» Bastard Colleagues

football and alcohol seem to bring out the worst in the english
Well, I could mention the football club where one steward I worked with would constantly be complaining about 'filthy jews and gypsies'. Cones fallen over in the car parks? Jews and gyppos. Fire in the kitchens? Jews on the catering staff. Team not playing well? Jews were paying them to lose.

Yes, this was at the height of the FA's 'Kick Racism Out of Football'. The badge of which he proudly wore, with seemingly no irony at all.

Or the small crappy pub in a small crappy town run by the landlord and his girlfriend who lived upstairs. He would regularly get so wasted on his own Guinness that he'd have to ask me to pour his umpteenth pint of the night, as he wasn't steady enough on his feet to do it himself. She would get similarly wasted on vodka, and on one memorable night got so hammered she collapsed in the middle of the bar and pissed herself.

None of this stopped me working there, though. It was only when the alcoholic trainwrecks decided that the pub needed to move upmarket and start 'doing food' i.e. chips, that I actually left. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Except that they had popped out to the cash and carry (a good 25 miles away) leaving an old-fashioned chip pan merrily boiling its oil over in the kitchen. Apparently I didn't need to know about this as I was supposed to be in the bar serving customers.

Length? 5 long years of lurking.

*pop*
(Fri 25th Jan 2008, 16:34, More)