Paphos Life

I was reading the Vax Carpet Cleaning thread, and previous careers came up. I thought a thread on memorable jobs would be interesting. I don't mean "High paying", but jobs that you have done and which years later you can still remember for one particular reason or another.

I used to work for Mowlem Management, back in the 90s. They built two of the buildings in Cabot Square, which is where Canary Wharf Tower is. I ran the computer systems for the two site offices, which housed abougt 150 people. One server had a 100mb hard drive, and the other a whopping 110mb. They had the most organised document management system I have ever come across in any of the industries I have worked in. Coupled with the backup system, I could restore a particular revision of a document using tapes from any point in the lifespan of the offices. The main index was actually a big A4 pad that the secretaries shared between them. Not computerised, but it worked flawlessly!

But that wasn't what I found memorable. It would be a bit sad really if that was the case. Nor was it the Belly Buster Breakfasts you could get at the site canteen. No, what I found truly memorable was being a part of something that had such a physical and tangible end result. When we were finished, there were two big office blocks built as a result of all our work. The concrete cores were the most fascinating bit. While a lot of the building work had been automated, in the 90s at least, the concrete core was still an industrious hive of activity.

And standing on the roof before it had been topped out. The wind was spectacular!

And I don't think I ever learned more about project management than I learned on that job. Gantt Charts really meant something there!

So what memorable jobs did other people have?

I think I mentioned earlier that I had worked for an American company for a while Installing computers into Commercial vehicles and on occasion worked alongside a 23 stone american engineer – The first time I met him was at a Toby Inn /Travel Inn at Stoke on Trent, We arranged to meet at breakfast as we had both arrived late the night before – We both ordered full English Breakfasts and duly waited to be served, In around 15 mins the girl arrived and put down two full English Breakfast’s and started to walk away – My American friend shouted after her asking Excuse me ma,am what is this ? To which she replied - It is what you ordered Sir a full English Breakfast – To which he responded bring me another three of these. I could hardly believe what I had just heard.
When we arrived at the job in hand we left the car and proceeded to the garage to start on the vehicle and my colleague said – Got to go back to the car I’ve forgotten something, He then returned with a 500ml bottle of water – He carried that water around everyday for Two weeks and never drank it yet.
The head office was in Connecticut and he said everyone travelled into Connecticut on a Sunday to start work on Monday --- Friday was called going home day when they travelled back to where they live, I have seen a similar thing happen in Guildford in Surrey where people rent accommodation all week and travel home on a Friday.
On one occasion he said he had to be back in the States for Thursday night to go to his monthly appointment with his therapist, I asked him what this was all about and he said he goes once a month, Lies on the couch and offloads to his therapist everything that is on his mind and can then look forward to anther great month.
I still find this experience hard to believe but will always remember it – I don’t know if all Americans are like this but had never come across anyone like him before.

Emphasise with you here on this topic, Dom. But I'm tired and ready for a good night's kip. Will respond properly avrio!

Cheers- AL

Did you have to ride on the DLR? In those days it was incredibly unreliable.

Ouch.