Did you have to go through any initiation rites when you first started work? In these days of the Health and Safety Gestapo, many of the little tricks we used to get up to are banned, but it was fun at the time!
My first job on leaving school was as a butcher. One of the first things I learned was how to spot a wind up. Most experienced butchers used a strange language called “gnalskcab” or back slang, a way of turning words around and talking so that the customers couldn’t understand what was being said. I only fell for one, we had a knife grinder visit once a week to sharpen our knives, and I was persuaded that, being left handed, I would be better off buying a “left handed boning knife” from him. Yep, I fell for it! But didn’t fall for the “Sky hooks” for hanging the sides of beef up with. One day a young lad came into my shop carrying a small plastic bag. He asked me if we could spare some “elbow grease” for cleaning the fridges out. I sent him round to Tesco, who sent him on to keymarkets and he was last seen entering dewhursts, as far as I know he’s still looking.
When I joined the fire service, there were a few initiation rites, some quite harmless, others down right evil! New recruits would be asked to count the blue lights to check they flashed at 120 times a minute. We used to send them to the top of the drill tower, on the coldest, wettest, windiest night of the year, to test the railway horns. These were like hunting horns which were used to warn of approaching trains if we found ourselves on a shout near a railway line. We would leave them up there, telling them that the nearest station would be testing their horns, and they had to listen out for them.
Another was the “Bacon Roll” this was a method of securing a casualty to a ladder or similar as a makeshift stretcher. It was called bacon roll, because you were ■■■■■■■ like a joint of bacon from feet to head. We would tie the recruit up in the drill tower, then someone would set off the station bells, and we would all disappear on a “shout” leaving them up there for an hour or two. I did get caught once, when I got promotion and was moving stations, my old crew tied me bacon roll to a ladder, then stood me up against the drill tower and bombarded me with snowballs.
When we did heat and smoke training in the hot house, I would pile the fire high and turn up the heat when newly qualified BA wearers went in. Their ears would burn but not because anyone was talking about them. We called it “burn um to learn um”, after H&S took control, we had to modify it to “warm um to inform um”
We have all taken the p out of the new transport clerk by defecting a unit for a “flat 5th Wheel” or gone in all concerned and reported the radiator being full of water.
So come on, whet initiation rites did you go through, or put others through?
Not quite an initiation rite but we had a dippy young transport clerk and one night Carrier turned up for a callout on a defective fridge. The lad turned round and asked the warehouse management next door (who have nothing to do with Transport) what the problem was, they told him it was the flux capacitor, which he duly told Mr. Carrier and then looked surprised when Mr. Carrier and assembled drivers ■■■■■■ themselves laughing.
Being a fitter and having a young 'un sent to you for a ‘fitter’s clip’ was awkward.
The idea was to belt them around the ear - but I could rarely summons the gall to clobber a lad, so often sent them back with an errand to source a length of fallopian tubing.
Never had any myself but my dad told me back in the 80’s they had an apprentice fitter who received a few pranks shall we say , first was pouring lighter fluid on the back of his boiler suit and … well im sure you can guess or even smell the burning 
Also when it was nearing bait time they once sent him on top of a trailer to repair the roof and duly removed the ladders so the poor sod spent his lunch stuck on top of the trailer 
During army basic training all jocks from 8 different troops were told to muster at the naafi and wait for the delivery of tarton boot polish.
Being welded to the top of a shipping container over lunch, with a strip of flat bar welded onto my steely capped boots.
Long Stands or weights.
Cataloyed knackers
bags of oil pressure & skyhooks
It was in 1951. It was my first day as an engine cleaner on BR. I went home at the end of my shift with my ■■■■■■■■ liberally coated in Engine zb Oil. I had to wash me nuts in paraffin first, before I could get the oil of and finish me ablutions in a tin tub, in the back yard, coz we did not have an indoor bath. 
Happy Days? Were they ZB
I myself have been sent to pick up a long wait 
I sussed it after standing at the window for 15mins being ignored, so I partially redeemed myself 
My son, who obviously takes after his mother, has been sent to the shops for left handed screwdrivers and stripey paint 
I had a van boy who used to get initiated on a daily basis, sometimes, if the last drops were close together I would lock the doors so he couldn’t get in & had to run down the road to the next drop, if he didn’t make it, he had to get a bus home 
I used to get him to stand out in the road and stop traffic so that I could back in to a side road to turn around, then when he was stood in the middle of the road waving his arms around, I’d drive off leaving him standing there
At one firm I worked for the guvnor was always doing the boys in the warehouse up like a kipper, I’ve seen em with a broomstick through their sleeves, cable tied to the fence with their trollies round their ankles shut in the back of containers while everyone else went to lunch and when things were quiet he would them that the forklift had broken down so they would have to handball a load of, say, corned beef off a curtainsider, so you’d have one on the trailer passing cases down to the one on the ground, he’d wait until they’d done a few pallets then come and pick them up with the forks and take them into the warehouse, sometimes he’d do a few pallets like this before they realised
I got caught with the long weight one meself ,One factory where I worked the young lads used to get told to go and see X and ask him for his reproduction tool, you can guess what hapened there
Mate of mine on his first day got sent to the corner shop run by an old dear, and was told to ask for a bag of ■■■■■■■■ drops
Wheel Nut:
Long Stands or weights.Cataloyed knackers
bags of oil pressure & skyhooks
You forgot …
Bucket of sparks
Bucket of steam
Glass hammer
The long weight is my favourite, we had some dopey apprentice on all of these when I first started in engineering. I heard he won “Young engineering technician of the year” a few years after, god knows how.
I took his shoelaces out his shoes one day and hung them off the lights in the break room. His head bumped into them as he walked through the door but he still sat down and asked which ■■■■■■■ had nicked his laces
AS an apprentice hgv mechanic in the early eighties my initiation was lithium grease ( the black horrible stuff! ) liberally smeared over ones privates 
& i got off lightly! My colleague had the same treatment but with engineers blue Taught you respect though - no gobby little [zb] then 
i myself like truckerjon, became a butcher when i left school, not long after i started, i was sent to the post office, which was 2 doors away from the shop, i was told to go get some change for the tills, was given a cash bag and a piece of paper (detailing what change i needed) long que at the post office, finally got to the front, handed the bag over and the folded piece of paper, the nice mister read the paper, started laughing like hell, turned it round so that i and everybody behind me could see it, and it read… this is a stick up, do not call the police, with a bright red face i turned around only to find everybody laughing and my so called work mates laughing through the window, ha how i laughed 
I was a rooftiler/slater before i came to trucking and the apprentice we had was complaining that we had the oldest transit in the fleet so one day we told him at breakfast that if more than 300 cars past us on anyday monday to friday on our way back from dundee to dunfermline then the boss said he would buy us a new van!! Well two weeks later while i was sound asleep he jumped up shouting YEEEEES?? I asked what was wrong and he said that 315 cars had passed us and he had been counting them for the last two weeks!!! We had forgot all about it but told him back at the yard to go see the boss and tell him our good news and ask when we would get our new van and he did!!! Well you can imagine the giggles we had when the boss hunted him
grahamzx6r:
i myself like truckerjon, became a butcher when i left school, not long after i started, i was sent to the post office, which was 2 doors away from the shop, i was told to go get some change for the tills, was given a cash bag and a piece of paper (detailing what change i needed) long que at the post office, finally got to the front, handed the bag over and the folded piece of paper, the nice mister read the paper, started laughing like hell, turned it round so that i and everybody behind me could see it, and it read… this is a stick up, do not call the police, with a bright red face i turned around only to find everybody laughing and my so called work mates laughing through the window, ha how i laughed
You’d probably get 20 years for that now
I sent a work experience lad through to the other workshop for a box of sparks for the grinder as it was looking a little low lol
when I started my apprenticeship when had a spark plug tester the lead that should have been connected to the spark plug being tested was clipped to a metal topped bench, a tool box was then pushed against said bench, you guessed get me a spanner from my tool box as you touched it some kind person would press the tester button made you jump some what
We used to get the new starts at the garage I worked at to phone up a motor factors place for tartan paint, a bag of compression and some tappit clearances.
I did my apprenticeship as a web offset printer,I got had with the ‘pop up burgess’s and get us a long wait for the stacker’…45 mins after arriving the storeman came out and told me i’d waited long enough and I could go back now ,I managed to get another apprentice with a trip to get spirit level bubbles,tartan ink for a scottish holiday brochure and my all time favorite…whilst shrink wrapping a pallet of boxes get them to press their body against the pallet as we shot round and round with the wrap then lift them with the forklift (still stuck helpless to the pallet) onto the back of one of the wagons and take for a ride around the plant happy days
I worked in a restaurant kitchen when I left school. The chef got me one night by getting me to phone the butchers and order 1/2 pound of chicken lips, 6ft of fallopian tubes and 1/2 pint og pidgeons milk! 
a favourite where i worked was to send the yts down to the coop to ask for a pint of mothers milk and some tea bags lol.