» Toilets

I used to work in a bar...
and being the lowest of the low, have the dubious honour of often being sent in to clean the toilets after people had puked and missed, pissed and missed, or worse.
One night the Ladies toilets got blocked. Two of the girls went in and refused to touch it. The manager, desperate to keep the toilets open, found the two youngest members of staff (me and one of the Glass Collectors) and sent us in.
I'd seen the Men's toilets in a fair few states, Bank Holidays tend to bring the worst out in people and leave you with eyes looking like you've just had CS Gas sprayed in them, but this was a totally new level.
There was about quarter of an inch of water on the floor coming from the overflowing toilet, girls had CONTINUED to use it, obviously long after it had been blocked up. There were Tampons and the like thrown against the wall and various messages written on the mirrors in Lipstick (what can I say, we bred them classy in Whitley Bay).
We eventually managed to clean the place up, but the toilet was still blocked. The usual culprit (a broken glass) wasn't there, letting us conclude the blockage was futher along the pipe somewhere. So we went out to the back yard and lifted the Manhole cover.
The stench was the worst thing you can imagine, a whole days worth of drunk geordie effulent building up rapidly.
Our manager, being a tightarse, didn't want to call Dynorod out, as it would cost a fortune (this being a Bank Holiday and all). So had the bright idea of trying to blow the blockage clear using CO2 from one of the Gas Bottles.
We managed to jerry-rig a hose onto a nozzle and thrust it into the brown soup. He turned it on and a fierce bubbling came up from the cocktail of crap, starting to spray it around and out of the manhole, giving a few people brown trouser legs. He then decided we needed to hold it in place, to stop the end moving round. CO2 is cold stuff, so several people ended up getting freezer burns to their hands, as well as shitty trouserlegs.
Apart from stirring up the contents of the drain, exposing smells and sights no person should ever see, the gas did nothing. Our manager then suggested shoveling out some of the drain so we could rod it ourselves. Strangely no-one would do this, so he gave in and got the professionals out. It cost 300 quid and he tried to claim he couldn't buy us all a drink at the end of a 16 hour day because of this. Could still afford several for himself though...
God I hated that place. Thanks for bringing up a long-recessed memory, bastards.
(Fri 2nd Sep 2005, 15:06, More)

» Things you've done when you've had no money.

No Money

Once when I was so skint I couldn't get into a gig, I stood by the van as they were unloading the keyboards, picked one up and walked into the show pretending to be a roadie. Luckily I'd had some Mentos beforehand so my brain had enough sugar to think of this idea.
Hang on, that might have been an advert from my youth, DAMN TV!

Woo, posting Virginity broken!
(Fri 8th Oct 2004, 11:41, More)

» The passive-aggressive guilt trip

Have half of you dated my ex?
Looking through most of these stories, I see so much that involved my ex. Somehow I put up with her for four years, but had so much off her I could have exploded more than once. Some of her classic guilt trips are as follows:
Constantly ringing/texting me when I was out with my mates to "Check I was having a good time, I think I'll have an early night, there's nothing on TV and I'm bored. But don't worry, you have a good time." Which translated as, "If you don't come home now, I'll sulk for the rest of the weekend, only answering questions with 'no' or 'fine'."
Cooking really badly so when I said I was too tired to cook I'd get, "Well I'd cook, but I know you don't like my cooking." Classic
Saying it was "fine" (always a bad word) when I said I was going to do some work on the PC next door, leaving her to watch the god-awful interior design shows on TV, within five minutes, I'd have her coming in and going "I'm bored" before sitting behind me and annoying me until I paid her attention. The same would go if I went in the other room to read, listen to the radio, or anything that meant I was out her sight.
She hated sport in all its forms, so if I asked to watch something on TV, she would be fine about it. This meant she could watch whatever she wanted for the remainder of the time, as if I mentioned I didn't like it, the reply of "Well I don't like football, but I let you watch it last week." was always looming.
She would moan about having to pay half for food, inspite the fact she ate more than half of it. She thought it wasn't fair as I earned more than her, so I should pay for everything and keep her sweet.
Oh, the final, wonderful, culmination of this came one dark night around two years ago:
We'd both gone out into Newcastle with our separate groups of friends. Within an hour, I get a text saying "I'm not feeling well, I'm going home." I reply with "Ok, are you going to bed, I'll be quiet when I get in, shouldn't be too late". I don't hear anything else all night, so presume she's gone home, taken some Night Nurse and crashed out. One thing leads to another as the night goes on and I end up out until around half 1. As I'm walking home, I note the bedroom light is on, she's fallen asleep with the lights on more than once, so not a problem. I get in and she's lying awake in bed. "What time do you call this?" I get. Being slightly drunk, I foolishly reply with "Around half 1. Why are you still up?", "I thought you weren't going to be late." "Sorry, I was out and lost track of time, then had to walk home. I thought you were ill and had gone to bed." "I had, but I couldn't sleep because I'm afraid of burglars." The conversation went downhill from there and generally ended up in me telling her she was a deranged, OCD suffering, spiteful evil person who I couldn't see myself being with any more.
Sorry this strays off-topic more than once, I'm just having a bit of a vent.
Length, Diameter, Surface Area, Etc...
(Mon 17th Oct 2005, 13:51, More)

» Fire!

The Dragon
I had a friend who's party piece was entitled, "The Dragon." For this you require:
1 Butane Lighter
1 Mouth
1 Mate of Little Brain
The idea is you take a mouthfull of the Butane from the lighter, then breathe it out over the (now lit) lighter. You get a small amount of fire coming from your mouth, hence the dragon.
Anyway, he hadn't done this for several months (having grown up since his days at uni) and was persuaded to do it one night. One thing had changed since the last time he'd done it:
He now had a beard.
I say had as the resulting flames from his lips caught his whiskers and left the pub with a delightful smell of burning hair and bruised ego.
The Dragon now sleeps, until the next evening Tequila is bought...
(Fri 4th Nov 2005, 15:39, More)

» Weird Traditions

Rejected Coins
Whenever a vending machine rejects a coin, before I put it back in I bang it against the machine. The fact the coins usually accepted after I've done this makes me refuse to stop it, depsite the strange looks I get.
I thought I was strange until I started my new job, then found my boss licking coins after they'd been rejected. Now I'm just afriad to take change from the coffee machine at work.
(Mon 1st Aug 2005, 10:11, More)