[2Wycked]

renotime asked if I had any interesting/horror stories about delivering pizzas.

Thought it deserved its own thread as I am sure everybody has some crazy ass work stories.



HOTEL STORIES

1. I had one guy, with his door propped open, lean it open when I knocked.

I started to read him the total and he cut me off saying, "Dude, shut the fuck up this white girl is sucking me off."

He into the slightly ajar door to look at me and said, "You white motherfuckers always talk too much. Here's my money and keep the change. Leave the food outside my door. I ain't cum yet."

2. Another story was when I was delivering to some women and the door was completely open. Her friend comes out the shower with only a towel over her hips, showing off her great rack. She yelped and ducked back in quickly, but her friend getting delivery was greatly amused.

She actually said, "Don't run away every time a cute guy looks at your boobs. It's no wonder you don't have a boyfriend." Hilarious.



DINE-IN STORIES

1. I had some black woman who was ignoring her crying baby and I went up to her and informed she needed to comfort her baby or leave the premises.

She launched into some tirade about white people needing to step off telling black people what to do. The entire restaurant went dead silent.

This bitch went OFF on my manager claiming she was coming back with her crew to beat her ass. My manager said, "Go on and do your thing girl!"

She never showed.

2. Seen some guy beat his girlfriend in the parking lot. The girl was a cook of mine and I didn't even hesitate in calling the cops, as he had stomped her out badly, with her bleeding out her mouth with two black eyes.



DELIVERY STORIES

1. I was robbed at gunpoint.

I used to have a dream when I got shot, I would crawl to my car, but never make it & die on the concrete. The more I accepted the situation, the closer I got to reaching my cell and calling 911. Haven't had the dream in years, but occasionally have it when severely stressed.

2. Having somebody steal from me - multiple times.

First story: Woman rips a 90 dollar order out of my hands and slams the door in my face. I call the cops on speaker phone right outside her open window. A cop shows up in less than two minutes, as a station is a few blocks away.
He asks her, do you have the money to pay for it? She said no. I said my manager said if you pay at least half they won't pursue charges. She balks and the cop says if don't pay the 45 you will get picked on theft from person (felony) and have to pay the 90 bucks back as restitution. Suddenly, she had the cash.

[Matt3B]

I've got a few stories from my door to door sales days, including a car crash like yours on the way back to the office where I count my blessings I didn't die. I should have. My seatbelt saved my life.

One of the scariest encounters I had was in one of the worst council estates in England, or so I'm told. It was in Nottingham and the council estate is called The Meadows. They had CCTV on every street corner pretty much, and it was the first time I'd seen anything like it.

Thing is, these places were an absolute haven for selling what I was selling which was Sky TV. Although dangerous, we still did these types of estates. You could go on a white middle class estate and get 2-3 sales a day, but council estates you'd be getting 5 and up.

I'd get funny looks everywhere I was going, some people laughing at me when they opened the door saying I'd never survive around the estate looking like I was (dressed in a suit).

I never had any trouble though, anywhere I went, except for this one door. Even at night, I felt safe on these council estates (except one Halloween) which was quite surprising. This place was rough as hell, too.

Anyway, I knock on this door and I hear a bit of commotion on the other side. I waited for about 10 seconds and knocked again. I heard noise, but assumed they didn't hear me because it seemed nobody was acknowledging I was at the door.

I turn to head off and a second or two later I hear the door burst open. I turn around and this big, fat motherfucker who was easily 6'4 was standing in the doorway holding a butcher's knife.

"What the fuck do you want?! What the fuck are you doing?!"

I was scared as hell and started apologising.

"What the fuck do you want?!"

"Nothing nothing, I'm selling Sky that's all" and I held up my Sky catalogue we used to outline packages and prices to people when we're selling.

The guy chills.

"Oh, Sky? Yeah, we want Sky! Come on in, mum will be well happy".

I was petrified going in but they were actually alright. They joked about the knife thing with me and I still don't know to this day whether it was a serious defence mechanism or they were fucking with me all along. I got the sale anyway and an amusing story out of it.

[The Great Basilisk]

Nothing quite like the above but i'll share anyways:

Worked at a grocery store meat/fish counter at the time and we often had the town alchoholics come in and buy food...

One night one of the cashiers comes to me and asks if i had seen some drunken guy steal some expensive meat. She says one of the other customers had reported him for stuffing it in his pants or something. Anyways i hadn't seen anything and next thing i know this guy comes up and starts yelling about being humiliated in front of all other customers. I have no idea what had happened and he demands to see the store owner. His going on with his tirade and we finally get him to leave by telling him to come back next morning when the owner is here and he is sober. The cashiers comes and tells me that she had told the drunk guy that "if you have anything on your person, now would be the time to give it up" when he went to pay for his other stuff. The guy got angry and started stripping in front of the other customers. Turns out the guy didn't actually have anything on him and we know this because he stripped naked in front of everyone. Next time i saw him it was like nothing had ever happened.

Also another one. Two drunken guys come in and try to buy some sausage. Anyways this dude hands me a picture of jesus cut from a newspaper or something. After putting lots of thought into what kind of sausage he wants, all the while leaning on the counter because he couldn't stand up on his own, he points to a sausage and says "give me one jesus of that". I ask him "how much is one jesus?". He asks me if i believe in jesus. I say "not really". He looks defeated and says "well, i guess not that much then". I give him about 200 grams of sausage.

[LooTa]

1. Worked as a gym instructor/personal trainer but basically used the gym as a base. It was in the heart of the CBD, so plenty of bars to frequent. I'd crash in the massage room often after hitting the bars after work, and banged a few shielas in there. (It also ended up pretty well decorated by the end of my employment, with things I'd stolen while pissed - statues, signs etc) Anyway, there was a couple I used to train. She was a fucking stunner and he was a dweeb (but very rich, aparrently). She came to our christmas party without him (as I had hinted to her) and I got a hold of her and showed her the massage room. But when we came back down to the party after doing the business, he had arrived, and knew exactly what had been going on. As you would expect he started making a scene - but it wasn't him I came to blows with. My boss stepped up and made his feelings known about my "highly inappropriate" behaviour. Him and I had had an uneasy sort of relationship, but with both of us liquored up and him having a reason to get in my face, it was on - we started punching on right there in the courtyard. Needless to say I didn't come in Monday.

2. Worked in a casino maintaining the beer lines. Basically I'd wander around the complex changing kegs as they ran out, and I couldn't very well hook up a keg for paying customers without checking if the beer was good, could I? Thus, I ranged from tipsy --> smashed throughout my shift and ran a harem comprised of staff I'd meet on my travels. My now wife was part of that harem.

3. Worked as a bouncer - saw a co-worker lose an eye by getting a glass smashed in his face. Had a few good fights and got a few easy bangs, but it's boring as batshit most of the time.

[Dr. Howard]

Ah, I've been waiting for a thread like this... I think I'll have to cycle back a few times for posts. I don't even know where to begin? Funny stories, gruesome stories or bang stories? Lets start with gruesome I guess.

1. So, I was driving back to the shop after picking up some parts and I get a call from my boss who says "ok, the worst thing that can happen has happened" I reply with "oh great, who's dead" When he tells me that someone has cut their hand off I say "thats not the worst thing that can happen! Remember how X got paralyzed last year and fuck how Y got killed 3 years before that, this is just the worst one that you've had to respond to" So, what happens in these instances is that you want to beat the police and safety authorities to the accident scene and they dispatch almost immediately when they hear on the ambulance radio channels that they have responded to a work related accident. The scene is a bloody rock, with a bloody chainsaw and no body parts lying around. It turns out the guy got some sticks jammed into the saw, went to pull it out without turning it off but slipped at the same time and revved the gas by accident...freeing the sticks and freeing the saw to fly into his hand. Now, the interesting part is the next phone call I had to make to the guy who went to the hospital with him as it depended on the level of fines that the company was going to get for this. I call the guy and say "so, when you say he cut his hand off, you mean its all the way off?" The other guy replies "oh yeah, like cut right off" and I say "so you had to pick it up off the ground and bring it with you?" he says "no it was hanging by this flap of skin and flopping around" I replied "great, we're not totally screwed then, I'll call you back later". Under the law, there was a big distinction in penalties if something was severed or not...hanging by a flap of skin was not 'completely severed' so it stayed in the realm of 'minor injuries'

2. Driving way out to the woods to do some surveys with another guy early in the morning and we round the bend on a logging road and I say to my passenger "did you see that?" He says "I think i did, we'd better go back" We turn around and pull over at the bend and barely make out the two tail lights of the trailer of a logging truck way off the road and into the forest. Whoever was driving just missed the bend completely and went straight off the road and into the forest. We each took a side of the truck and worked our way along towards the cab trying to get through smashed up parts and trees yelling "hello!" I got stuck by a pile of trees that I could figure out my way around and I heard my partner yell, with relief, "theres no one in it!". The radiator was still steaming and the lights were still on so the driver must've been able to get out, and to the side of the road and gotten a ride. There was no blood either. So we hopped back into the truck and called it in to the cops and continued on our way to work. This was made even more crazy by the following story from earlier in the same year.

3. There were two salt of the earth guys running an operation just outside of town that uses a machine called a skidder, which is like a giant tractor for the sake of this story. A few weeks into the project I get a call from the police asking if we are running an operation as such and such a location I say yep and think "oh shit, not again" as its never good when the cops call your business. The cop then proceeds to tell me they have found a body there and need to know the names of my employees. Luckily it is neither of them but here's how the story turned out. My employees said they would pass a car parked at the side of the road when they would turn off the highway to go into the job site where the machines were parked. They figured it was someone who was camping or hunting and didn't think anything of it. The coroner determined that the person had died of a heart attack and maybe had heard the machines running after pulling over his car and went up that way for help. Now here's the really intense part, the cop says "I'm suprised you guys didn't find it, we found the body after running the plates when the family reported the driver missing" We found the body right where you guys were parking the machines and from the tire tracks from the skidders you almost parked right on top of him at least once.

There's a lot more where this came from. Compound fractures, animal attacks, head on collisions, death, fights, girls. Like if you want more.

[Matt3B]

Damn, what do you do wiscanada?

[A War You Cannot Win]

Standing post on the rooftop of the Sheraton hotel in Sanaa, Yemen in the summer of 2011.

COC calls me and the adjacent over watch post on the roof over the radio to inform us that the commander of a battalion of tanks in the Yemeni army just went rogue and is now taking some of his tanks on a Grand Theft Auto tour of the city.

[Dr. Howard]

(07-15-2013 09:17 AM)MattC Wrote:  

Damn, what do you do wiscanada?

The majority of my crazy work stories are from doing forestry work in northern Canada. I have settled into an easier life now though. Luckily some people have made good visuals of what that work is like.

The first video is typical of 'commuting' for field work or tree planting

The second video is an hour...overkill but is more typical of the work I started out doing, then I became the guy these guys called when things got really fucked up.

[Dr. Howard]

(07-15-2013 10:10 AM)A War You Cannot Win Wrote:  

Standing post on the rooftop of the Sheraton hotel in Sanaa, Yemen in the summer of 2011.

COC calls me and the adjacent over watch post on the roof over the radio to inform us that the commander of a battalion of tanks in the Yemeni army just went rogue and is now taking some of his tanks on a Grand Theft Auto tour of the city.

and things like this are why even in my old job there wasn't much of a right to complain. We had some guys that had come over as refugees from the civil war in burma and one guy was smiling 24/7, someone asked him "Ted, why are you always so happy" and Ted said "Nobody shooting at me"

[kinjutsu]

I have a few to share:

1. I used to work for retail chain that catered to lower income people.. The actual store i was in was located in the ghetto. It's middle of the day during July and I'm doing my work while my manager is at the till ringing people through. Sometimes people will bring their own pricing guns into the store and change the prices to get the clothes at a cheaper price.
After a while i hearing some shouting i look towards the till and i see my manager shouting at some 8 months pregnant woman. My manager is part way up on the counter with a pair of jeans in her hand screaming at the pregnant woman telling her to get out of the store.
I dash over there. I was about 15 feet away when the pregnant woman grabbed my boss' hair and pulled her off the counter on to the ground.
At this point my boss starts punching the pregnant women in the face hard. 1st punch knocks her back on her heals. The 2nd puts her on the ground. My boss starts punching her in the head
till i get there and stop her.
The pregnant women tries to stand up and is wobbly as hell and doesn't know where the fuck she is.
After security gets there they arrest the pregnant woman and the cops take her to the hospital.
A few days later i find out my manager was ROTC back in the Philippines and she learned how to box at age 7.

2. Same company as above but different mall, still ghetto but not as much.
I was at the front of the store folding shirts on a table and i saw some teenage kids talking shit to some older (late 20's, early 30's) Asian gangsters. There were about 9 kids and 3 Asian dudes.
As the kids got on the escalator they gave the Asian guys the middle finger. At which point the Asian guys proceeded to beat the living shit out of all of these kids. Very badly. They curb stomped 3 of them on the escalator steps. A few minutes later mall security shows up and literally doesn't know what to do. There was a lot of blood. After like 5 minutes the police show up and the tape off the area and start taking statements from everyone. I told them i didn't see or hear anything. (i ain't no snitch)

[Hotwheels]

Pics are kinda self explanatory.







We fucked shit UP that day.

*Actually, I was stopped and another train derailed into the side of my train. This is back when I was still an engineer. North suburbs of Chicago.

[JoyStick]

i been waiting tables for a long time on and off...

1. this was on new years eve a few years, a bitch in a mini skirt period bled on our booth and we had to take the seat out and wash it and closed off that table for the rest of the night. it was one of those big round booth and she was towards the middle so she had to slide across a big portion of the booth to get out. there was a lot of blood. pretty gross.

2. i banged a bitch at a waffle house in the restroom, while we were working. i was fingering her behind the counter while she was talking to her customers earlier that night, a family of four with two kids. they couldn't tell.

3. a buddy of mine was food running drunk and drop a skillet on somebody lap. on the way down, the skillet knocked over dude's drink. the customer had a hot skillet with his steak dropped on his lap and than instantly cooled off by the coke he was drinking. ha.

[Dr. Howard]

Ok, here are a few more. Lets go with animals/animal attack themes. A bit of background on these involves knowing something about what happens to wildlife when you go far enough north to get into what biologists call 'the caribou management zone'. At this far north there really are no towns or houses. Its just forest, logging roads, and an occasional mine. The animals have not been exposed to people and so are eerily curious when they see people or vehicles.

1. Wolves. If you ever get the feeling you are being watched, you probably are. I was used to seeing wolves in my normal work areas and they were husky/malamute sized and would leave quickly when they saw you. Not so much the caribou area wolves. I remember seeing them for the first time when I was working very far north and I rounded a corner in my truck and there were 9 of them just standing in the road and they were big. Like a malamute propped up on great dane legs. I put on the brakes and they didn't move so I just rolled forward slowly and they just casually parted and stared me down like a bunch of teenagers acting tough at the local mall. Later on in the day another guy in the area gets on the radio in a whisper and says "guys...guys!!! there is a wolf looking in my window!" apparently he was doing paperwork in his truck and heard a thump and there was a wolf with its paws on the window looking in at him.

2. Bears. Thank god I only worked in black bear country, not grizzly bear country. However, these were not florida black bears, these were the 800lb kind that eat moose calfs. I always lucked out with bears and I never had a severe standoff but I still found it nerve wracking when you're out walking by yourself and you come across a bear and it notices you, and doesn't run but turns, and walks towards you slowly and silently, sniffing the air. When you look say, a deer eye to eye you can see that its terrified of you, not a bear its more of a 'lets see what this thing does' look. Similar to fighting someone, when you can see they are afraid you have a lot more confidence. Anyhow, of people I went to college with one guy climbed a tree when chased by a bear only to be able to watch the bear tear apart his two dogs while they tried to protect him. Another guy smashed a bear over the head with a tree branch that was chasing down his dog and another guy was pulled out of his tent in the middle of the night by a bear and his co worker could only hear him scream as he got dragged off into the woods and was ripped apart and killed. Very few people have guns at work, and even fewer carry them on their person.

3. Moose: Bull moose are crazy, especially when they have antlers on. They act well, like bull cows except they are lifted way up into the air and there is no fence between you and it. They will stand in the middle of the road, look at your truck and just snort, foam at the mouth and then leave the road at their own pace. I remember doing some surveys at the bottom of a hill near a lake and I heard a loud crashing in the woods. I took a few steps back and this big antlered head popped out of the tree line, looked at me and snorted. I backed up slowly as my truck was just up over the hill and yelled at it while it came out of the brush and into the clearcut and would stamp the ground and snort and close the distance. This was resolved when I was able to get into my truck and lay on the horn and it trotted off down the road....towards where there was a crew of tree planters working. About 15 minutes later it was chaos on the radio with a site supervisor picking up tree planters who were being chased to the side of the road by this same moose. It would just make a bee line from one person to the next one in the distance and we would be honking the horn and yelling for that person to run for the truck. Survivorman concurs with antlered moose being nuts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xltg0iagMJY

[LeBeau]

(07-15-2013 07:01 PM)wiscanada Wrote:  

1. Wolves. If you ever get the feeling you are being watched, you probably are. I was used to seeing wolves in my normal work areas and they were husky/malamute sized and would leave quickly when they saw you. Not so much the caribou area wolves. I remember seeing them for the first time when I was working very far north and I rounded a corner in my truck and there were 9 of them just standing in the road and they were big. Like a malamute propped up on great dane legs. I put on the brakes and they didn't move so I just rolled forward slowly and they just casually parted and stared me down like a bunch of teenagers acting tough at the local mall. Later on in the day another guy in the area gets on the radio in a whisper and says "guys...guys!!! there is a wolf looking in my window!" apparently he was doing paperwork in his truck and heard a thump and there was a wolf with its paws on the window looking in at him.

[WesternCancer]

this dumb chick with bit tittayz at my work drives her forklift into a pole at least once a day... thats all I got.

[Matt3B]

(07-15-2013 07:01 PM)wiscanada Wrote:  

another guy was pulled out of his tent in the middle of the night by a bear and his co worker could only hear him scream as he got dragged off into the woods and was ripped apart and killed.

Fucking hell.






...got any more?

[A War You Cannot Win]

Here's one about Guantanamo Bay. Nothing about torturing prisoners or anything like that, but I can maintain to you with a straight face that something just isn't 'right' about that place. I stood in a observation tower for months that I swear is haunted.

This tower was facing a cliff over looking the ocean. Beautiful view during the day. The water was three distinct shades of blue the further you looked out. The Cuban border was only about 25 meters from the tower where the fence dividing the countries started. There's also an abandoned and unused magazine batteries right next to the tower.

Watching the post at night, you'd slowly start to experience stranger and stranger things that picked up in intensity and frequency the more you stood the post. I'm not talking about the crazy hijinks your Cuban counterparts on the other side of the fence get into, which is crazy enough with rabidly hunting down Cuban Asylum Seekers in a manner that could also be describe as not exactly adhering to the Geneva Convention... but other things.

First things would be the phantom footsteps. Feet pounding up on the rickety wooden staircase to your post. You'll hear these pretty often. There's always no one there. Just the sound of foot steps.

Then you'll hear the whispers. Always unintelligible, but unmistakably there.

Then you'll finally see 'her'. The little girl. Always by the rocks down off the cliff on the Cuban side of the fence line. Roughly 200Ms from your post. Her head languidly bobbing with the waves in the water. You don't see a body. Just a head. Looking up at you. She doesn't show up on night vision, unfortunately.


I'm sure some readers will say its just the isolation and an overworking imagination getting to me. Maybe, but people have been saying the same shit about that tower and the surrounding area for years.

[A War You Cannot Win]

(07-16-2013 08:49 AM)A War You Cannot Win Wrote:  

Here's one about Guantanamo Bay. Nothing about torturing prisoners or anything like that, but I can maintain to you with a straight face that something just isn't 'right' about that place. I stood in a observation tower for months that I swear is haunted.

This tower was facing a cliff over looking the ocean. Beautiful view during the day. The water was three distinct shades of blue the further you looked out. The Cuban border was only about 25 meters from the tower where the fence dividing the countries started. There's also an abandoned and unused magazine batteries right next to the tower.

Watching the post at night, you'd slowly start to experience stranger and stranger things that picked up in intensity and frequency the more you stood the post. I'm not talking about the crazy hijinks your Cuban counterparts on the other side of the fence get into, which is crazy enough with rabidly hunting down Cuban Asylum Seekers in a manner that could also be describe as not exactly adhering to the Geneva Convention... but other things.

First things would be the phantom footsteps. Feet pounding up on the rickety wooden staircase to your post. You'll hear these pretty often. There's always no one there. Just the sound of foot steps.

Then you'll hear the whispers. Always unintelligible, but unmistakably there.

Then you'll finally see 'her'. The little girl. Always by the rocks down off the cliff on the Cuban side of the fence line. Roughly 200Ms from your post. Her head languidly bobbing with the waves in the water. You don't see a body. Just a head. Looking up at you. She doesn't show up on night vision, unfortunately.


I'm sure some readers will say its just the isolation and an overworking imagination getting to me. Maybe, but people have been saying the same shit about that tower and the surrounding area for years.

[A War You Cannot Win]

Double post

[Dr. Howard]

Sure do @Matt C. I was debating some of the other ones where people got killed but they are just sad. I'll stick with some funnier ones and post again later about a few old timer stories which are over the top wild west type logging stories.

1. I was out doing some surveys in a burned over area on a really hot and dry day. Working in burns makes you look like an old time coal miner/apocalypse survivor because when you sweat all of the ash you stir up sticks to you and makes your nose run etc. I was also getting dehydrated and when that happens I get nosebleeds and they take forever to stop. So, as is the case I got a massive nosebleed. I was working by myself for most of the day so I just thought "meh, I'll let it go until it stops, i will eventually" So it was blood down my face, onto my shirt and pants for about an hour then it stopped and I continued on with my day. Later, after walking out of the bush up to the side of the road I got onto the radio to a contractor and told them to come and meet me so i could bitch them out about some of the work to be done on the burn area. They came by in their truck and just listened in silence and when I finished my update the one guy driving says "are you ok?" I said "yeah fine, I just need that work done"...I thought they meant that "am I ok" because I seemed pissed off or something. I walked back to my truck, got in and saw myself in the mirror and then realized why they asked. I forgot about the nosebleed and ash from earlier in the day. I looked like charlie sheen in platoon but was just talking away like there was nothing out of the ordinary. No wonder they were worried.


2. Parasites. Some of the temporary camps I would work out of cheaped out on their water filters and my body never reacted well to it. This is also combined with the fact that taking a shit in the woods is an adventure, especially when you forget toilet paper. We would always have a good laugh when someone would come back at the end of the day missing a shirt sleeve, both or the whole shirt. When I was out on the day involved in this story I was well prepared but not when it got to explosive episode 4 or 5 and I had used up the toilet paper. I knew that I had to get back to camp and then back to town so I started to hike back out. After 2 more stops I had cut my shirt sleeves off and used those. I was still about a half hour hike from my truck. I had to stop again and had nothing left but my field maps...so I made that choice. Laser printer paper makes awful toilet paper. The maps lasted long enough to get back to camp, load up on TP and water and start driving an hour and a half to the medical center. On the drive I had to pull over 13 times, and by this point it was like someone was just throwing a water balloon out of my ass every time I stopped. Turns out I had 'beaver fever' (not that kind) but the kind from stagnant unfiltered water full of parasites. Basic medicine clears it out but I enjoyed my phone call a few days later when my boss asked "where are the field maps" and I said "covered in shit out in the woods, thats what happens when you are too cheap to hook up a water filter"

3. Food. The greatest thing about field work (up until about 2000) was the food, most places had remote camps with cooks or field houses with unlimited grocery budgets. This was required because hungry loggers would mutiny if not well fed. I remember one company I worked for had a house we stayed at in a small town and they had a lady that would come by in the morning to see what we wanted for dinner and would cook it up by the time we got home. She would bake pies etc for us to take in our lunches and for the groceries we were just handed a credit card and told to get whatever we wanted from the grocery store and make use of the grill on the back deck. Free housing and free good food on top of your salary is the tits when you are 20 years old. Now for the down side, one camp I worked out of hired a terrible truck stop cook to work at the camp. The food was so bad that people would just skip it and eat white bread and butter rather than whatever she cooked up. The final blow was the day the meatballs for the spaghetti were raw on the inside. People were just flipping out and she came into the dining tent crying and shouted something like 'I worked really hard on this all day' and one of the tree planting guys snapped and he stood up and yelled "HARD WORK!! Come and strap on some tree planting bags for a day and then tell me about hard work! Get chased by a bear and then tell me about hard work! Until then get back in the kitchen and learn how to cook hamburger so its not fucking raw in the middle!!" People would have cheered if he ripped into some 19 year old college student but this lady looked like someone's favourite grandma. She ran out of the tent crying and quit the next day.

[renotime]

I take it you are a land surveyor, wiscanada?

I did building survey for 2 years, not nearly as fun.

[Dr. Howard]

(07-16-2013 01:15 PM)renotime Wrote:  

I take it you are a land surveyor, wiscanada?

I did building survey for 2 years, not nearly as fun.

something like a land surveyor, the company did pretty much anything natural resources related. I don't know if it was fun but it was character building. I've never complained about working in an air conditioned office after that.

[Dr. Howard]

Last ones. These are not my stories but are stories from my grandfathers, father and mentors from their time working in the same business. Its certainly not like this anymore.

1. My grandfather had two stories he liked to tell from his days doing surveys. The first was that they had to canoe into most places they went to and the guy he worked with had a trick he would do. When they would see a moose swimming in the water they would pull the canoe up beside it. This guy would then jump out, onto the moose's back, grab it by the ears and ride it around like a dolphin. It would head for shore and he would jump off before it could touch bottom. The second was what the french loggers would do 'for fun' in camp. In their camps they would have an open garbage pit and when a bear came sniffing around they would put a snare on a long line at the bottom of the pit and catch it. The loggers would then take turns with an axe going down into the garbage pit and seeing who could kill the bear without getting mauled.

2. My dad worked in some logging camps and talks about how dinner was a serious affair and so were table manners. One rule was that there was no reaching across the table in front of people for things, you asked them to be passed down. Some new guy did not care for this rule and after a few days of being warned he reached in front of someone to grab a bottle of syrup. He didn't make it because the guy he reached in front of slammed a fork down, through his hand and into the table.

3. A retired french logger and another old guy named sparky had the best logging stories I have ever heard. My favourite goes like this: One one job site in the winter they would drive past this shack where an old hermit lived and they'd see him getting the mail in the morning and honk the horn and wave. One winter morning they drove by and saw him out there getting the mail in his underwear, weird but they figured maybe he was drunk and continued on. Another guy came in later to the work site and said the same thing "did you see the old guy getting his mail in his underwear this morning?". They never saw him again after that and there was never any smoke coming from the chimney so someone mentioned it to the police a few weeks later. The police were well aware of this, in fact they had gone to check on him a few weeks prior after a family member said they hadn't heard from him. The officer who went to find him found that he had died in his sleep, and his fire had gone out. He went to put the body in his car but there was one problem. It was frozen, and it wouldn't fit. So he stood the body up in the snowbank, so he could go back into town and get the police van. Thats what these guys were waving to on their way to work.

[scotian]

(07-16-2013 03:16 PM)wiscanada Wrote:  

(07-16-2013 01:15 PM)renotime Wrote:  

I take it you are a land surveyor, wiscanada?

I did building survey for 2 years, not nearly as fun.

something like a land surveyor, the company did pretty much anything natural resources related. I don't know if it was fun but it was character building. I've never complained about working in an air conditioned office after that.

Wiscanada, your bush stories are pretty crazy, I've done some work in remote areas but we're not usually too far from a camp, looks like you've been way farther out from civilization. I personally don't like being too far out in the bush because my survival skills aren't so great and I'm not too keen on getting chased by wild animals, although I've seen tons of black bears and the odd wild cat.

One almost crazy story I have was when I was called to do a quick job "just down the road" from the camp I was working at, I didn't get the best directions and ended up driving past the turn I was supposed to take. It was dark and late October so the weather in northern Alberta was cold, it also started raining heavily and the dirt road became very muddy, after about 15 kms from the last light (sign of civilization) I saw, I decided to turn around. I ended up getting bogged down in the mud in the work truck, so I got out and the mud was up to my ankles, I put it in 4WD but kept spinning, fuck! I then grabbed a bunch of branches off some trees and put them under the tires for traction but still couldn't move. It was past 10PM and my cell phone didn't have service, I started panicking a bit because I knew it would take a few hours to get somewhere with service and I wasn't dressed properly for a long walk. Anyway, I kept fucking with the truck and putting down lots of branches and after about 20 minutes finally got the truck unstuck, then eventually found the site I was supposed to go to.

Working in the bush definitely isn't for everyone and it can be really dangerous, I can't imagine how the guys did it way back in the day before cell phones, radios, etc.

[InternationPlayboy]

I've got some pretty good hotel stories I can put on here when I have some time. I worked at a party hotel in south beach for two years. We definitely had our fair share of interesting stuff go down, from naked people walking around, fights, people dying in our pool, people being arrested with large sums of cash. I saw it all there.