A slightly earthier story. Back in 1989 I was working for a big national haulier, an household name that was once a nationalised company that had a three letter acronym as it's trading name. Nuffsed. They employed me as a sort of relief driver going to whatever arm of the company needed me, the idea being to find a job that suited me and that I liked. For obvious reasons I won't go into too many company details, but eventually I found a nice little number working out of a company in Evesham hauling soft drinks for a big manufacturer on a night trunk 'oop norf' five nights a week. The job entailed going into the yard at 6pm, where my trailer would be hooked up ready for me by the day driver. I then took the trailer just over an hundred miles ' oop north' swapped the trailer at their other depot and came home, simple's, I was usually finished by 1.30 am and home. The bugbear of this job was a huge transport manager with a very bad attitude that everyone was scared of and really was aggressive towards his staff. I'll call him 'Nobby' ( not his real name, obviously). Nobby had an habit of coming up behind you and grabbing your collar, lifting you off your feet and marching you to his office if he was in a mood with you or he just wanted to impress himself on you. Not nice, but them's the breaks in my line of work sometimes. The first time he did it to me I simply held firm and asked him not to manhandle me, the second time I removed his hand walked to the front of him and said to his face as politely as I could " Nobby, if you want to speak to me, please do this " and made a face to emphasise what I was doing at that moment, which was talking calmly to him face to face. It seemed to work and he did this from then on. Result! Nobby however was a man of many irksome ways. He decided then that I could squeeze a small run in to their depot 15 miles away before heading off to my night trunk. Me being me I just shrugged my shoulders and got on with it. The run added three parts of an hour to my night, no biggie! The job was okay other than Nobby. The place I went to ' oop north' had a gate man that worked as a roadie for Chubby Brown in his other job, and I would have my break in the gatehouse listening to Chubby's last gig that this guy always had a tape of. I even borrowed a few off him and listened to them on the way home, it was coarse humour, but kept me awake on the dark journey back. We did have headlights and streetlights back then, I just meant the sky was dark. Even with irksome Nobby adding to my workload, I was still home in bed by 2 am, and the job was still a cushy number. However, after watching things and checking my timesheet the irk had another surprise for me, he added another 15 mile run to my night. Another run to the other depot before I went, so now I had two to do before shooting off ' oop north'. Grr! I mentioned to the union guy that the irk was doing this because I had the nerve to tell him to stop manhandling me, he agreed and said he would speak to him about it. Of course, he just said that was the job and he was perfectly within his rights to add to my workload, after all, it was job and finish and I was finishing rather early for a night shift. Grr, grr! I persevered and in my smiling polite way just got on with it, we all knew he was being a total - rhymes with runt, towards me, but as he pointed out, it was perfectly okay to do it. eh ho! This went on for about 8 months. I came in, did two runs to the local depot, then took the trunk 'oop norf' had my break in the gatehouse with Chubby's main man and laughed at the coarse humour on the way home. The upside being, I now never saw Nobby in the yard and he never got the chance to grab my collar, lift me off my feet and talk to me like I was a piece of dirt, as the extra work I was being given meant our path's seldom crossed. GOOD! Then the Christmas rush came and the proverbial hit the fan. The irk was under pressure to get loads out and was spending a lot of the evenings in the yard, both in the main depot and the outbase depot where I was going first. Crap! He then played his trump card. As it was now officially the Christmas rush I now had to do a third run to the local depot before my main run. Grr, grr, grr! I had to go like the wind now. The lanes to the local depot were winding and unlit, the potholes were like small mines, and the local trailers very badly maintained. I had to be careful not to shift the load and run the risk of the wrath of Nobby, who was always shouting to me to make sure I didn't spill the load or I'd get his boot up my delicate area. Ouch! One night when I went in, the loader said the first trailer had a pallet on with a broken base and he had loaded it with the broken side leaning in against the pallet on the other side of the trailer to hold it steady and could I ask the fork lift driver at the other end to unload that one before the one it was leaning against when I got there. I agreed, and when I got there relayed the message to the fork lift guy. I then picked up another trailer and headed off back to the main depot for another load. As I pulled into the well lit outbase depot on my return I saw a very angry Nobby stood by the side of a large area of broken bottles and spilled pop. I guessed what had happened, the fork lift driver had forgotten what I'd said and pulled the pallet off that the other was leaning on and the pallet had gone over. As I got out of my truck and was just about to say I knew what had happened, he hit the roof, I had eighteen stone of furious Nobby in my face shouting "I told you not to drive like an effin idiot around those lanes you effin, stupid...." he then grabbed me around the throat and shoved me up the wall with my feet dangling in the air. I was struggling for air. He was not being nice. It is at times like this that on reflection I often wonder where the inner resolve comes from. I knew I had no chance of getting him off through reason, or could even breathe enough to ask him to put me down, so I thought about this for a milli second and... kneed him in the cobs, hard, and bang on the tender spot. as he folded and dropped me I punched him in the side of the jaw, twice! He fell back under my truck rolling around as if he'd been hit by the truck not an eleven stone bloke. He was holding his gentleman's bits in one hand and his chin in the other while he mouthed the words " you're sacked" I shrugged my shoulders, got in the truck and drove back to the main yard to get my van and go home. The next day the phone was ringing off the hook. The company that actually employed me phoned to say I was indeed sacked and they may lose the contract, what's more I had no pay for the previous week and the week I had just partly worked, and I had to pay for the damaged losses. Great! The police were on the phone next. Could I come into the station and do a statement. More great! The upshot of this was. The union guy spoke to the MD. A outside contract trucker had watched the whole thing from his cab, the unloading of the pallet, me telling the loader about the broken pallet, and the attack from the irk. The police spoke to other employees and the fork lift driver who said he had indeed been to blame for the pallet going over and that I had advised him to unload it first. I was awarded my job back, compensated for the abuse by my employer, all my pay back and had a formal letter of apology from the soft drinks company that included an ex gratia payment for not speaking about it publicly for ten years. I heard through the grapevine later that the Irk and his sidekick were both sacked. Apparently, they had both been up to no good in other ways too. Nobby had received a broken jaw and had to have an operation on his gentlemen's dangle for his reward. ( I don't feel proud of that btw) I however got compensated and looked after very well by the company from then on. Alas, I never stayed long after that, the whole thing had left a sour taste, and I'd drunk enough of their product to make me feel sick each time I looked at it. I still do. so it has left a sour taste for much longer than you may have thought. To qualify this a bit. I am quite capable of looking after myself, I dare say a few of us on here came from a similar background and are versed in the school of hard knocks. But, do you know what, I seldom raise a fist or talk to anyone badly. The school of hard knocks also taught me manners and respect for people. Oddly enough I had an almost Identical incident to this five years later at another transport firm. I'll tell you about that another time. Maybe
i had a very hard time for year s from a bully , years later i seen him in a bar with his then girlfriend , i walked over and said hello dickhead , would you like to step out side for a wee chat, he looked at me like a wee lamb ,,i didn t think so i said am not so small any more . the girl friend asked what was going on , when i told her she got up and left him , result . now when he see s me he ducks and dives
I would of done exactly the same only difference would of been the very first time he laid his hands on me I would of kicked the Marmite out of him and would of got the sack straight away,
Yes, I tried that for a while, but the job was cushy because of the early finish. I had a small building firm to run in the day
That’s always been my trouble I’ve always had a bit of a short fuse, I’m a gentle man now, older and wiser
Nobby got what he had coming to him, you don’t mess with our Malc and get away with it Altogether now 1-2-3-4 Nobby has only got one ball the other is in the ......
it was different times too where a lot of management thought that was acceptable - now they're just more sneaky about it. i went for a summer job (didn't tell them it was only for summer) after my first year at uni, I got through to the second stage interviews with the big boss. he was a pig. he was bullying and sweary during the interview - not that i'm unfamiliar with swearing but it was inappropriate in an interview and quite scary - afterwards he told me i'd got the job. i thanked him and told him that i wouldn't be accepting due to how he behaved and spoke to me during the interview. His face turned purple and i turned on my heels to hear him shouting about how i'd wasted his time and was an ungrateful b***h, all of which reassured me i'd made the right decision. I was shaking like a leaf and burst into tears as soon as i was out of there, i was 18 and pooping myself but knew i couldn't work for someone like that.
I couldn't really say even if it was irn bru and they were owned by Barr pops. It wouldn't be fair on them!
If you'd concentrated on building bigger buildings you might not have needed the lorry job.....there more money in bigger buildings.
i had very wobbly legs as i left which are difficult to hide in a skirt suit dad was fuming when i told him and took a lot of persuading from me and mum not to pay the horrible bloke a visit!
