When I was but a young lad...
...I worked as a labourer for my then-girlfriend's dad installing windows and conservatories in the local area. It was a fairly decent job for a 21 year old lad I suppose, and it gave me a reasonable amount of cash in my pocket (at first anyway) - £200/week was not bad for a young man still living at home with his dad and with no real outgoings. It was my first 'proper job' besides working in supermarkets or fast-food places and I was eager to get stuck into a man's job and get fit in the process.

I started working for him around May, and I thought it was great being outside all day in decent weather - especially when the summer sun really kicked in.

The problem was - it was a 'cash-in-hand' job. I started off doing the odd shift for him and it slowly went from 1 or 2 days a week to 5 or 6 days, and when any holidays came around, I was left with no pay for the duration of the break.

This, I could handle - the job was what it was and I didn't expect the guy to pay me holiday pay when I was technically not working for him anyway. After all - it was supposed to be temporary and as long as he didn't take the piss, things would be O.K, right?

Wrong.

Problems arose pretty quickly when the big boss-man would stop coming in and he would leave me working with the most sectarian piece of shit I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my entire life.

I was raised in a Catholic household (although by this point in my life I had escaped that particular burden) and he considered himself a Protestant which, given that some of the local inhabitants of my particular town had a propensity for sectarian hatred, led to some pretty severe bullying at my work.

Although I was employed as a labourer, about a month into the job I was expected to be able to fit windows and doors, install cladding and guttering, cut wood perfectly, put up fascias around door and window frames, and do pretty much everything else that they had been trained to do as time-served joiners. When I couldn't manage it (or tried it anyway and inevitably fucked it up) I was: "a dumb catholic arsehole" and my work was of a standard: "that you would expect from a fucking catholic" (conveniently, he ignored the results I received in my exams at school and the multiple Universities that were willing to accept me as a student and the fact that I couldn't give 2 shits about the Catholic/Protestant nonsense so prevalent in our locale...)

I would usually work from 8am until late into the evenings receiving no overtime, and therefore also having no fucking life of any description outside this shitty job. I was physically and mentally done-in and, because of the bullying my self-esteem was absolutely non-existent.

He would give me jobs knowing that I would fuck them up (and also knowing that I was too young and wet behind the ears to have the confidence to say "I'm not doing it") and then spit sectarian vitriol at me in front of the customer, then bitch and moan to the boss about the "idiot catholic bastard" that he had working with him. He was obviously trying to get me fired, but I was still a good worker and I still tried my best to make the most out of a shitty situation. I would work non-stop for the ungrateful cocksucker and would even do extra shifts with the boss at the weekend (also for no extra pay) without a peep or a moan.

Without the confidence to just say "fuck it" and walk away, I felt trapped in a situation which led me to work even harder to try and make them see that I was a good guy and not the "stupid fucking catholic piece of shit" that they perceived me to be.

We had to install conservatories in torrential rain and I was electrocuted by the drill on more than one occasion. We would put cladding and guttering up without a harness (the boss didn't buy any for us) when the layer of frost was so thick on the roof-tiles that we should have had fucking spikes on our shoes. I accidentally sliced my thumb open to the bone with a Stanley knife one morning, and when I was discharged from the hospital after an x-ray and some stitches, I got a phone-call to go back to work. Now, bear in mind that I was using power tools, saws, hammers etc. and I was sporting an oversized comedy thumb. He couldn't even give me the afternoon off...even when I turned up looking like a cartoon character.

Suddenly, £200 a week didn't seem like that much money. Something had to give, be it me having a break-down (at 21!) or taking my hammer to this guy's head. I just couldn't take it anymore...

Looking back on it - the boss was probably just happy that he had someone that he could take advantage of and pay less than a Polish immigrant, not to mention the sick-pay, NI, and tax benefits of having a £200/week, cash-in hand, flat-rate slave working for him.

The final straw came when, at Christmas time, the boss gave us our final wage before the holidays. The guy I was working with got a £200 bonus as well as his holiday pay over the next 2 weeks because, you know, he works so hard. The boss assured me that there was something extra for me in my wage packet as well...

There was - I got a £20 bonus.

For putting up with sectarian bullying, shitty wages, electric shocks, dangerous working conditions, and a life that had fell by the wayside because of the long hours, I got a bonus of £20 for Christmas. Nor was I getting any pay over the holidays...

I'd had enough and threw the wages in his face, told him to shove his job, and walked the 5 or 6 miles home feeling fucking amazing.

Because I had stood up for myself for the first time in 7 months, I felt good about myself again. Even if it was just for a fleeting moment, I felt like I was actually worth something.

To this day, every time I think about it, I make a silent, solemn oath never to let someone make me feel as bad about myself as they did.

Apologies for length/lack of funny.
(god_is_a_ghoti Carpe Deum., Fri 11 Jun 2010, 10:22, Reply)