Tricks on apprentices

[RETIRED]

When I was an apprentice (Motor Mechanic) my boss sent me to the nearest Repco (12 miles away) by train to get a bottle of sparks.

I hopped on the train, went to Melbourne, watched 2 films and returned to Chelsea. Went to the local Holden Dealer, got a jar and filled it with the swarf from under the grinder, put masking tape around the jar and labelled it "just add heat".

Needless to say I was never sent on a fools errand again.


We had a mechanic at one dealership that I worked at who was the most obnoxious, know it all mongrel bastard that I have ever met. The workshop foreman hated him, 22 mechanics hated him, the sales staff hated him and the women in the office loathed him. Not a well liked person at all.

We welded his tool box to the bench, filled it with grease and even suspended it from the rafters by cotton. He still wouldn't quit.

He was a pom of the worst sort. I think his mother paid his fare here to get rid of him. He turned up in a suit and changed at work. He wore proper hobnail boots with the steel horseshoe on the heels.

In the workshop we all had our own bench with a steel grate in front. I was doing some repairs on my bench which was next to his.

He is standing motionless working on a gear box and the urge (plus the urging from all and sundry) was too great. I arc welded his boots to the grate. The workshop foreman then called out to him and he bloody near broke his legs when he went to turn round. I am glad he was "hobbled" because I think he would have killed me had he caught me.

He arrived back at work as if nothing had happened and told us it would take more than that to scare him off.

Another plan needed.

He owned this beautiful, immaculate Automatic Zephyr MK3 (this was the 70's). His pride and joy. Now it is an unwritten law that no matter how much you hate someone you don't do wilful damage to thier vehicle. At least it used to be, times are a changin'.

He got in it that night to go home, got out the gate, 50' up the road and it died. Restarted, same again. All the mechanics are watching and trying not to laugh. Restarted, same again. He storms back, gets some tools and asks one of us to go with him to look at what the problem might be. First time he had asked any one to help.

Checks spark and fuel. All OK, Starts it up, revs it, turns it off and closes the bonnet. Restarts, 50' up the road it stops again. He glares back and if looks could kill and words could hurt, I wouldn't be here to annoy you now.

He storms back, cleans out his locker and his tools.

In a hiss " Right, you little antagonistic little (expletive deleted). What the &*^K have you done to my car?"

Says I, who is very brave with 20 other mechanics behind me,"What makes you think I had any thing to do with it?"

"Because you are the only p**** sneaky and underhanded enough to pull a stunt like this"

"Well," I reply. "I will make a deal, you quit and I will tell you."

"You bastards have all won, I quit, now have you done to my car?"

"I wired you ignition through your brake lights. I notice when you start it up you put your left foot on the brake, while it stayed there you had ignition. Release it and you switch it off. When you got Andy (the othe mechanic) to help you, he knew and kept his foot on the brake so that you had ignition."

"You are all *****", he bellowed and left.

I have not seen him from that day to this but I still get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about it.

Sorry about the length.

[Grue]

Here's a pic from a book Rare Trades by Mark Thomson - great read

[bob w]

While working on a house in the country I went to get my nail bag out of the back of my ute. Lifted the bag and some "bustard" had coiled a dead brown snake under it. Frightened the bejesus out of me and was an occasion of much mirth to the roof tilers that were laying out the cement roof tiles. Lunch time came so said snake was recoiled under a stack of tiles on the roof.
Tilers came back and started work. It is scary to see an adult roof tiler jump off a roof with about 8 cement tiles in his hands. Luckily noone was hurt but this story was repeated in the pubs for a long time afterwards.
Bob

[Kev Y.]

This was not a trick performs ON apprentices, but BY the apprentices..

When I was doing my time as a painting apprentice in the "good old days of the S.E.C.V", I had a Foreman who used to like to sit in his raised office and survey his domain (our workshop) he took great delight in telling us how we were to conduct ourselves in and out of work.

He also enjoyed sitting watching us and eating his morning brew (which was kept in the bottom draw of his desk.)

One day someone found a feral kitten ( many of which populated the works area ) and managed to place it into the foremans bottom desk draw.

Come the appointed brew time we all watched anxiously as he opened his draw to retrieve his food. as soon as the kitten had sufficient space to fly out of, it clawed its way up his arm and around the office.

For us it certianly was a spectical to behold, fur, blood, and food spinning all over the place.

No one ever owned up, and the foreman for some reason started eating down in the workshop with the rest of the workers!..

[journeyman Mick]

I've been racking my brains but I can't remember anything I've done to an apprentice. Mind you there's very few people putting appentices on in the building trade nowadays. So here's a few that were done to fellow tradesmen:
Smeared no more gaps around the inside of the plasterer's hard hat. We didn't have to wear them inside the finished areas. He walked around for half the day with a white stripe on his forehead wondering why people were laughing. (He wasn't real sharp).
I spent about ten months working on an island resort development, commuting every day, six days a week, very long days. Towards the end of the job my mate and I (we were sharing a house) went stir crazy. Used to pass one of the painters on the road every morning and like us he was more asleep than awake. One morning my mate got in the back of the ute and we flew past the painter and slowed down in front of him. My mate stood up in the back of the ute and dropped his dacks :eek: while I turned the rear spot lights on and hit the air horns. When we got on the boat that morning the painter had a real good laugh and told us we were mad b@st@rds.

Just before the job finished I grabbed a 9 litre water filled fire extinguisher out of my shed. One of the plasterers would wait at the side of the road for the painter to turn up and give him a lift. We rolled up at 5am and called him over and then gave him a wake up squirt in the head :eek: . We told him to get the painter to open his window when we drove next to him. So we went down the road and waited. When the painter drove past we caught up and got next to him (dual carriage way) and motioned for him to wind down his window. When he did so he copped a wake up shower also :eek: . He was ropeable! By the time we got on the boat however he was laughing and he reckoned we were truly mad. To tell the truth after ten months of ridiculously long hours we were a bit unhinged.

That afternoon we chased one of the other chippies to his car with the extinguisher. My mate was hanging out the window with the extinguisher while I was driving across the barriers around the car park and over the gutter. My mate jumped out and the two of them ran round and round the other blokes car. My mate ended up on top of the other car (an ex ambulance) squirting the guy while he was trying to unlock the door. He only just got off the top in time. Meanwhile I sat in my ute splitting my sides in laughter. A few of the other blokes were still around and one was taking photos. We caught up with the poor bloke at the next set of lights and managed to unload the last of the water in through his wndow before he managed to wind it up. I had sore ribs for a few days from all the laughing. After that it was official, we were "those mad b@stards".

On our last day on the island we knocked off at lunch time and went down to the beach, still in our work gear, boots and all. We had with us an esky full of ice, a bottle each of tequila and triple sec, limes, salt, a 30M power lead and a blender. Went down to the beach hire hut (the resort was still operational) and plugged into their power, got an umbrella and a couple of lounge chairs and drank margaritas till it was time to go home . When we got to the boat we plugged the blender in again and continued with our party It was a great cathartic release, the stuff of legends.

Mick the mad b@stard.

[bitingmidge]

Not played on an apprentice, but in the same vein:

In the early 70's I worked in an office on the top floor of one of Brisbanes taller buildings (about 16 levels).

One of the guys I worked with pulled this stunt on April Fool's Day.

He arrived early, before the morning peak with a few props, and rode the lift to the top floor (our office). At 8.25 the busiest time, he called the lift, splattered mince and liver over it's walls, and placed a pair of shoes facing the door, half filled with water, and a small piece of dry ice in each, before sending it back to the Ground Level.

Apparently when the lift arrived at the ground floor, the doors opened to reveal the smoking boots and bits of exploded passenger everywhere, the desired effect was achieved.

Same guy used to take the brown paper bag his lunch was wrapped in, wet it and work it into a kind of sausage shape, pointed at both ends. This would be left in the back corner of the lift in an attempt to ensure that there was an express lift available at knock off time.

Cheers,

P

[Kev Y.]

Not played on an apprentice, but in the same vein:

In the early 70's I worked in an office on the top floor of one of Brisbanes taller buildings (about 16 levels).

One of the guys I worked with pulled this stunt on April Fool's Day.

He arrived early, before the morning peak with a few props, and rode the lift to the top floor (our office). At 8.25 the busiest time, he called the lift, splattered mince and liver over it's walls, and placed a pair of shoes facing the door, half filled with water, and a small piece of dry ice in each, before sending it back to the Ground Level.

Same guy used to take the brown paper bag his lunch was wrapped in, wet it and work it into a kind of sausage shape, pointed at both ends. This would be left in the back corner of the lift in an attempt to ensure that there was an express lift available at knock off time.

Cheers,

P

BM I always thought that your northerner's were a heat effected bunch!

Kev

[Geoff Dean]

As an apprentice, I had a smart @rse tradesman that was always trying to get me. One day he asked me to get him an open ended ring spanner.(he was pretty stupid also, there is such a thing, plumbers and pipe fitters use them.)

He was mildly suprised when I came back with one, but he was absolutely pi##ed when he found that I had taken one of his good ring spannners and just grinded part of the end out of it.

That was about the last time he had a crack at me.

My father also tells me he once sent and apprentice to get some short circuits. The bloke at REPCO twigged what was going on straight away and handed the apprentice a piece of fuse wire about 2 foot long and told him they had no short circuits left, but to just cut this one down to the size it was needed.

[echnidna]

"the doors opened to reveal the smoking boots and bits of exploded passenger everywhere"

I wish I'd thought of that one

[RETIRED]

Oh what a pity it is now called harrassment.

[AlexS]

As I'm retiring tomorrow, I can now own up to the following, played on a cadet engineer about 35 years ago. This was done purely as a practical joke with no malicious intent, and apparently, after he recovered, was accepted the same way.

Every long uni break, the cadets used to be sent to a country office for a couple of months. This bloke went to Tumut and left his lunch, including some meat sandwiches and fruit, in his desk drawer.

We 'rescued' his lunch, boxed and sealed it in black plastic and left it in the summer sun to fester until just before he was due to return, when we posted it off to him through the departmental mail. It cleared the office when he opened it.

He's now Deputy Director General of the dept. and about the only member of the executive left who actually knows anything.

Sorry Fishy, it was me - whaddaya gunna do, sack me?

[Neo]

I once went to a B&S Ball where they hooked an electric fence up to the urinal.

Between school and Uni I worked at a sheepskin tanning place. When I left they held me down and dyed my nether regions purple. It was all a great laugh until I had my testing for the Air Force a couple of weeks later and tried to explain to the doctor that the 'bruising' around my groin would wear off in another couple of weeks.

The RAAF Fire Fighters (Firies) used to have a 2-part foam for extinguishing fires. They used to put part A in the cistern and part bowl and watch the FNG (***** new guy) react when the cubicle started to fill with foam.

The Yank ration packs are called Meals Ready to Eat (MRE's) and they had heaters for them, a couple of bits of cardboard wilth a chemical powder between them, just add water, the chemical reaction happens and gives off heat and hydrogen. In Somalia we occassionally used to scrunch them up to get the powder out, stick it in a water bottle with about an inch of water, put the lid on, give it a good shake and pop it under someone's bed. About 30sec later the pressurre would build up, the bottle would explode and they would levitate off the bed.

Another good one was to get a Bograt (really junior officer) to go out on the airfield and then radio him to tell him the rotating beacon on the vehicle was 'intermittent' and to go and see the Techs to have it fixed. The Techs would check it and say their old chesnut 'No fault found' and tell him to ask the control tower for more info about the fault. So we'd get him into a possie where the firies and and everyone else could see him easily and then say it's still not working properly because its on, it's off, it's on, it's off......

One of the best was vegemite on the eye pieces of the binoculars - ink was better because you couldn't smell it.

[goat]

i was re roofing a silo 20+metres high ,me and another bloke was up on top and a young bloke on the ground attaching to rope to the next sheet which i would haul up, being a hot day i had a big bottle of water and i noticed the young bloke was not looking and just staring at the ground waiting for the sheet to be pulled up,so i poured water over him when he looked up all he saw was me shaking my old fella and putting it away ,he always paid attention after that

[Enraf]

All pieces of timber are 600mm long

All joints must be of an acceptable tradesman standard and be exactly as per sketch.

I've seen a few apprentices caught with this one

[AlexS]

Tricks and practical jokes in the services are a whole new topic. Many's the soldier who's gone to bed with a good bellyful of Dr. Foster's sleeping medicine and woken up to find his bed in the middle of the parade ground, or suspended from the rafters in the old Kingstrand huts.