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#
www.b3ta.com/board/163117

it was part of our 'careers' lesson when i was at high school. for some reason this chap called neville sponge wanted to be one. i never understood why.
(, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:08, archived)
# Neville Sponge!!!!
Yes! Neville Sponge, wanted to be a brain surgeon but was convinced to be a mastic asphalt spreader!! Thank God someone else remembers it... Nostalgic sigh...
Oh, and the worst job I ever had was in a packing factory (certain theme emerging here) putting shampoo bottles into cardboard boxes. Not bad, except the corrugated cardboard was so sharp and the box so badly designed that every time you tucked the flaps in (ooooer) it took a neat little roll of skin of the back of your fingers.
By the end of the day my fingers looked like those novelty butter curls your mum used to impress dinner guests with in the 70's, except bloodier.
Quit that day, went home to cry.
(, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:24, archived)
# I remember that!
There was a YTS (or YOPS, whatever) leaflet doing the rounds that had my then assistant Venture* leader on it!
There was a photo of him accomapnied by a quote about why he chose to work in a dark room**...


*big Scouts- you got to wear (pale) brown shirts & march a lot...

**Not as exciting as it might appear
(, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:18, archived)
# Bill Tarmey
aka Jack Duckworth out of Corrie, started out as a mastic asphalt spreader

(, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:07, archived)
# Yes I remember that too
Christ I never thought I'd hear someone else remember that mastic asphalt spreading joke. It's pretty obsure. I recall that also Neville Sponge was drawn with extremely phallic-shaped ears (or did I just imagine that?).

My list of shit jobs is endless.
The first one was washing up in the kitchen of a local hotel at 16. Evening shifts ended at 2 in the morning, the washing liquid gave me severe eczema. I gave up when my arms starting bleeding badly.
Another one that sticks in my mind was working in a almond processing plant one summer. There was a particularly nasty boss there called Maurice. I never truly understood the power of hate until I met Maurice. His favourite pastime was bollocking the girls on the production line when they stopped momentarily to turn over the tapes in their walkmans. He started to pick on me when I got a broken finger from a motorbike accident, purposefully giving me jobs like lifting heavy sacks to exacerbate my pain. Most of these jobs were superfluous, it's just that wanted me to give in. He said so. His only motive for hurting people was pleasure. He was an evil man.

Anyway I studied hard, went on and got a degree and do better things while I like to think that he squandered the rest of his existence in that same shithole doing nothing useful with his life.

After I graduated I got a hotel bar job just to tide me over until the big offers would come rolling in.
I quit after one evening. The job wasn't bad but by chance I noticed a chef from that first hotel where I worked 7 years ago. This was symbolic.
For me, the circle was complete. I started in a hotel kitchen, I ended in a hotel kitchen. My life was a rags to rags story.

I was gutted. And I'm sure Maurice would have loved that.
(, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:13, archived)
#
i remember that too, but then I did go to the same school
(, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:02, archived)