Odd work practices

[GaryMG4]

Whilst answering the Tomato Energy thread some memories from when I started working for one of the regional gas companies back in the late 1970s. I went there as a senior programmer, grade SO 5 or 6,grades were so important then. On my start day I was introduced to what I can only describe as the stationery monitor. This man's job was to sit in his office, about the size of an average bathroom and hand out stationery as required. So I was duly issued with my coding pad, a spiral bound notepad a couple of pencils, a ruler, a red biro and a blue biro. I was told I had to take my empty biro back to have it replaced, I can't remember what happened about the rest. I think this man retired not long after I joined and it was then just a stationery cupboard.
They did have a tea trolly from which you could buy a tea or coffee and in the morning they often had crusty rolls with either a slice of ham or slab of cheese, so not all bad.
Anyone else have memories of like this?

 

[Ian Key]

I remember at school we used to have a "rough book" in which to write notes about homework and memory aids that didn't need to be written in the lesson book for that subject.

When it was full you had to take it to the deputy heads office at 12 o'clock to get a replacement and he used to examine every page to make sure it was full. If he found even a quarter of a page unused somewhere in the middle you were told to go away and come back when it was full. Which was fine but you could never find those notes again.

It was his way of exerting power over teenagers as he was 5 foot nothing and most of us were nearly 6 foot

 

[GaryMG4]

'Little man' syndrome. As an IT contractor I came across a few people like that over the years. Mostly it was just hostility because we were contractors and outsiders but occasionally they were people who had absolute control over their tiny empire and needed everyone to know it.

 

[EvTek23]

Yep, I remember back in the 80's the tea trolley. 10.30 in the morning you'd hear the cry "Trolley trolley trolley" and there would be Pearl waiting to serve you. The tea and coffee was free, but rolls and snacks had to be bought. A great time to catch up with people who would otherwise be buried away in their departments. It was a great leveller of peoples jobs and skills,, engineers, managers, secretary's all there for a common purpose and a chin wag!
We also had a technical stores, and stores catalogue with a specific pad to write out what you wanted. A ring on the counter bell and Charles would appear and scuttle off to get the bits in your list. After several trips having bought out the wrong component you'd get the right bits in the end and off you'd go to put them in whatever you were working on.
Great days of organisation, now all gone, a pantry and coffee machine replacing the trolley, and a much depleted stores within each department resulting in things having to be ordered for each job.

 

[T1 Terry]

Whilst answering the Tomato Energy thread some memories from when I started working for one of the regional gas companies back in the late 1970s. I went there as a senior programmer, grade SO 5 or 6,grades were so important then. On my start day I was introduced to what I can only describe as the stationery monitor. This man's job was to sit in his office, about the size of an average bathroom and hand out stationery as required. So I was duly issued with my coding pad, a spiral bound notepad a couple of pencils, a ruler, a red biro and a blue biro. I was told I had to take my empty biro back to have it replaced, I can't remember what happened about the rest. I think this man retired not long after I joined and it was then just a stationery cupboard.
They did have a tea trolly from which you could buy a tea or coffee and in the morning they often had crusty rolls with either a slice of ham or slab of cheese, so not all bad.
Anyone else have memories of like this?

What about pepper and salt on the tomato?

T1 Terry

Yep, I remember back in the 80's the tea trolley. 10.30 in the morning you'd hear the cry "Trolley trolley trolley" and there would be Pearl waiting to serve you. The tea and coffee was free, but rolls and snacks had to be bought. A great time to catch up with people who would otherwise be buried away in their departments. It was a great leveller of peoples jobs and skills,, engineers, managers, secretary's all there for a common purpose and a chin wag!
We also had a technical stores, and stores catalogue with a specific pad to write out what you wanted. A ring on the counter bell and Charles would appear and scuttle off to get the bits in your list. After several trips having bought out the wrong component you'd get the right bits in the end and off you'd go to put them in whatever you were working on.
Great days of organisation, now all gone, a pantry and coffee machine replacing the trolley, and a much depleted stores within each department resulting in things having to be ordered for each job.

I worked as a contract hydraulic fitter at a major crane construction company. When I first started there, they had two people in the store and you had to bring back the broken drill bit or empty tin of thread cutting compound, or the pieces of the broken thread tap ..... like you can get the broken pieces out when it breaks The fitters dept had a store cupboard with various pieces of broken drill and tap so you had the required buts to get a replacement ..... discovered afterwards that the cleaner would collect the tray of broken bits and put them in the fitters store cupboard in exchange for getting things fixed rather than having to go through the painful process of submitting a repair request and explanation of how the item broke to the in house maintenance dept When I was employed to work as a fitter in the maintenance dept, I would call through the fitters area and pick up anything that needed repairing for the cleaner that kept me in good with the fitters and I'd get a lot more work in their dept that way, maintenance couldn't take anyone from the production side, but we were free game for the fitters dept ... until I proved that I could work on my own without screwing up ...... then I was contacted directly by phone the afternoon before to see if I was available to work for a mth or so because they needed to catch up on their backlog .... never lasted longer than 6 weeks because I'd have caught up the backlog by being given the complete build of the powerplant and hydraulics on the next crane in the build program ...... never twigged that the problem was I worked too fast
The full time fitters initially resented me, but later I was "the man" because I'd take the pressure off so they could do all their "foreigner" jobs during work time Later discovered I was paid more that twice as much as the full time fitters, can't blame them for not working hard, they just stayed there because they had access to some really good equipment to manufacture their "foreigner orders" which is where they made the real money ......
Loved that job, even if it was 125kms each way to work each day and meant leaving the house by 3:15 am and not getting home until 11pm .....

T1 Terry

 

[Ian Key]

@T1 Terry your reminiscences about doing foreigners reminds me of my father going in as temporary manager for a now defunct large motor group at a garage in Derbyshire to try and turn it around as it wasn't as profitable as it should have been.

He noticed that although there were very few cars booked in for a service or warranty work on a Saturday morning the works were very busy. The mechanics were doing foreigners off the books and pocketing the money using the company's equipment. Within a month the garage was shut down.

 

[Rolfe]

And the management hadn't noticed?

 

[KT23]

For the ultimate in 'foreigners', in the days of large doors to the computer room to bring in very large kit, and raised floors for cooling ventilation - someone brought their car on to work underneath it!!!!

Absolutely true, it wasn't me, but I saw it! Sadly in the days before everyone had a camera in their pocket.

 

[GaryMG4]

Those were the days, proper computer rooms raised floors and heavy duty aircon. I went to a county council office to install some software for them and as part of it I needed to access the mainframe. At this site I could only do that from the computer room, they took me down into the basement, swung open the huge doors and there sitting in the middle of this dark cavern of a room was a server, about the size of a fridge freezer and the rest of the room was empty. To add insult to injury 'my' ICL mainframe was running as an emulation on an IBM server!

 

[Ian Key]

The famous one about workers shirking was in the 1970s at British Leyland where they discovered 14 men asleep in sleeping bags.

A lad I used to know worked permanent night shifts at the carriage and wagon works in Derby so he could machine parts for his and other peoples Harley Davidsons. That was when he wasn't taking his unofficially scheduled 40 winks.

 

[T1 Terry]

@T1 Terry your reminiscences about doing foreigners reminds me of my father going in as temporary manager for a now defunct large motor group at a garage in Derbyshire to try and turn it around as it wasn't as profitable as it should have been.

He noticed that although there were very few cars booked in for a service or warranty work on a Saturday morning the works were very busy. The mechanics were doing foreigners off the books and pocketing the money using the company's equipment. Within a month the garage was shut down.

And the management hadn't noticed?

A mechanical workshop I worked for between jobs, had a proprietor who was a known crook amongst the vehicle repair community, had more failed businesses that ended in bankruptcy than Trump, all for the same reasons, he was living in a fools paradise spending way more than he made ..... but he would reopen the next day under a slightly revised name ......

He had a variety of "accountants" over the yrs, and the one at the time was in having morning coffee with us .... and complaining he had bought a business we knew well up the road and it wasn't making near the money it was capable of or even what it was making when he bought it, thinking was a good investment .....

I near choked on my coffee and they both looked at me with that questioning face ........ I mentioned that as an accountant with a "questionable" reputation, which he was taken aback by, then I added, you wouldn't be this bloke's accountant if you weren't .... they looked at each other and burst out laughing .....

As I'd set the base line, I asked what sort of background checks he'd done on the manager and mechanic ...... the bloke managing the place was a crook of the highest order, he had sent a number of mechanical businesses to the wall, the mechanic was just one of the managers in training .......

I recommended that he set himself up across the road in the multi level car park and film from around 7pm to midnight ...... just so he knew what was going on .....

Between them, they were generating a monster amount of work doing repairs that didn't need doing, but booking the cars in to work on after hrs, telling the customers they were that flat out, the jobs could only be done after hrs, but they would only be charge standard mechanical rates .... and a wink wink, nod nod, discount for cash ...... "the accountant that owned the place had a good method of covering the reduced income".

They were absolutely racking the $$ in, he caught them on video and confronted them with it .... they bought their way out of it becoming a criminal matter and left without severance pay .......

The accountant actually turned a profit on buying the whole set up and promptly sold the building, reducing the competition for the bloke I was working for, so he was also happy and I made a few $$ out of getting a couple of crooks out of the industry ..... or so I thought .....

The mechanic learned well from the crooked manager and opened a shop of his own, specialising in maintaining govt and council vehicles on lease ..... I thought that was about it and I reckoned there could be no better match up, crooks looking after crooks looking after crooks

The other one was caught trying to sell workshop gear he had bought on another mechanical workshops account that he was supposed to be working for, I was happy to refer that one to the authorities ...... I expect he spent quite some time practicing his skills with soap on a rope ..... he had destroyed a lot of good people with his antics .....

T1 Terry