The good old days
By Primal Sneeze ~ January 30th, 2008. Filed under: Crappenings, Fun, Work.
- Incredulous Internments
- Banking Buddies
- Small humans and their keepers
- A Blue Moon
- The day the Wall came down
- Meeting Mary Mac
- Constantin Opel
- I’m a bit sheepish
- Movie making magic #1
- Movie making magic #2
- Making Movie Magic Suspended
- Making Movie Magic #3
- Making Movie Magic #4
- Making Movie Magic #5
- Making Movie Magic #6
- Spare ribs anyone?
- Two big size nines
- Baby bomb
- That was it then
- The absolutely brilliant employee – part 1
- The absolutely brilliant employee – part 2
- The absolutely brilliant employee – part 3
- The good old days
- The Grandmother of all Weekends
- Strange days and holidays
- An accidental Irish picnic
- This is cat altogether!
- Colouring in – an epic tale in 3½ parts
- Voting on Lisbon wasn’t easy
- The Leaving Cert – A Crash Course
- The pre-party
- The pre-party – part 2
- The pre-party – part 3
- Crappenings
- A bottle jack, a hammer, a stepladder and a sweeping brush
- The Surprise Party
For many years I worked with the same company. (Note the Freudian slip? with not for). Except for one unsavoury incident, I truly loved every minute of my time there. The work was interesting, but what made it was the people. HR did a great job of selecting new hires that would fit in – meaning you could be the greatest engineer in the world, but if you didn’t have a wild or witty streak, you could fcuk right off.
There was more laughter in that building than in the Foley department of the BBC sit-com studios.
It suited me fine. I seemed to get away with murder. Or at least, manslaughter. Or maybe mouse-slaughter. Well nearly anyway. I was in the office late one evening and ended up getting roped into loading a truck. A mouse ran across my path and was killed instantly by 4 tonnes of forklift and 70kg of Sneeze. The following day, a funeral was held and the scrapings off the floor laid to rest in the flowerbed. The GM officiated and, I was later told, said some very nice things about Michael and offered his condolences to his wife and their 153 children. As perpetrator of the crime I wasn’t present – I was locked in the warehouse cage for the duration. I was only released after a team from accounts reported they couldn’t say conclusively that the bum-prints on the forklift seat were mine. So much for forensic accountants.
Early one morning, in an effort to cheer up the receptionist, who had missed out on a promotion, I burst out from the mens’ shouting call the Guards! Call the Guards! We’ve got a floater. It worked and she literally fell off her seat laughing. Which would have been fine if she hadn’t been in the process of transferring a call from Germany to Sales and ended up putting it through to the canteen. The chef wasn’t having a great day either and screamed at the head of procurement in BASF: How many times do I have to tell you fekin eejits? I will not take orders from you at this hour of the day. I honestly can’t remember how that one was soothed over.
We had a manager temporarily transferred to us from California to lead a particular project. Erik Wenger insisted on a meet-and-greet breakfast for all the senior staff. I did up a nameplate for the janitor and invited him along. It read Crisis Avoidance Manager – well he kept the toilet roll dispensers topped up, didn’t he? No one was more deserving of a free meal. Erik-with-a-K, as he was to become known, introduced himself and told us how great he was for half an hour or more. It was the day before St. Paddy’s, which sort of counts as a Friday, so we were all pretty chilled and let him rabbit on. Enough about me. We squirmed – we’d all have to explain our roles and tell him how great we were. So tell me … we squirmed a bit more. What are you guys all doing for the holiday? We relaxed. Are you going to the mainland? Stunned fckuing silence. The janitor came to the rescue. Well we can’t because of all the heavy rain ya see. The Irish Sea’s too high and the boats aren’t allowed sail. It’s a health and safety thing. Really, said Erik-with-a-K, that’s unreal. Oh it’s not just here, went on our saviour, it’s all of Europe. Shur they had pictures of Venice on the telly last night and the place is under 20ft of water.
On the shop floor, most of the staff were young Dubliners. In the days before cheap air-travel, few had been past Newlands Cross, never mind seen exotic places like Kildare or Wicklow. To put that to rights, one of the company nights-out was held in Navan. It became obvious after a couple of hours that the pub we’d chosen was too small and with more still to arrive, something had to be done. The production manager volunteered to scout for a larger venue and took, Wayne with him. Settled in the new hostelry I asked the PM why he’d taken him. At each pub they went to, he had Wayne stand inside the door while he approached the counter. He’s explained to each barman that there were 40 in the group and pointed out Wayne as the drunkest. If you think you’ll have no problem with him, then the rest will be a piece of cake.
That’s the tear ducts washed out for today, thank you!
Congratulations on the nomination yesterday.
Hehe brilliant – how did the mainland gobshite settle in after that one? My work has never taken me anyone remotely near a palindromic town – I’m mad jealous!
Oh, God. Please tell me that your ‘Crisis Avoidance Manager’ got an immediate promotion!
Currently perfecting the art of silent laughing. I am at work.
Ha! Great yarns, Sneezy. It sounds like a blast working there.
Congratulations on your nominations, hun! Richly deserved so they are, even if you are a mouse murdering bastard.
RIP Michael Mouse. They’ll never see your like again.
More Congrats on the Nominations today!
Grannymar – I forgot one more tear-duct-cleaner! Will I put it in now? What the hell, I might as well – it’s Christmas. Hold on … I remembered a second. Maybe a third will come and I can fill a post.
Conorín – Now that I that I think of it, he got fired while he was in Ireland.
Sugar – There is no higher position than janitor in any company! Second in line is the receptionist. King and Queen if I were to be sexist about it.
I’m serious here: If you ever need to know anything about a company, these two are the ones to tell you.
John – It isn’t working – I can hear you!
Sam – It truly was a blast. It truly was.
We’ll never know for sure, but I suspect it was suicide. Michael and Marcia had been having issues. Having 153 kids to feed can put a strain on any relationship.
It’s such a privilege working in a place that you enjoy. Hard to find places like that.
hahah, mainland, and poor old Wayne. I like it Sneezy I like it just fine.
Caro – I never found a company like it since. Which probably explains why I work for myself now.
FMC – I’ve heard Aer Lingus pilots use the same expression and had to use all my powers of restraint not to break into the cockpit and rip their fcuking heads off! Yeah, yeah, I know they say it when the plane is over the sea and they mean the destination landmass (or so Aer Lingus tell me) but it still pisses me off because they never use the word on inbound flights.
I’m sorry Primal – being an African and all, but talk me through this mainland thing – is Ireland not the mainland or do you happen to live on a small speck in the sea that has failed to come up on my ‘Google Maps’? – or is it just good old Erik – with a ‘K’ being a typical American – with a large ‘A’? We get it over here all the time. You’ll say you live in Kenya and someone will want to know if you’ve ever met their friend from Johannesburg?!
Ireland is an island. We have a neighbouring island – Great Britain – with whom we have had uneasy relations for a while. Both are off Europe.
Some people refer to the large island off our east coast as “the mainland”. Others object.
Tribal politics….
Thanks for that clarification Aonghus – tribal politics I can relate to!
I thought so.
We bazungu like to pretend we don’t do tribal, but…
Sounds much like the R&D company I worked for during the 90’s. The basic requirements for hiring was genius level brilliancy, complete and utter lunacy and an uncontrollable sex drive. I qualified for two out of three right off the bat but I snuck by the brilliancy part of it simply due to my innate ability to fix absolutely anything. Otherwise I was a complete idiot.
We had this couple that worked there that at any time of any given day you could catch them copulating in your office if they thought you might be at a long lunch, on the back staircase, the roof (if the weather was nice of course) and I once passed by them appreciating each other on the hood of her car one late Friday evening of overtime as I passed by. I wished them a good weekend as I brushed passed on my way to my truck. They happily waved at me and she asked me to drop by Saturday night for their band practice as their regular sound man…[pause: sounds of ecstatic pleasure from her]…had come up missing again. I think they lived happily ever after but you never know these days.
We had a rutabaga launcher. Put together by the engineering department, building maintenance department and myself that consisted of the top and bottom of a barbecue grill sized propane tank welded together with an 18″ stainless steel barrel that pointed straight up from the firing chamber with 1″ thick walls and an inside bore diameter of 5″. It was charged with a potent mixture of oxygen and acetylene.
And the hierarchy had their offices located in a office trailer parked out back which is where we did our first test fire.
We rammed a good size rutabaga home, charged up the firing chamber and touched her off (we were located at least 60 ft from said trailer). Exactly 2 minutes and 47 seconds later our vegetable based projectile came screaming out of the sky and through the middle of the roof of the office trailer, continuing through the floor into the ground, taking pieces of the copier with it. Much later, when the new edition was put on and the tailor hauled away, we found the remains of our poor tuber driven nearly 3 feet into the ground. We lovingly filled in the hole it created with a bit of topsoil. Eventually it sprouted.
Just one story for another…
Ahh now that’s a key admission there Aonghus. Perhaps we should be looking at a few Irishmen here to mediate and give up on the UN lot!
Sorry Primal – don’t mind us talking amongst ourselves
We’ve sent some to Chad.
Only they can’t go, because the rebels are too close to the airport….
White girl – Aonghus has done an admirable job of explaining the “mainland” bit, but allow me add my few cents:
Erik-with-a-K was referring to us travelling from Ireland to “mainland Britain”. As for the tribalism Aonghus mentions*, we were shocked at his lack of geo-political knowledge. He believed Ireland to be part of the UK. Even if we still were part, why would we travel to another country within that empire to celebrate our own country’s national holiday?** Furthermore, he was also implying that the island of Ireland was so devoid of distractions that we’d have to go elsewhere to find a way to celebrate.
One would expect someone at executive-level to do a little prior research on the country they were being seconded to for two years.
*I am very firmly of the Irish tribe and one of the “objectors”.
**Well, our politicians do. Last year all but one government minister remained in the country. The rest availed of paid-for trips to watch young girls, with bad hair and garish costumes, dance on the streets of New York and elsewhere. All in the name of promoting Ireland, of course.
Glad to hear that Primal – ‘firmly of the Irish tribe’ there.
Think you may have to swing by yourself and mediate. This agreeing to agreeing turns out to be a ‘maybe’ according to the local press report I just read so nothing’s really changed.
PS. Thanks for the 10 mins – (Didn’t realise you honestly thought I was that slow!), but it’s ok, I’ll just keep adding on till my times up. He He
Tá scéal deas ag Domhnall Mac Amhlaigh i “Dialann deoraí”
As far as I recall, the story goes as follows. Domhnall is working on a site somewhere in rural England. Most of the others in the hut are Galwaymen.
But there is one bewildered Geordie among them.
“Let’s get it straight, now,” ar seisean, agus dreach anbhuartha ar a éadan ag camchúrsaí polaitíochta na hÉireann, “There’s Orangemen and Nationalists and Unionists and the A.O.H. Well then, whose this other crowd they call the Culchies?”
(Jackeen mise dála an scéil). And also an objector. But I thought it best to keep the explanation neutral.
There was a point to that story I omitted to mention.
It is hard for outsiders to know the shibboleths of a society.
I tend not to have too high an expectation of outer Europeans in this regard; and to make allowances for most Europeans.
I was once asked by a Yugoslav factory worker in Germany whether Ireland was a Muslim country…
This is what I meant:
From the Tagesspiegel (and, OK, its talking about builders)
“Die Iren, sehr britisch wirkend, hätten sich von ihm die Bühnen zeigen lassen.”