» Ripped Off

Beans on fucking toast?
Little, almost pyrrhic victories are the best..

So.. at East Midlands Airport, red eye flight, looking for something to set me up for the journey, fancied beans on toast. Looked at the menu... beans on toast £2.95. Hmm a trifle expensive for 1/2 tin catering standard (i.e. microbeans, uberhard, brown not red tomato 'gravy', soggy white non descript bread).
Exploring other options I come across 'extras'..two pieces of toast 90p, beans 95p., net saving £1.10.
That'll do nicely.
"Beans and toast please" (employee makes to slop industrial beans on unbuttered toast)
"woah, hold on there fella, I want to butter my toast first, or your overly sloppy microbean juice will impregnate my bread, with soggy effect". (Employee growls, looks for bowl, slops beans contemptuously into bowl, flings toast onto plate)
Get to the till... "£2.95"
"What..why?"
"Beans on toast, £2.95"
"But the beans aren't on the toast, they're in a separate bowl, that's beans with toast, and that's two extras"
"Nope, that's beans on toast"
"In what way are my beans on my toast?" (Queue starting to build)..
"Oh, alright, £1.85 then"
So.... 'On' costs £2.95.. 'and' costs £1.85.

Top tip. I must get out more.
Beating the cheeky fucks at their own game is fun though..
(Fri 16th Feb 2007, 15:21, More)

» Desperate Times

Hanging on by the shirt tails
Not me but a FOF, fortunately. On a works do, all suited and booted, very formal. As the evening wore on they found themselves in a restaurant.
Half way through the meal he suddenly realised he was about to soil himself unless he got to a toilet rather quickly. He made his excuses and waddled off to the kazi. He just managed to get his kecks down in time, and in time honoured fashion sprayed the bowl and back-splashed his arse. he then looked around for toilet paper,but in his haste to void, he hadn't checked, and alas there was none.
He looked for alternatives, and short of using his hand, there was nothing, when an idea came to him.
He was weaing one of those shirts with an extra 'D' of material (well D on its side) at the bottom on the back. Without further ado he tore the bottom of the shirt off, carefully leaving enough to still tuck in, and liberally cleansed and refreshed.

He then chucked the torn piece of material down the pan, flushed and walked out....

Breathing an audible sigh of relief, he went to resume his place at the table. A hushed silence came over the room, and he noticed many other diners staring over his shoulder.

There, like a puppy on a leash, trailing by a few untorn and previously unnoticed threads, was the offending piece of folorn, soggy, brown, shit stained shirt.
(Wed 21st Nov 2007, 11:13, More)

» Accidental animal cruelty

Taking a pig upstairs
A mate of mine lived with a woman for a while, who was nuts about pigs. Had a pig flap put in the back door, used to take it for walks, that kind of thing. More of a family pet than a culinary investment, the pig started off small, and, in the way of things, got bigger.
And bigger. And friendlier.
This pig used to follow my mate around, and being curious, often followed him upstairs.
This wasn't a problem when it was younger ( reason in a min) but became an issue when the fucker grew to 14 stone, and lead to her untimely dismissal.

The problem is, that pigs' legs fold the other way from ours. This makes stairs effectively a 'pig valve', piggy can go up stairs with a moderate amount of piggy decorum, however, only way the pig can get down stairs is to hurl itself from the top step, and hope for the best!
This was just about acceptable when the pig was a piglet, rather a different matter when a large sow hurtles past, picking itself up off the bottom step.....
(Fri 7th Dec 2007, 11:47, More)

» Political Correctness Gone Mad

Small, far away
When I think about PC, I always think about dwarves. I don't know why, but 'persons of restricted growth' just sounds less pithy.

Me and dwarves have a bit of previous, in my formative years, every single trip I took had at least one dwarf meeting interlude. So much so that I was convinced I was either being stalked, had one as a familiar, or a dwarf was my alter ego. Perhaps I'd seen 'Don't look now' too many times.

Anyway...driving through the Peak District a few weeks back, a motorcyclist came towards us. As he passed us, I turned to the missus.

"Weird how sometimes perspective does that to you, isn't it? I was convinced from a distance that that was a dwarf on a motorbike, now it would appear (more sensibly, I mean, dwarves on motorbikes come on?) that the motorbike was massive and the person was of average size."

"Yep, you're right" she said, "I thought that too."

Two minutes later, another massive motorbike comes hurtling past, (like a Harley on steroids), and we think the same thing. "Blimey, what a massive bike."

Turn the corner, and fuck me, it's a (googles the collective noun and is rather delighted to discover it is) shortage of dwarves, about forty of them, having a day out on [it very rapidly transpired] normal size trial bikes. What are the chances of that? Mad eh?
(Thu 22nd Nov 2007, 14:55, More)

» Bastard Colleagues

Fast track?
Julie C. She'd been appointed on a 'fast track' program for uber PhDs at Zeneca, the same one I failed to get on after my 'ambiguous' psychometric test results (q.v.)

She was nightmare - the usual shit, bossy, opinionated, obstreperous.

Nominally my boss for a few months, it was painfully clear she'd slipped through the (sanity?) net.

She had a PhD in Chemistry, which means she's had more than her fair share of exposure to the more esoteric "10 to the power of" terms micro, nano, terra, femto etc

Rather worrying then, when she asked her boss "how many grams in a kilogram again?"

He was hell bent on trying to get rid of her after that, he put her on a dangerous practical project using hydrofluoric acid gas (etches glass, turns bones to jelly sometime after exposure, very nasty indeed).

An experiment went wrong one day, and a small amount escaped which she was convinced she'd inhaled.

I was in the office later when the phone rang, and he was asked what had happened, and how much he thought she'd inhaled.

"Not e-fucking-nough" was his reply.
(Mon 28th Jan 2008, 15:09, More)