Re: Stories to tell
I was talking about different jobs I'd had during my life the other afternoon to my family and my granddaughter was in hysterics about this tale I told.
It was funny in one aspect but could have proved fatal.
I used to be in charge of the seconds department at the hosiery firm I worked for. We made socks for well known names such as M@S and many other big stores. I answered to the main boss if anything was amiss.
Then there was Horace a gentle giant of a man who used to suffer with his nerves a lot. Horace was in charge of the folders who paired the socks up to go into the shops.
Then came Jack a small bloke who was foreman over Horace and had a terrible way of speaking to the women, plus bullying Horace who was literally terrified of him.
Jack only tried his bullying tactics with me once and I turned on him like a hellcat and told him he was NOT my boss and if he did not treat the women with courtesy I would complain to management.
WOW he certainly calmed down after that.
Anyway to get to the main story.
Where I worked there were massive sliding doors where the work, after being returned from the finishers was sent back in skips. These skips looked rather like the big basket trunks that actors use.
One morning Horace came through and put his hand up to me rather than say his usual ‘Good Morning.’
I could see he was trying to eat something so I just acknowledged him and glanced as he went towards the sliding door to check the goods that had arrived.
As the door slid open I heard a terrible gurgle and just looked up startled as Horace tried to say something but his false teeth shot out of his mouth still wrapped round a toffee that one of the girls had given him.
I shot to his aid and quickly picked up his teeth and shoved them in my pocket because I thought he was going to have a heart attack, apart from not wanting anyone stepping on them and perhaps having an accident like having their big toe bitten off.
As Horace slithered down the door frame he pointed to one of the skips and was trying to say something.
I was amazed, as I looked in the direction he was trying to point out to me, to see two legs sticking out with odd socks on and holey shoes.
It looked like a dead body but at the time I was trying to support Horace from fainting out and with him being six foot tall weighing roughly 15 stone it was taking me all my time to hold him.
Somebody else had heard the kerfuffle and came running out.
Jack the foreman came along saying “WHATS OOP? WHATS OOP?”
I told him instead of shouting 'WHATS OOP' to give me a b****y hand to get Horace on a chair to help get him back into this world.
Meanwhile the other person who came out lifted the lid on the skip and it revealed two model legs that I had to use in my job encased in two odd socks plus two old shoes on the end of them.
Some silly b****r was playing the fool and nearly caused poor old Horace to have a heart attack.
When things calmed down I took Horace’s teeth to the toilet to try and prise the toffee out of them.
Gawd Almighty it was like wrestling with a b****y alligator.
I stood for nearly half an hour trying to get the darn things free.
I wasn't too happy about doing it but I had to do something about them because he was in no state for me to try and shove them back in his mouth. It took me well over 30 minutes to get all the bits of
toffee off them.
I managed to clean them in the end but I think Horace learnt his lesson NEVER to try and eat toffees again with his false teeth in.
Later on in the day the owner of the firm came round to see if all was well, which he did every day.
I followed him out of the door as he was doing his rounds and as we walked in the yard what should be sticking out of the biggest heap of coal slack but the two legs with holey shoes on.
It took a lot of talk and convincing the boss to tell him that a prankster was running amok because he jumped into action ordering two men to start shovelling in case some one was underneath the slack.
The legs looked SO very real.
Yes we did know who did it and he had a good ticking off.