I am not famous, so it is highly unlikely I will ever get asked to write an autobiography, despite how frankly brilliant it would be. As non-famous lives go, mine has been pretty interesting. For this reason I have decided to start telling a few stories of things that happened to me in the past, focussing on those things that have made me the person I am today.
I think I am going to start in the summer of 1995, at the end of my second year at University I returned home and signed up with the local staff agency in the hope of securing some potentially lucrative temporary work. I was still working at the local cinema and bingo hall (more of that another time), but this was poorly paid evening work. I needed full-time employment that would keep in me in Books, pot noodles and cheap lager for the next 8 months (OK, one of those I didn’t buy).
Within hours I had my first call.
“Angry, I’ve got a job for you. Do you have your own safety boots?”
“Err, yes” I lied.
“Excellent, report to the refuse depot at 4:30am tomorrow morning”
And this is how I became a bin-man. Or refuse engineer if you want to be all politically correct. I prefer bin-man. I borrowed a pair of my Dads safety boots that were one size too big and got a lift from my Mum at 4:30am. The foreman took one look at me, and said, “Fucking hell, do you even know why you’re here?”. I admit that tracksuit bottoms and a Pop Will Eat Itself t-shirt wasn’t the best attire for emptying bins, but I had not done it before, so how was I supposed to know?
I was introduced to the rest of my ‘crew’ who between them managed a couple of barely audible grunts in my direction. Though I did clearly hear, “Fucking students” at one point. If only he’d known how little fucking there had been in my second year the joke would have been on him.
As I was given a fluorescent vest, and told to get in the cab, the heavens opened. And I mean really opened. This was the height of summer, yet it was pissing down like it was mid-November. As my crew passed round hot tea from a flask, (“Sorry student, no more cups”), they took turns to remind me how wet I was going to get. I did not understand how it would be just me, as surely we would all be out in the rain?
Wrong again Angry. My first day was a Wednesday, and little did I know that Wednesday was the Village Run. This meant that we left the town where I lived and instead we collected the rubbish from several villages close by. To fully understand what this actually meant, I must describe the villages. We are not talking about a hundred homes, congregated around a village green like in the Vicar of Dibley. We are talking about a couple of dozen homes, all about 200 yards apart. Each one with a single bin. A single bin meaning a single bin-man, and I think you can imagine who that single bin-man was.
As I loaded each wheelie bin, and pressed the button on the truck to take the bin and empty it, I could hear the banter from the cab. It was still pissing down and my PWEI t-shirt had become like another skin. Apparently 200 yards was to short a distance to keep stopping for me to get back into the cab, so by the time I had returned the empty bin to its place, the truck was already halfway to the next home, with me jogging behind, piss-wet through and in oversized safety boots. Everything I was wearing began to chafe, and after about two hours I begged for some gloves, “Don’t be fucking stupid, they’d get ruined in this weather” was the response from the foreman.
I asked for a break at about 7:30 and was told that, “It’s job and finish, not clocking on and off, if we skip the break we finish earlier”, and I resisted the temptation to point out we could finish even earlier if they got out of the cab every now and again.
After about 5 and a half hours of chasing a refuse truck round the Northamptonshire countryside we finally returned to the depot. No-one seemed to notice that everyone was bone dry apart from me, and one of the other team members said to the foreman, “I wonder how long this little arrangement is going to last then?” despite the fact that I was stood right beside them and had clearly cracked their little code. “That depends how many village runs we’ve got left” I replied, wearily. “Just tomorrow and Friday” was the answer.
My mind was made up, I had blisters on my feet and hands and was developing crotch-rot through running in wet tracksuit bottoms, I was already composing the call to the staff agency in my head.
I eventually got home and my Mum couldn’t stop laughing at the state of me, and after showering, three times, I called the agency. “You could not pay me enough to go back there.”
I spent the next two weeks in a warehouse putting “Made in England” stickers over the “Made in Albania” writing on lightbulb boxes. Much more my cup of tea.
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marycub · January 26, 2007 at 9:14 am
bingo hall?? ha ha.
sooz · January 26, 2007 at 9:33 am
Bless!
You showered 3 times??? Weren’t you a tad sick of water by then?
greavsie · January 26, 2007 at 12:33 pm
2-3-4 Ohhhhhhh…Mr A’s a dustman, he wears a oversized safety boots….
Oli · January 26, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Ohhhhh the wheels on the bin go round and round
drunk punk · January 26, 2007 at 7:44 pm
There was a programme in the late 60’s? called The Dustbinmen. They said “Bloody” a lot so Mary Whitehouse had it removed from our screens. Their leader was called Cheese n Egg. If you’d made a career of it you could have been the next Cheese n Egg. Still ‘Cheese n Egg : I am livid’ hasn’t the same ring to it.
Great tale. Loved it.
snowbug · January 26, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I’d prefer stickers to garbage too;-)
z · January 26, 2007 at 10:01 pm
You’d have been fine if you’d had a pair of gor-blimey trousers. Scarred you for life, I should think.
If I were your mum, I’d not have laughed at you. I’d have been horrified and sympathetic and you would have had to demonstrate that you were a hard man and not a mummy’s boy by doing the village run again the next day. And Friday.
M.C. Glammer · January 27, 2007 at 10:29 am
Me and my mates used to go round with the binmen in the summer to get the lemonade bottles, comics and jizz mags people threw out. But we were only 13.
I’d have gone round that run the next Wednesday ahead of them and split all the bin bags, then laughed at them scraping bin spill off the road.
Paul Hullock · January 27, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Ooh so you’ve actualy had to do some work then? you poor thing.
You let slip some important info to me you went to university (always the sign of a tosser)and have little regard for the working class (tick another box there I’m afraid) also your prophesy of pop music eating itself shows a grasp of pop culture which in the light of hitory you can judge as well as me.
If i ever find you asleep in my wheelie bin you’d better give me a blow job or I’ll call the police/custom oficials/blog police (they exist you know!) just go forth and try to behave yourself in future.
The Blog Police
Léonie · January 27, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I was a dinner lady for a while. We should have formed a gang.
Admin comment by Mr Angry · January 29, 2007 at 1:43 pm
marycub – I’ve had loads of part time jobs as a kid, bingo caller, projectionist at the local cinema, spuermarket shelf stacker, factory cleaner, barman, silver service waiter. All have stories I might one day tell.
Sooz – It was the smell, it got into my nose and I couldn’t get it out…
greavsie – I never felt like singing that day.
Oli – some of them didn’t, trust me!
Drunk punk – Cheers.
snowbug – much more my thing.
z – My mum still tells this story, she thinks it is hilarious.
MC Glammer – Good idea, but I was not as vindictive back in those days. I believed in the inherent goodness in people, what fool!!
Paul – I’ve had lots of jobs that required hard physical work. I went to University, yes, but my background is very much working class. That said, I am much better that you.
Léonie – To do what, fight crime?
Post of the Week » Blog Archive » Shortlisted posts: week ending 2nd February 2007. · February 3, 2007 at 11:36 am
[...] 3. I Am Livid: Stories from my past #1. [...]
jonathan · February 10, 2007 at 1:19 am
Ah, ‘worst job ever’, always a fertile ground for a story- I must get round to writing properly about my two weeks as a trainee skirt-pleater in Gorton, Manchester. I’m pleased for your sake you just did the one day- that is to your credit no matter what the ‘anti-student’ bloke up there has to say- you don’t want to be sticking those conditions any longer than it takes to gather material for a decent blog post.
By the way found you via your nomination for post of the week, which is, if you haven’t discovered already, a marvellous place to find new blogs. Think of it like a rummage around som particularly choice village bins, if that is not still too painful an image for you.