch me out for mistakes in the transcribing because I couldn't hear...

...Or how the publisher's CAT gets its name on the credits page, above those of us who actually do work?

It was pretty much a wannabe Devil-Wears-Prada situation, but with uglier, more "ironic" clothes. If they wanted a maid, they should have hired one. I'm so glad to be rid of that excuse for job training. The only thing I learned is that the world is full of people who think they're performing brain surgery when all they're doing is kissing arse.
( KersaI Missive Free Michael Shields! with Monday's Liverpool Echo, Fri 11 May 2007, 7:21, Reply)

Book Shoppe Weirdos
When I had work experience, my 3 choices were all unavailable so I was selected to work in a startup bookshop. Most of the customers were normal, but there were a few really weird people. Especially this one guy, I'll call him Gord.

Gord was in his 40s, 6 feet tall, rail thin with a lopsided haircut and tattoos of occult symbols across his forehead and on his hands. Every time he came in he'd babble on for at least a half an hour about how the Atlantians were an alien race with spaceships and stuff, or about Crowley's Thelema, or whatever he'd been reading that week. I had a look at his records on the database and the longest list of books I've ever seen came up, and sure enough they were all from the Occult section.

Couple years later I read a police brief in the newspaper about a purse snatcher, with a note saying that he told his victim he was Jesus. The description in the brief perfectly matched Gord's.
( Hosehead, Fri 11 May 2007, 6:34, Reply)

Brakes Specialist
I had school work exerience when I was 14 and mysteriously was placed as a mechanic.
I was a tiny, scrawny and weak girl, and the only girl at this workshop.
It was such a novelty for the customer who would say "aww look at the cute little mechanic in the pink overalls!" I was pretty rubbish at it, I was no good at lifting, or sweeping, or anything really. I had a great time though, getting covered in sump oil and packing bearings and changing tyres.
The other mechanics told me all kinds of stories about tricks played on other apprentices and WE kids, but they wouldnt do anything to me cos i was a girl.
(spent.fish flipping and gasping, Fri 11 May 2007, 4:01, Reply)

One for the Aussies
There was a girl (sort of) who started at our company who was short, of a certain weight and not what you'd call a classical beauty.
Basically she looked a lot like The Gobbledock, that Smiths Crisps monster who used to appear on all their ads.
Anyway, once this had been pointed out, our floor manager took great delight in sending her to the canteen every couple of days to buy a dozen or so packets of crisps.
She never did figure out why we'd piss ourselves laughing every time she showed up with her arms full.
( difficultchild, Fri 11 May 2007, 3:58, Reply)

Mundaneish
I spent the summer after my A-Levels shadowing a well known QC, before I went on to do my LLB. Interestingly(ish), he was defending "Warrior" from hit TV show Gladiators in a perjury trial at the time. Slightly star struck meeting this minor celebrity.

10 years later, I now work in an office 50 yards from the gymn he owns and see him about 12 times a day - so the shine has subsequently worn off. I say grown up - I had worked in the office of a solicitor friend of my dad's earlier that year, but they were anything but grown up.

This wasn' my first experience of work as such, as I was 18 and had a few menial jobs. But my first experience of "grown up" work.
(Seance Trumpet has got no beef with a man enjoying a croissant, Fri 11 May 2007, 3:38, Reply)

Bibles..
My first ever job, besides that of shoveling neighbors walks and porches for $5 was during high school. I was talking to one of the counselors, and mentioned that at 15, and a junior in high school, i was looking for an after school job. He had one.

I worked for a small company that produced bibles. I spent about 2 to 3 hours after school 3 or 4 days a week, placing ribbons into bibles, shrink wrapping them, placing them in boxes, then into packing boxes, then sealing them. After sealing them, i placed the said box of bible, onto a pallet. after putting 24 of these boxes on a pallet I would move it, then start anew.

I was pretty much left to my own devices. I came in, punched a time card, and went to work. Once in a while, i would run out of packing tape or shrink wrap and have to call the maintenance guy to bring me more.

the highlight of this experience with this was the boss (it was a brother and sister team, they got it from their father). the brother, was arguing with a salesman.

"This is crap - this isnt leather"

"that is the best product on the market"

"Bullcrap"

At this point he takes off his shoe

"This is a Florshiem shoe. This is genuine leather" Proceeds to pound his desk like Krushev with it.

He proceeds to yell at this saleman, throws his sample book out of his office and tells him to get the F*ck out, and dont come back until he has genuine leather covers.

Funny. I never liked him, thought he was a douchebag, but his sister, in some sort of way (Her being near 40 at the time) was hot.
(Subway Riding the rails underground, Fri 11 May 2007, 3:13, Reply)

library b*tch
Many moons ago, I had the misfortune to be a librarian, which is surprisingly even more boring than most people can imagine.

We used to get lots of kiddies in for work experience, most of them thinking ‘I like books, I’ll work in a library’, little realising that contrary to popular opinion, the staff didn’t spend all their time lolling at their desks with a book in their hands, but running round returning, shelving and re-ordering books, and helping punters find titles such as ‘A field guide to pumpkin varieties’ or ‘Help – my husband wears my clothes’*.

Consequently, most of the grommets were slightly pissed off to find they had to fill their days stacking books or re-ordering them according to the Dewey Decimal System, and by about day three we would usually find them hidden up the back in the 900 aisle (history and geography, in case you wondered) with a magazine, or tucked up in the Wendy house* trying to get some shut eye

Until Sally came along, a girl so obnoxious she made Paris Hilton look like Nelson Mandela. This girl took a rather ‘pro-active’ approach to her work experience. Rather than listening, watching and learning the somewhat mundane trade, she decided after about two hours of being there that she new better than everyone combined and did not hesitate in informing us at all intervals, vociferously.

While I or another staff member was serving a customer, she would jump in with her own two cents, talking over the top of us, which either led to her sending the person off in the completely wrong direction, or more often than not, leading to an argument where one of us would angrily tell her she didn’t know what she was talking about, and the customer would wonder what had caused their local library to become such a hotbed of internal conflict and disagreement.

By day three we all despised her, the final straw being me catching her trying to observe and write down the safe combination as someone else put away our (albeit modest) day’s takings.

So we expelled her from the premises. Yes, we expelled someone from work experience. In a library.

I have no idea, but I like to think little Sally went on to a stellar career in sanitation management or perhaps as a prison officer . However since she was probably such an officious little know-it-all she probably ended up in human resources.

*ps absolutely true book title

*pps you wouldn’t have found me anywhere near that Wendy house – more than once an overexcited child had left a ‘deposit’ in there for one of us to clean up…

*pps Length? She was only there three days – long enough to piss me off good and proper though.
(blu-k, Fri 11 May 2007, 2:03, Reply)

Sequins got me in to trouble.
My work experience was lovely. I went to a primary school and got to cut and stick and colour in with six year olds for two weeks.

I got in to trouble though for using sequins on some of the kids pictures though.

Harsh.



I could do with a bit of length right now if there is any going spare...anyone? no? ... I'll fetch my coat :-(
(Just a girl., Fri 11 May 2007, 0:49, Reply)

Ah, happy days
I worked for a very small insurance brokers next door to a sex shop. Every day the boss would nip out for lunch, then return half an hour later with a huge grin and a brown paper bag. "What you got today then boss-man?" "Check THIS out..."

I was 15 and very sheltered. I got so much more than admin experience.

(At the end of the week they offered me a part-time job, too. £10 a day, 2 days a week. Best summer of my life.)
( SugarSpunSister Yeah, whatever, Fri 11 May 2007, 0:06, Reply)

Not as
My one and only work experience week from school was in an electronics lab. Unfortunately nobody told the grumpy arsed electronics type that I would be invading his personal space for a week. After one day he called in sick and with nowhere else to go I was left in his lab for the week.
On the last day, having played with "the big magnet" and stuff for three dull days I decided to leave him a momento of my stay and went through all of his racks of "test" circuit boards and made a single, small incision on each of them - there were about sixty of them I think. I so hope that he was absolutely and throroughly pissed off by my actions. Maybe I am evil after all . . .
(Reverend Felcher, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:48, Reply)

We once took...
a work experience guy on at a place I worked building lighting systems.
His application form asked "Have you done any work experience? If so, where"
He answered, "2 weeks in a garage"
"What did you learn from this experience?"
"I don't want to work in a garage."
Brilliant!

Also, when I was a young Apprentice in the Army, I was once sent running back from the ranges to the barrack block for some shooting record cards. The duty Sergeant in the crew room took a dislike to me, an sellotaped them to a drill MILAN missile and made me run back with them.
My Platoon Sgt peeled them off, called me a c*nt, and made me take it back again.
So after about 3 miles, half of them carrying 60-odd pounds of gear for no reason, my Sgt says, quietly, "I called you a c*nt, because you weren't smart enough to hide the bloody missile, and bring the paperwork. That idiot in the crew room would not have been able to explain why our drill MILAN was under a bush, and he couldn't have blamed you for taking it. Did you learn anything today?"

I did
(TwoFourAlpha, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:46, Reply)

Mine was pretty fantastic actually
It was back in 1997, in a bank. I won't say which one in case they find this out, but i managed to sneak out of there at the end of my two weeks with a laptop, a shed load of stationery and over £200 in cold hard cash. And where did the blame eventually lie? The other kid who was there with me, the one with A.D.D.

Oh, and i sneezed in the bosses coffee every morning too
( Dazz - In Your Base, Killing Your Dudes since, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:46, Reply)

::cringes at memory of first bad work experience::
[Apologies in advance for post length. Also, I have decided to use the people's real first names, but not their last names, to protect their privacy.]
I work at a daycare part-time. DCFS (that's Department of Child & Family Services, for you Brits who weren't aware) states that there must be 1 adult per 8 children. Well, my boss wanted to pick up a bit more income, so she decided to hire me and thus be able to have more clients.
So there was this family--we'll call them the Richardsons. The Richardsons had just welcomed home their new baby, Ava, who was baby number five (NOTE: they just had their sixth child, a boy named Becklin, on April 16th). [YES, I KNOW THEY HAVE A LOT OF KIDS.]
Anyway, so their oldest, a girl named Tatum, had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck at birth and therefore experienced oxygen deprivation. As a result, she's always been a bit... oddly-behaved (not trying to be rude or anything; her parents would tell you the same thing). Well, because Ava had just been born, everyone--including Mr. and Mrs. Richardson--was paying lots of attention to Ava and not as much to Tatum.
So Tatum decided to get attention anyways (nevermind it was the negative kind). She was 10 years old and in the third grade, but I've seriously seen better-behaved two-year-olds. HONEST. If something didn't go Tatum's way--even if it was just something like, "Tatum, let's not hug your brother [Weston] that tight; he doesn't like that"--Tatum would proceed to choke/scratch/tease/slap/spit at one or more of her brothers (Weston, Karch, and Jaxon all go to my same daycare too, as does Ava and now Becklin). Since DCFS states that childcare providers can in no way physically punish a child, we had to only put her in time-out for red-tape reasons. We (my boss and I) tried EVERYTHING else--ignoring her (making sure her brothers were safe, though), taking away her outside-playtime priviliges, moving the brothers to a different room--until finally one day Tatum was going to attack my boss, who was 5 months pregnant at the time (she had a lovely baby girl named Taylor, who's now just turned 1 :D).
I did what came to mind first: I jumped in front of my boss, grabbed Tatum's ankles and wrists, and leaned on her, physically restraining her, until her parents came to pick the children up.
In the process, she scratched my arms and hands, tried to pinch my skin, and tried to spit in my face (I pinned her down before she could do anything).
Needless to say, Tatum didn't stay very long at the daycare, and that was pretty much the worst work experience ever.
(Mademoiselle Dustman picked a bouquet of oopsie daisies for you on, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:32, Reply)

joiners/plumbers
are dirty dirty bastards. the ones at my old estate agency reckoned they used to shit in a doughnut or chocolate eclair and give it to the new boy or work experience kid.

i'm not sure i believe that, but it is definitely true that when a flat is being refurbished, the joiners (who go in first) will use the toiler. when it's not plumbed in. as if it were plumbed in.

meaning that by the time the plumbers come in some days later, it makes "trainspotting" look like a spa.....

ugh ugh ugh i've shown people round flats and gotten halfway through the front door only to realise what was going on. i think i need therapy.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:27, Reply)

I worked in an Engineering firm.
I met an older version of myself, which was odd.
We also played a game called "piss off the office staff", whereupon everyone banged a metalic surface with a hammer hard enough for the office guys to hear.
'Twas great fun.
( Green Spanner and his magical lack of activity, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:15, Reply)

Squids.
Being a biology nerd I willingly applied to a massive museum in London thinking it'd be interesting, that and I got a couple of weeks off of sixth form for the pleasure of it.
Most of it was pretty dreary, I spent most of my time rearranging drawers full of snails.
The highlight came when I had to help with the display of the museums recent acquisition, a massive squid by the name of Archie. This was all well and good, it meant I didn't have to sit in a dingy room, however the room stank of formaldehyde and other toxic fumes and so we had to don protective suits, masks, wellies and goggles making me look like some sort of monster.
So this squid, is sitting in a home made tank, which was essentially some wood nailed together and a load of pond liners. To the right of this is a massive glass tank a metre off of the floor. We have to lift this squid into the tank. Easier said than done.
In the end we make a squid lifting device out of some of those trolley things with a raising platform, some rope and yup, more pond liners.
It was going well, until the trolleys decided to start wobbling. Luckily we save the squid falling off of the floor by holding it (a hand full of damp, formaldehyde laden squid is not nice) and then pushing it into the tank.
This said tank is filled with more formaldehyde which is an attractive green colour and when breathed in makes you pretty darn high.
Squid reaches the tank and lands with a massive plop sending what can only be compared to a small tidal wave of toxic liquid, squid juice and rotted flesh over all fifteen so of us.
The tube journey home was fun. It took days to get rid of the smell.
At least I got free drinks at the end of it.

Apologies for length, but the squid was huge.
(LoLLie, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:09, Reply)

Mate of mine...
worked on some kind of YTS / BTEC thing. As the young lad they used to pick on him and send him on "hilarious" missions for tartan paint and holes for nails etceteras. Being a switched on bloke though he played along and spent many mornings eating butties in a local cafe. The best however, was getting a four-day weekend out of a trip for a long weight!
( TomOz, Thu 10 May 2007, 23:03, Reply)