A lack of ambition

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Lack of Ambition

When I left school, many year’s ago, wages for a 16 year old were shit.
I would have been lucky to earn more than £15 a week.

We are talking about a long time ago.

The thing to do was to sign up for casual, agency work.
You could work whenever you wanted to, and for me that was every day.
The rate of pay was much better and you were not tied down to any particular company.

Those were the days before health and safety were thought about.
No special licence was needed to drive a forklift so one day I may be working in a warehouse and the next doing a night shift loading delivery trucks.

There was work available every day and night, so if I didn’t particularly want to work in one place I would ask for somewhere else to go.

The agency sent me to a local steel drum factory once.
A guy showed me what to do.

My job was to shove a steam cleaning hose into the steel drums that came past on a conveyor belt.
The drums would then be flipped over so that whatever shit was inside would get cleaned out.

Not really rocket science.

The factory was noisy so nobody could be heard if they were talking or even shouting.

The next guy up the line to me would bash the top of the now clean steels drums to put them back into shape after they had expanded with the heat.

Every hour an alarm would sound and all worked stopped.
We were given a half pint of milk to drink as the work was so hot.

In one of those breaks I found out from the drum banger that he had been at the factory for over 20 years.
Doing the exact same job.

Over 20 fucking years standing in the same place, day in day out, hitting steel drums with a big mallet.

What sort of cunt would want to spend their entire working life hitting steel drums with a big hammer?

Turning up and going home at the same time every day.
The half pint of milk every hour, forever.
Waiting for his pay cheque every Friday.
His working life controlled by an alarm sounding.
Probably the same 2 week holiday to the same place every year.

Lunch time was also started with the alarm bell.
The entire workforce stopped and made their way to the huge canteen.

In the canteen there was a line of workers with their trays, queueing up for whatever was on offer.

Probably the same thing on the same day every week.

The thing that struck me was that although there were many dozens of people queueing up to eat, nobody spoke.
There was just the clatter of cutlery to break the silence.

The misery of working in the shit hole had completely destroyed those guys.

I put my tray back from where I got it.
I left the canteen and walked out of the factory and got the bus home.

Although asked, I never went back there again.

Nominated by The Artful Cunter.

60 thoughts on “A lack of ambition”

  2. While I understand Artie’s nom ,
    I get that bloke who hits the drums.

    He’s the backbone of this country.

    Unswerving in his dedication to provide for his family.
    Boring? Yes
    But regular money .
    The kids in school shoes
    The bills paid
    Food in the larder.

    There’s worse things than boredom.

    In fact I want his job 😂

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    • Indeed MNC, and he was probably a decent guy, just thick as pigshit. Nowt wrong with that, just doing an honest (but utterly wank) job.
      I mean, who didn’t have a shit job and 15/16?
      My first part time job (at 15) was Saturday am in a bakery, cleaning rancid dough out of the bottom of the industrial prover and pm in a hamper factory, cleaning up chicken bits.
      Still remember the summer smell of rancid dough splats and rotten chicken caracasses!

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      • Morning HJ…I use, quite simply:
        kratom.co.uk
        You can buy 25g sample packs. If you get some, let me knoe and I’ll tell you what to do with it.

      • I had a shit part time job when I was 16/17 so you’re quite right and I remember the people who did it full time and had been there 20 years left me thinking what the fuck?

        One of the worst things was all of these pints of milk that had gone off and it was all lumpy like cottage cheese and stank so bad I was dry heaving the whole time I had to sluice them away and then stick the empty plastic bottles into the recycling.

        Thing is it gave me an incentive to concentrate on getting decent exam results and getting the fuck out of there.

        That’s one of the differences now between my generation and older generations and younger generations.
        You knew if you didn’t pull your finger out and put in the effort you’d be in a shit job for the rest of your life and it would destroy your soul.
        Now they don’t give a fuck because they have no intention of working anyway and would rather just leach off the system on bennies.

      • I agree Thomas, people who do boring or “menial” jobs are often some of the nicest of people, they haven’t got the pretensions of lawyers or politicians and are a bloody sight more honest. At our local supermarket we have ayoung assistant and nothing is too much trouble for him, always has a smile and a friendly word – totally different from the store manager who always looks as if his piles are really bad today, everyday.

      • Fucking iPad, let me finish !
        Packing tv tubes and making rubber soles for boots.
        To a man , all of the shop floor workers were decent people and l developed a deep respect for the infantry of industry. Management was a completely different matter.

    • I’d do that job. I’d name the drums as they came down the line: Alan Carr BANG!, Nylon Mincing Cunt Clarke TWAT!, Lineker CLOUT! Horribly Contorted Face Ku-Klux-Kuenssberg THWONGGGG!

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    • I agree with you totally MNC.

      No work is beneath you, but to spend your entire working life in such a dead end job shows a complete lack of ambition.

      My philosophy on work is……

      Whatever job you do, no matter how menial, you should aim to be the very best at doing it.
      There is no point in doing a job badly or even acceptably if you can do better.

      The day that you wake up not wanting to do your job is the day that you should start looking for another one.
      If you enjoy what you are doing then you will probably be good at doing it.

      Know your worth.
      Don’t allow anyone to give you additional work or responsibilities just because you can organise your work effectively.
      If they want more then they must pay more.

      Realise that you have limitations and be prepared to take a step back if you feel that you are out of your depth.
      I think that this is the most important thing.
      People find themselves being promoted to a position where they are incompetent.
      Instead of biting the bullet and taking a step back into a position in which they excelled, pride makes them soldier on until they are miserable, bad at their new job and a candidate for being sacked.

      I think that if you follow those steps you will be happy and successful.

      Nobody at the steel drum factory was happy or successful.

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      • I have no idea if the place is still there LL.
        But I suppose that steel drums still need to be cleaned and put back into shape.

        There will be other factories in other places.
        Perhaps the horrible jobs in these places are now mechanised.

        I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing.

        Having terrible jobs like that should be a reality check for youngsters who think that they deserve better, and if the terminally lazy benefit scroungers were forced to do shit, menial work for their benefits, they may pry themselves away from watching Judge Judy on their idiot boxes and start contributing to society.

      • “know your worth”

        Oh I like that Artie!
        That’s spot on.
        Absolutely.👍

        Great nom by the way,
        You certainly do a good nom pal.

      • Thank you MNC.

        I think that knowing your limitations and being prepared to take a step back is the most important thing.

        I have never forgotten that I am a sales and marketing professional.
        I have managed and owned my own companies and I still do, but I am a salesman.

        Other people that I have worked with in the past have been promoted to managerial positions and think that a sales position is below them.

        They move from company to company only considering management roles.

        Although I own my own company I will go out knocking on doors with my canvassers.
        I also enjoy going out to see potential customers to sell to them.

        I don’t do these things to either show my staff that I still can, or to demonstrate that I am prepared to.

        I do it because I enjoy it.

  3. “What sort of cunt would want to spend their entire working life hitting steel drums with a big hammer?”

    Ringo Starr, or Dave Lammy when the career in politics ends and he starts his Calypso Steel Band with vocals by Dawn Butler. They will probably get a weekly series on Radio 4 – “Sing & Swing In Your Mud Hut”

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  4. When I was younger an agency sent me to a vegetable but mainly onion processing factory, there was women there who had been there for years simply cutting onions in half.

    I was lucky and got to do what they called mans work, Loading the onions into the peeler and conveyor belt.

    On the plus side, the place was like 99 percent very attractive eastern European females, the only reason I stayed the few weeks I did.

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  5. In my early 20’s I did a few years in a factory. My job was bringing tubs of meat from the chillers to the formax machines to be processed into chicken nuggets, burgers whatever. Hard physical work at times but got you moving around and could skive off when the line stopped for breakages.

    There were people there on the line whose sole job was to pick off the rubbish and misshapen bits, just like the drum banger. Some had been there before I was born and had met their spouses there with their kids now working there too. Winter was the worst, 6am start finish at 2pm, an hour or so of daylight then starts getting dark again. It really was soul destroying but can see how people get trapped.

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  6. The story of the drum basher reminded me of this…

    When I was in the last year of 6th form I worked casual shifts at a bakery, usually Sunday night it was for the most part easy (good) money but boring.

    There was one shitty job, working in the pit which was a narrow aisle between the uni flow oven and the prover, the tins containing the risen dough came down on one side and the oven on the other and there was a conveyor belt running the length.
    The job was simple, take the baked bread out, bash the tins on the side of the conveyor and the bread flops out onto the belt then take the tins of dough and put them in the oven. It was fucking hell, literally, hot as fuck.

    Getting to the part of the storey of no ambition, one of the shifts had to oldish guys who worked in the pit, they wouldn’t do any other job, been doing it for donkeys years, fuck me I loved being on their shift because to other shift rotated jobs.

    There you go not only having no ambition but doing the same shitty hot job twelve hour shifts for fucking ever!

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  7. A lack of ambition has led us to this British hating, ethnic loving, shit show of a labour government.

    And I apologise for my lack of ambition not to organise a huge rally to march on Parliament and kick every labour, tory and lib dum politician to fuck.

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  8. Sounds like all of the shitholes I worked in during the early part of my life. Scrap metal yard, post office cleaner, paint factory, machine operator & a warehouse. I was a poor nobody going nowhere surrounded by cunts.

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  9. Interesting nom this.

    I’ve had some shit mind numbing jobs during my earlier working lifetime.

    None worse than working in a sportswear factory where the job basically involved gluing the upper part of training shoes to the sole part.

    For 10 hours a day while local commercial radio was piped relentlessly over the tannoy system.

    Anybody who knows what local commercial radio sounds like or anybody with a taste in music for that matter, will know the pain I endured.

    Only saving grace was that it was a 4 day week.

    I only lasted a couple of months before moving on yet there were some members of staff who had been there doing that job for two decades.

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  10. I started work in the late fifties at a dead end job for more money to help the family, still struggling after the war. Apprenticeship work would’ve only payed you shirt-buttons, with the possibility of it not working out anyway.

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    • The job described in the nomination sounds like heaven. Nobody bothering you, just being left to get on with it. Not all the jobs I’ve had were shit, but the worst aspect of all of them was the people I had to work with. Ninety nine per cent of them were fucking arseholes.
      Forty five years getting out of bed on cold mornings, going to places where I didn’t want to be, doing things I didn’t want to do, but worst of all, doing it with people I didn’t want to know.
      And now I don’t have to do it any more. Thank fuck.

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      • I know where you’re coming from Allan. When I started work I had several jobs on site and didn’t get on with any of them. I only lasted a few months at most. Then at the age of nineteen I got into field service and never looked back. Out on the road alone, no boss looking over my shoulder, no need to get along with any other fucker or even to speak to anyone. With care I could avoid going into the office almost completely, probably went in once a year when I couldn’t get out of it. I was at my last employer for 24 years and I’d be hard pushed to recognise anyone there by sight. All communication was on line or on the phone and on occasions I had to go in the office I would perhaps meet for the first time someone I had been speaking to for years. I retired four years ago during covid when my boss phoned me and told me not to go in any longer. The only person from the company I ever saw or heard from since was the guy they sent to collect my boot spares and the leasing company collected the car.

  12. My ambition at the moment is to wring the neck of whatever moron is in charge of the music(sic) that is constantly blared out at all JD sports shops… i.e. black drill/rap/killa filla 💩 I realise mostly younger people frequent the stores but not everyone is a bro’ or even likes the ‘genre’ I even asked one of the kids who serve in the local one…’what a load of crap don’t you get fed up of the same dirge all-day’ …he said ‘i wear these most of the time’ pulling out his ear pods 😩 ….whoa,whoa listen to the 🎶

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  13. The sad part of life is that just about everybody but the brain dead have ambitions, or more likely hopes, most of which have no chance of ever being realised.

    Morning all.

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  14. I think that it was Henry Ford who said, after he was extremely successful, that he would like to work as a sweeper up in Calcutta Airport.

    No stress and no responsibilities.

    However, that was after he became a multi millionaire.

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    • Thinking about it.

      If Henry Ford was a sweeper up in Calcutta Airport then he would probably organise his work so efficiently that he would soon be promoted to head to cleaning.

      Several promotions later he would be running the whole airport.

      I don’t think that you can turn work ethic or ambition on and off.

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      • Interesting bloke Henry Ford Artie
        .
        Massive antisemite.
        He is partly responsible for Country music 🎵 prospering in the US.

        He pumped money into dances and promoted it,
        Not because he particularly liked it but because he hated jazz.

        “Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.”
        -Henry Ford

      • Which is strange.

        As the descendant of red sea pedestrians, I fucking hate jazz.

        Sounds like a fire in a pet store.

        Squeaky squarky parp parp shite.

  15. Apprentice electrician, 15 years old,
    15p / HR –
    47p NI = £5.53 per week.
    £3.oo tipped up.
    £2.53 to spend.

    This was a big help to my family, instead of giving me 50p a week spence.

    First day at work was ” right lad get under those floorboards” and we’ll rewire this ring main.

    I went home looking like I’d been down the pit .
    Happy days….!

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  16. I’ve shoveled shit
    Laid tarmac
    Cut trees
    Loaded lorries
    All sorts.

    Because I’ll do anything for a few quid ( not so fast Cuntengine)

    There’s dignity in work
    No jobs beneath me.

    I’ve needed the money bad especially when the kids were little and grabbed any opportunity for extra money.

    Don’t miss night shifts though.

    My sleep pattern is still a bit fucked.

    We don’t realise how lucky we are, some people go through all kinds of monotony and drudgery to get by.

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  17. A mate said there was an engineering job going where he worked so off I go for interview.
    Turns out it was a cardboard box factory and I would be on a machine punching slots for the folds.
    The manager tried to give a motivation speech saying for example if I do 200 today maybe I can reach 250 tomorrow!
    There were 3 things not tolerated
    1 persistent lateness
    2 unexplained absence
    3 fighting.
    I said to the manager
    Look mate I think we are both wasting our time here and promptly fucked off.

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  20. That cunt in the header pic, Napoleon Hill, he wrote self help books.

    Have some ambition you lazy cunt!

    Write a proper book

    Jack London was still in his 20s when he wrote ‘call of the wild”.

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  21. As young fellow I worked digging out drainage ditches and old garage maintenance pits..

    hard graft but the upskirting potential was frankly disgraceful.

    “You’ve never had it so good”..

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  22. When I was made redundant, went on the agency, only way to get a job unless you know some cunt.
    Spent 2 weeks at the local Red Cross centre, cleaning dog shit off the wheelchair wheels, cleaning human shit off bed pans, toilet extensions, cleaning shit and blood off crutches.
    On top of that hell the cunts on community service were sent to help, junkies, thieves, yobs.
    After 2 weeks they asked if I wanted the job full time………

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  23. Lack of ambition = lack of meaning in my experience.

    If you don’t know why you’re getting out of bed and where you want to get to in life you tend not to get out of bed.

    That is the exact problem I have with all of my young staff who – and further to last week’s nom that they love to bang the drum “I’ll never get on the housing ladder” – are lazy feckless instant gratification obsessed fuckwits who have no grand plan, no desire to make something of themselves, love to claim with lashings of self-pity that they’ll never find themselves in a better situation (whilst constantly pissing it up and going on holidays), so usually end up flaking out and not bothering to come into work; and to an extent I can understand it – because if I were in their heads and living such a life, I’d see no point continuing to drain the earth’s oxygen supplies.

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  24. My one dream as a young bloke?

    Never to call another man BOSS.

    Mission achieved 👍

    Self employment
    The gift that keeps on giving

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    • Fucking right – and you don’t have the choice to moan and expect people to feel sorry for you. Makes you get up and get on with it – you soon realise what you’re capable of when you’re answerable only to yourself

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    • Yup, me too. But I can’t deny that there were times I looked enviously out of the car window at blokes digging holes or emptying bins and though, jammy bastards.

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