Reminiscing past life of a 🦖

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glenwilson

glenwilson

NRU Heed
NRU Member
15 Mar 2012
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Falkirk, United Kingdom
Seeing Ice's pictures of farming reminded me of some past jobs. I have worked mainly in IT since mid 80's and all of that was Mainframe related. Started off at 16 in brewing which included training as a beer taster! Then worked for Coca-Cola in the laboratory and travelling to factories. After getting made redundant from there I got a temporary summer job at TWA in baggage.

The job was basically loading baggage into containers which then get loaded on to flights. That was a weird group of people who were full time.

One of the shift leaders was more like a mob boss. Used to have a massive roll of cash in his pocket. Nothing suss about that. Another bloke was just a thug. He would go and collect the containers from the aircraft, stop halfway back and rummage through the cases to steal stuff. I did mention it but was told to ignore it. This guy found an injured pigeon by a plane. All the people looking out the window thought how kind he was until he just ripped its head off!

One bloke had a collection of ladies undergarments in his locker. Others were just very weird.

If you got a job with BA when being put in a team you were asked do you steal or not? If you said no you went in one team, if you said yes you were in the other one! There was a block of toilets that had a false ceiling and the BA thieves used to stash stuff in there. They obviously got greedy as the whole ceiling came down.

We used to share a convey belt with Saudi. They used to get some heavy luggage down. One bag we tried to lift was so heavy the handles came off and it split open. There was a V8 engine block in it! Occasionally we would asked to help a customer. A group of Saudis turned up but there was only a few seats available so the men got them and left the women behind. We were carrying there bags around whilst they tried to get a flight home. Must have a busy day as there were no seats on scheduled flights. So they went to the BA desk as asked to charter a jet! Staff were pleasant and asked how they would pay. They other guy I was with had a couple of briefcases. The woman opened on and it was full of £. BA person said sorry we only accept $ for charters. Woman asks for the other briefcase and it was full of $!

Saudi and ElAl were kept apart for political reasons. There were always some shady folk about. One woman was there quite often. Usually wore a jump suit and it usually had bulge under one shoulder. If you had to describe a Mossad agent…

Anyway, we used to have to drive things similar to that below. The ones we had were propane gas powered. Not fast but you could do wheelies in them. Occasionally had to go out to the 'sticks'. If a plane was late coming in there may not be a stand available so they got parked elsewhere which could be a mile away from the terminal. Passengers were bused out and we drove the containers out there. Runways and roadways were controlled with traffic lights. So you would get a green light to cross an active taxiway. Then look and have a 757 coming at you!


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