War Stories (what are they good for?)
I have had a reasonable number of jobs in the past 25 years (Jesus Christ, is it really that long since I left school), including a couple of spells which could almost be seen as careers if you half-close your eyes and squint a bit! Inevitably I have some stories (some funny, some not) sourced from my time in most of those jobs and I’d like to share some of them here. But first, the background of where they originated. In effect, the short version of my CV is:
After leaving school I worked for a couple of years as an Office Equipment Service Engineer repairing typewriters - remember them? - and photocopiers throughout Scotland, and attended college studying for a City & Guilds in Radio, TV & Electronics Servicing. A complete change of direction then followed and I worked for a major Plumbers Merchant for a dozen years or so in various branches throughout West Central Scotland and the North East of England, starting as a Warehouseman and relief Lorry Driver, working on the Trade Counter, as the Counter Supervisor, in the Office, as the Office Supervisor, Branch Manager, and finishing up as the Area Commercial Controller with responsibility for 13 branches in South Scotland and Northern Ireland at which point the bastards had a major internal reorganisation and I was made redundant!
Moving swiftly onto another small
er Plumbers Merchant
as Warehouse Manager I worked there for 6 fairly unsatisfying months before
being made redundant again (lucky white heather anyone?). At this point I
realised that maybe another change of direction was required and I decided to
spend my way through my redundancy money while being a self-employed motorcycle
courier in Glasgow for a year. Great fun (apart from my death-defying
accident, of which perhaps more anon) but I literally made a several thousand
pound financial loss over the year! I think I was the only courier in
Glasgow whose motorcycle was actually insured for courier work - fifty quid a
month I seem to remember - and since I was riding the best part of a thousand
miles a week, the bike needed a full service about every six weeks at a cost of
a couple of hundred quid! So onwards and upwards and having very narrowly
failed the eyesight test to join as a cop I started in 1997 as a civilian with
Strathclyde Police, working for about 3 years in a police office as a Divisional
Assistant & Turnkey (see photo right, although it isn't me) which mostly involved dealing with the general
public and searching & looking after prisoners in police custody.
I stopped being a Turnkey in 2000 and no longer work for Strathclyde Police, and sadly I have no stories which relate to my current job, so where and what it is have no relevance to this forum.
Some of the stories have been sanitised, mostly to protect the stupid, but sometimes because they relate to stuff which discretion forbids me to discuss, so in no particular order other than that which I remember them and add them to this page here they are …….
- The Orangeman
- Tam and the personnel carrier
- Tam and the prisoner escort
- Waldo and the insulation
- Waldo and the diesel tank
- Waldo and the beery breath
- Waldo's demise
- The police negotiator
- What's the cubic capacity sir? (added 5th August 2006)
page last updated 12/04/07
In a branch
of a Plumbers Merchant in Glasgow I worked with a number of people who were,
let's say, fairly keen members of the Orange Lodge. This didn't
particularly bother me, partly because it gave some opportunities for
baiting them, so I got on pretty well with everyone, although getting a
Saturday morning off any time around the 12th July was mostly impossible since
85% of the staff had "walking" commitments then! I worked there for about
a year as the Warehouse Supervisor before moving to the north east of England
and transferring to another branch. A couple of months after I moved down
south I had
a Friday off work and travelled north back to Glasgow for the weekend.
Since I had some time to kill before the inevitable beer and curry, I decided
I'd visit my former colleagues so drove to the industrial estate and parked
outside the branch, straight across from the office window where I could see
half a dozen people inside, and they saw me getting out the car. Well I
was vaguely aware of some strange looks directed towards me as I walked towards
the front door, but thought nothing of it until I walked in past the Trade
Counter and made eye contact with a guy who I'd worked closely with for a year
but who just blanked me and looked away, ignoring my spoken greeting.
Confused I went through the office door to be greeted by a very senior member of
staff who asked very loudly "what the FUCK are you wearing?". I
looked down at myself to see if I'd accidentally put on a pair of crotchless
tartan rubber shorts or something (as you do), and then the penny dropped.
That morning I had, as was and remains my custom, gone into my drawer and
retrieved the first thing which came to hand (not being a fashion icon I pay
little attention to clothes, as those
who know me will testify!) and that day I happened to put on
without
a second thought a South Africa rugby jersey (see photo right), whose colours
are vaguely reminiscent of the football strip of Glasgow Celtic (particularly
their away strip - see photo left), the sworn enemy as far as a certain type of
Protestant in the west of Scotland is concerned. I explained that it was a
rugby jersey and had nothing to do with Celtic or indeed Catholicism, but the
following 15 minutes I spent there were rather strained, so I made my excuses
and left.
A few months later I again visited the branch, this time differently dressed, and the guy who had blanked me made an obvious point of coming over and asking how I was and how the job was doing, and wasn't it nice to see me again ......
As
a postscript, that guy sadly died a year or two later by which time I was back
in Glasgow working as Area Commercial Controller and that branch was one for
which I was responsible. Along with other colleagues I attended his
funeral which was held in the "Orange" church in Glasgow and presided over by a
Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) minister who was wearing an Orange Sash over
his clerical garb! Very surreal and rather reminiscent of the Rev Dr Ian
Paisley, that famous prick from Ulster. I made a big point of crossing
myself at every opportunity, but nobody noticed. Except God maybe.
Police
Officers sometimes travel around in minibuses, usually referred to as Personnel
Carriers. One
afternoon the driver of one such vehicle, lets call him "the Captain", was in the vehicle
with, amongst others, a fairly young cop who I'll call "Tam". Now I don't
know whether you've ever driven a minibus, but sometimes they're a fair length
and in order to get it out of the parking space they were in at the side of the
road (having completed the enquiry they were on) the Captain called out to the
person sitting right at the back of the vehicle, who happened to be Tam, asking
"how much room have I got between us and the Cavalier behind?" at which
Tam looked out the back window and replied "about 15 feet". The
Captain duly put the vehicle into reverse and swiftly moved back all of 2 feet
before the minibus stopped with a big crunch. He shouted to Tam "For
fuck's sake, I thought you said there was 15 feet between us and the Cavalier!",
to which the reply was "Aye there is, but there's an Escort parked between us
and the Cavalier!"
In
July there is a traditional two week holiday in the west of Scotland called "The
Glasgow Fair" when lots of people head off to various holiday destinations,
including Blackpool. One such Glasgow worthy did just that one year but
sadly managed to quickly bring himself to the attention of the Blackpool Police
for some misdemeanour at which point the Police National Computer revealed that
a Warrant was in existence for this fine chap since for some reason Glasgow
Sheriff Court wanted to have a word! Lancashire Constabulary duly
contacted the police office in which I worked, where the warrant was held, to ask if we still
wanted him.
As is the norm, it was arranged that two nightshift cops would take an unmarked car down the 195 miles south to Blackpool, and my shift was working nightshift so the two cops chosen were Tam and Mackem. They decided to share the driving and Mackem (who is a good guy but was not always known for his even temperament) was behind the wheel when they set off southbound. They arrived in Blackpool at about 2am and established that the prisoner was completely compliant and wouldn't cause them any problems so loaded him handcuffed into the back seat of the car and set off again, this time with Tam driving.
First though, Tam assured Mackem that he knew the route back north to the office, so Mackem settled into the front passenger seat and instantly fell asleep. Tam directed the car along the M55 due East for about a dozen miles to its junction with the M6, whereupon he turned right (think about it!). About an hour later Mackem woke up and was idly gazing out the window and wondering how far north they'd reached when he saw the sign saying "Birmingham 20 miles" whereupon he shouted to Tam "What the fuck are you doing, we're heading in the wrong direction!" to which Tam replied "It's OK big man, I know a shortcut!".
The car was then stopped on the hard shoulder and apparently the prisoner had to physically separate the two cops to stop Mackem killing Tam!
I
worked for a year or so in a particular branch of a Plumbers Merchant with various
"characters" chief amongst whom was probably the guy I'll call "Waldo".
He was a very strange boy, and one of my favourite stories of him concerns what
he did with a delivery of loft insulation. You may be familiar with this
stuff and it comes packaged in large rolls which when stood on end are about 5 feet
tall and 3 feet in diameter.
The way this warehouse worked was that this item was stored on a mezzanine floor, so we unloaded the 100+ rolls out the back of the delivery lorry straight onto the warehouse floor, then signed the driver's paperwork to let him away, giving us as much time as we wanted to transfer the packs up onto the mezzanine, the floor of which was maybe 10 feet above the warehouse floor.
Anyway, the rolls were now lying about 3 or 4 deep on the floor, all aligned with each other a bit like the two rolls in the photo above right (think of a stack of lots of tubes of Polo Mints or Smarties lying aligned in the same direction). Waldo and I were on the Mezzanine as other staff were down on the floor throwing them up to us one at a time when Waldo announced loudly "watch this!" and proceeded to stand on the edge of the loading dock poised as if he was on a diving board, then before anyone could stop him he launched himself out in a beautiful somersault onto the comfy padded rolls below, which instantly parted because he was in the same alignment as the rolls, and he went down through them all and hit the concrete floor of the warehouse with a sickening thud.
Fortunately for him a combination of the rolls slowing his descent a bit, and his head being exceptionally thick, he wasn't badly injured. There has been an advert on the TV in the UK recently for, I think, Kleenex Velvet toilet roll where it's portrayed as so comfy and padded that the workers in the factory use piles of it to jump down onto instead of using stairs, and I always think of Waldo when I see it!
At the branch in which I worked with Waldo, for our delivery vehicle we had our own tank of diesel which was similar to the photos except it was
rectangular, but importantly like the photos it had a wall round the base which formed a sump
which accumulated a mixture of rainwater and spilt diesel.
In the winter one year the pipes leading from the tank froze so Springer, the warehouse supervisor, gave Waldo specific instructions to take a blowtorch from stock; play it gently over the frozen pipes to melt the blockage; then finally take some 4" hair felt from stock and lag the pipes with it to prevent future freezing. All pretty straightforward one would think. Not for Waldo though.
He did as instructed and took a blowtorch from stock and melted the frozen stuff in the pipes, then he took the felt and lagged the pipes, but that's where logic flees because his next action was to get a polystyrene cup from the coffee machine and scoop up some of the mixture of watery diesel from the sump and pour it over the felt lagging, then get the blowtorch again and point it at the by now exceptionally combustible felt. Can you guess what happened? Yep, a sheet of flame shot up the side of the building so Waldo didn't hesitate, he ran like fuck all the way down the warehouse and crashed through the door into the office where Springer, the warehouse supervisor who had given him his task, was processing a cash sale through the till.
Waldo screeched to a halt in a
cartoon-character fashion as Springer looked up at this sudden violent entry to the
normally quiet office, and quickly asked "what's wrong?" to which Waldo,
pointing to the till and indicating the fact that Springer was halfway through the process of
counting out
change, replied "it's OK, I'll wait till you finish that".
Springer duly finished his counting 30 seconds later and said "well, what's up?" to which Waldo screamed "THE BUILDING'S ON FIRE! ".
By the time the Fire Brigade arrived the flames had melted the top half of part of the warehouse external wall (bottom half plain brick, top half clad in a plastic substance from about 10 feet off the ground). In the photo on the right you can see the area where the tank was and where the cladding was burnt, although there's no trace of the damage now and the tank was removed years ago. It was the furthest part of the dark brown building, just beyond the two roller shutter doors.
A long time later I asked him what had gone through his mind to lead him to do what he did, but he just shrugged and said "Dunno"!
I
used to live some 20 miles from work, and had to get the 0659hrs train which
arrived at the other end at 0730hrs followed by a half hour walk to work for an
8am start. Sometimes my colleagues who had cars would spot me walking and
stop and give me a lift the last bit of the route and occasionally it was Waldo
who did so, in his old scabby Vauxhall Chevette which had been "customised"
with various crap-looking stick-on plastic bits on the outside, and the whole of
the inside - floor, roof, dashboard, steering wheel, seats - was covered in dark
blue fur (no, really!). Well I say fur, but in reality it was
exceptionally filthy, stinking, mangy cheap nylon which would have made your
hair stand up with the static were it not for the insulating properties of the
greasy dirt which coated it!
Now Waldo often arrived for work still smelling of beer, and I think he was proud of this because it showed that he was a hardened drinker. A real man. The first time he stopped to pick me up though I discovered his secret, because he had an opened can of cheap lager sitting between his legs as he drove, and he took several little sips from it en-route to work. So the smell of beer coming from him wasn't from a mammoth session the night before, it was from the small amount he'd consumed just before arriving at work!
No, not that sort of demise, as far as I know he's still alive somewhere. Waldo's girlfriend has been described by those who have met her, as more of a man than most men, and he lived with her in her council house. One night, after a day when they had both been drinking heavily, they had one of their customary stand-up fights and were each giving as good as they got, but this time his girlfriend (or "The Burd" as he always called her) decided, not for the first time, that enough was enough and wanted him put out of her house so as usual she called the local police to assist. This time though, while relaying to them her side of the story of how he had beaten her up (leaving out of course the bit where she did likewise to him just as effectively), she added for good measure "and when you come round here there's a cupboard full of stuff he stole from his work".
When the officers arrived to eject him from the premises they asked to see this cupboard, and lo and behold, it was indeed full of stuff he had stolen from his work! So, the branch manager received a call from the police asking if he had anything missing and Waldo duly received what he deserved! I believe he later got back together with "The Burd" but whether they remain as a couple I thankfully have no idea.
The (almost certainly apocryphal) story goes that a number of years ago on a Saturday afternoon in Glasgow City Centre there was a report of a housebreaking in progress (i.e. the offender was still on the premises) in the upper floors of a shop in Buchanan Street (right in the busiest shopping part of Glasgow). Several officers were dispatched to try to catch the suspect who had by now quit via an upper window onto some scaffolding and had climbed up onto the roof of the building, from which there was no escape although there was no way police officers would go onto the roof to try to arrest him as it was considered too dangerous. As the suspect peered over the edge at the growing crowd who had gathered to see what the police were doing, and the police and public stared back up at the roof, one of the officers, who I'll call Roo, decided that if a prolonged stand-off was to be avoided someone should take swift decisive action, so he went to the van and retrieved a megaphone.
Making his way back through the crowd of shoppers Roo put the megaphone to his lips and addressed the guy on the roof (and thousands of innocent bystanders) with the immortal line,
"It's the polis, if you give up and come down right now we'll no kick yer cunt in!"
Early in my career in a major Plumbers Merchant, but before the company had been taken over and became part of the major chain, I worked in a branch in Hamilton which had a window display of showers, both electric and mixers. One day when I was working on the Trade Counter a little old Italian man came in looking to buy a new electric shower. I say little and I use the term advisedly. He was about five feet tall and five feet wide.
I took him into the window to show him what we could offer and use my newly acquired selling techniques to make sure we got the sale. The showers were non-working displays and had been basically nailed to the wall at random heights. I showed him the first one, describing in detail the power rating, water flow rate, and all the lovely features. He listened intently, then lifted the shower head off its holder and brought it down as far as the length of the hose would allow, then said "No, s'no good" (you have to imagine the Italian accent).
We moved on to the next one, and I launched into full flow, detailing all the benefits it could offer at a most reasonable price. Again he lifted the shower head down and looked as though he was trying to get it to stretch all the way to the floor, then he said "No, s'no good".
We moved to the third option and repeated the scenario, only this time, after telling me again it was no good, he leaned close to me, lowered his voice, and explained conspiratorially in his thick Italian accent "it's for my wife, she like to spray it up her fanny!".
I'd love to claim that I had the presence of mind to enquire further about the fanny in question and ask the question which heads this story in order that I could furnish him with something with a suitable flow rate, but I was so taken aback (I was innocent in them days) that I let him leave without closing the sale. I don't know if his wife ever managed to partake in that simple pleasure with a new shower from somewhere else. And no, I didn't think fast enough to suggest a longer hose.
