» The Boss

Crazy Steve
There were 3 managers in a fast food place that I worked, two that loved their jobs and the other, Crazy Steve, who clearly didn't give a shit.

Some of his highlights include:

1. Shooting an attractive girl in the face with a mayonnaise gun because she was complaining. (They have pretty impressive range actually).

2. Often just telling customers to get out if they complained and even dragging one out by his shirt.

3. Turning the cctv off and helping 3 guys that pulled up in a van lift the statue of said food chain's famed mascot into the back. (He didn't even know these guys, they just pulled up and tried to steal it randomly).

4. Leaping over the counter and having a fight with a tramp outside the store.

5. Giving a kid a giant ice cream in one of the buckets for chicken and acting like it was normal.

6. Closing the store one time because he wanted pizza and phoning up Dominoe's and offering a trade. They accepted.

7. Setting the fire alarms off accidentally about once a week and giving all of the fireman free food when they showed up. He also found some gizmo in the office draw and was dancing around clicking it until the police showed up and informed us it was some panic alarm thingy.

8. We had some points reward system; he'd just give them to us regardless. 'You want a new playstation game Jonny? Here, have 4000 points and get it out of the catalogue.'

9. Would give children the whole set of toys with one meal.

10. Giving some guy's dog an ice cream outside.

11. Would just park his car in the drive thru and pretend it had broken down if we were too busy.

12. Writing bizarre complaints about the other managers, such as 'I don't like Dave's ears' and putting them in the drop box.

13. On a few occasions he'd take a bunch of french frie bags into the office and write the names and numbers of the employee working the stand on them and slip them back in to the pile. So I'd then inadvertantly hand some girl a portion of fries with my number on. I even got a call once.

14. Told me to take the trash home, which I found bizarre, but put it in the boot of my car anyway since he was so persistent, to find he'd just filled a black bag up with bags of mini-eggs from the store.

15. (one I forgot) He threw out all of our name badges and ordered us new ones from head office, including 'Fanny' for some gay bloke and 'Lil rem'. I was given the appropriate 'Ahmed'. I'm white.

16. (Another I forgot as it's not so much crazy, but just nice) We had to monitor the waste at the end of the shift and put it in some bin, incase we had a surprise inspection the next day and they counted it for the week. But he'd just pretend to put it in there and let us take whatever we wanted, then give the rest to homeless people on the way home. The other two managers were strict that it MUST go in the bin.
(Fri 19th Jun 2009, 14:37, More)

» Political Correctness Gone Mad

Typo of doom

A few years ago, when I was about six months into a new job, I was participating in a presentation remotely. We’d been commissioned by a rather large educational company to create a web site that allowed children to play games against each other. This is fairly common these days but at the time it wasn’t so much.

It was early in the development stage, and we’d knocked together a 2D beat-em-up, mortal kombat style game. The kids could simply fight against each other using the arrow keys and space bar to punch etc. It was both graphically and technically simple, but had been a bit of a mare to put it together.

Through the design phase the client had specified that they would prefer one character to be of a ‘Caucasian’ origin and the other of an ‘African American’ origin, in order to appeal to the various minority groups and appear welcoming. The intention was to have a variety of characters upon completion, but if the client wanted it for the prototype; who are we to argue? We settled upon a stocky, punkish sort of fellow with a green Mohawk, and as the other character a tall, black gangster kind of dude.

We’d also inserted a chat screen below the main action, where the two kids fighting could communicate with each other, just for banter etc.

All was going well with the presentation, and my boss, on-site with the client, was talking them through it before allowing one of the big honchos to play a little game against myself, whom was safely nestled back in our office, hundreds of miles away.

We began and I noticed the movements of the client’s character were a bit erratic, and I initially assumed it may have been a lag issue, until I recognized he kept moving away from me. So obviously I figured he was confused which character was his, so I attempted to help using the chat screen, and sending the following helpful message.

“I’m the punk, you’re the bigger guy”.

Except, during the creation of the peripheral device known as the keyboard, some intelligent bigot had decided to place the B key right next to the N key.

My quick follow up of…

*bigger

…convinced no one that I wasn’t a racist. :(

I can only imagine what my boss’s face must have looked like…
(Thu 22nd Nov 2007, 14:40, More)

» Mix Tapes

Rocky goes for a jog

I put a collection of uplifting, motivational music on my ipod, that i listened to while jogging around a local park in the evenings. Mostly completely shocking things like The Final Countdown, the new batman theme and some crap euro football song called campione.

Which resulted in me fighting off a mugger to Eye of the Tiger playing in my ears.

It was the single, greatest moment of my life.

Lost my wallet though.
(Thu 7th Feb 2008, 17:11, More)

» Tightwads

My grandfather
My grandfather was without doubt the tightest person I have ever met.

His expenses were ridiculous, he could live off £15 a month for food quite comfortably, and that would be it. He'd complain that the postman had stolen his premium bonds cheque if one didnt arrive every month.

Christmas times were always fun. I'd buy him a bottle of whiskey, and be given a can of lynx in return.

One year my uncle received a pea-green shirt from Marks and Spencers, which he returned as it didn't fit, to find that the checkout wouldn't even recognise the barcode as they'd stopped making it 10 years previously.

My cousin phoned him for a 5 minute lift when his car broke down, only to find that once they arrived he was charged the petrol money.

We'd often joke about his tightness.

He died a couple of months ago. Really unexpected, an operation that went wrong.

Each of his 11 grandchildren, including me, received £12k. My mother and aunty received £100k each, plus his house to share, worth roughly £220k.

I feel guilty that he spent less on food every month than I would on a night out drinking.

I miss him.
(Fri 24th Oct 2008, 2:03, More)

» Why I was late

i suck part deux

I hadn't completed a university assignment that had to be sent via email in time, so instead I opened a jpg in notepad and sent all the crap from that instead.

Next day my lecturer asked wtf I had sent and I just shrugged and said 'hmmm, must have corrupted, I'll send it again tonight.'

Which gave me time to finish it. ;)
(Thu 28th Jun 2007, 16:29, More)