» Strange things you've been paid to do

Baggage handling (for £infinity p/h)
I spent three months, immediately following my graduation, being paid to *not* handle baggage at Gatwick. It was when Servisair were bidding for the Heathrow Terminal Five baggage handling contract. Somewhat speculatively, they recruited around 300 new staff to show how serious they were - this was back in the days when there was a still a suspicion that T5 might be finished before all the recruits reached retirement. They trained us (five days driving baggage trolleys in figure eights at RAF Swindon), signed three month contracts with us and told us to go home and wait to be summoned.

After a week's waiting, I got bored and got a cash-in-hand job picking apples on a local fruit farm. After a month I got really bored and moved to Cambridge where I answered the phone in a dog food factory by day and supervised second year undergraduate geology students in the evenings, all this time collecting my full wage from Servisair.

The first communication I rceived from Servisair was notification that my three month contract was up and that they were very sorry to have to let me go.

My favourite part? The effusive reference they gave me despite my never having done a single second's work for the £3,500 they paid me.
(Thu 30th Sep 2004, 11:35, More)

» Amazing displays of ignorance

Tides
My Mum, trying to explain to 6-year-old dred where the water goes when the tide goes out:

'into the sand'...
(Mon 22nd Mar 2010, 10:43, More)