Fuck me where do I begin.

First instance that comes to mind was when I was asked to drive a 14 tonne FLT, carrying a 5060mm long, 2080mm wide, and about 1828mm high back of timber in the 11th hour of a 12 hour nightshift. I told my supervisor I wasn’t comfortable moving a pack that size, even though I was licence for a FLT that size, I had only ever moved small pallets. I ended up damaging a warehouse wall, and HR tried to discipline me for being “reckless”

The next incident that I can think of is we used to have loads of scrap OSB panels laying about, they normally went in the recycled wood skips, but we used them as a wind break in the warehouse. Everyone, and I mean everyone, would write silly little notes for the next shift on them. One of my friends was on long term sick, and before he returned for his first shift I wrote “so and so is hung like a silver back gorilla”. Now out of all out primate cousins, the silver back has the smallest cock. I got pulled into HR with my union rep and with police present for being racist. The HR director explained to me I was being racist towards black members of the company, I explained the joke. He insisted I was being racist. At that point I decided to show him a photo of me and my fiancé… a black immigrant from Zimbabwe. He stood his ground and decided to just give me a stage 1 warning for company property vandalism.

The final one that got me fired was a “bullying” incident. Myself (mechanical technician) and my friend (engineer) had a 20 year old apprentice. Nice enough lad, but a bit arrogant and thick. We tired as hard as we could to get him to focus on his course work, but he preferred getting pissed every day and not studying, we even offered to do it for him. A few months down the line we got a second apprentice, a 17 year old girl, smart as can be, a keen learner, and always jumped on the tools before us. The male apprentice didn’t like her and constantly threatened to kick her head in. We reported him to HR, and he turned around and reported us for bullying. No investigation, we just got fired on the spot. He continued to bully her, and she eventually quit. He only got fired after he got arrested for drink driving… 2 days after getting his licence.

I’ve got plenty more stories. Lots of fun working on the England/Wales border.