Bullying Apprentices

[Pete999]

Still bored, got thinking as I sipped my 1st cuppa of the day, do any of the older members remember ever getting bullies at work? well there were about 6 Sparkies working for the firm I did my apprenticeship with, 1 really good one 4 OK ones and 1 little wazzock I got to work with.

Now I never minded the verbals and Micky takes, all part of the learning curve, but this little berk really was a nasty piece of work, used to thump me every so often,now not being one to go whinging to the boss, I spoke to my old man, he was a building QS, so he knew what was what on sites etc, told me if he did it again, promise, not threaten to smack him one, well next day it all kicked off, matey boy started shoving me around, and I promised the next time he touched me he would be eating his lunch through a straw, well he gave me one and I retaliated kicking him in his crown jewels, and he had the neck to report me for bullying him, we never worked together again, or spoke.

Anyone else got any horror stories? oh sorry for all these , do you remember threads, suppose they aer better that how do I wire up my mates shed lol,:wheelchair::54:a bit latter to early yet

 

[Plonker 3]

Ahh good old little man syndrome seen plenty of them on site. Used to work with someone who used to try and take the pee out of me regular. But as I used to catch the bus to work regular I would sometimes play hide and seek with his car so he would be walking around town or the area we working in for a while looking for it before he could go home.

 

[Pete999]

Ahh good old little man syndrome seen plenty of them on site. Used to work with someone who used to try and take the pee out of me regular. But as I used to catch the bus to work regular I would sometimes play hide and seek with his car so he would be walking around town or the area we working in for a while looking for it before he could go home.

Nice one Dillb

 

[Bobster]

Yes, well by modern standards it would be classed as such. Nothing like being punched etc... having a length of conduit pushed through the arms of overalls and cable tied in position was always a favourite.

It was character building, everyone had it.

 

[Pete999]

Yes, well by modern standards it would be classed as such. Nothing like being punched etc... having a length of conduit pushed through the arms of overalls and cable tied in position was always a favourite.

It was character building, everyone had it.

I agree but don't think you could get away with it now, or does it happen and kept quiet?

 

[trev]

If I did something wrong once during my apprenticeship the task would be explained again, twice and I'd get a clout round the head. Needless to say I didn't often repeat a mistake but sometimes I'd get one just to remind me of my place.
If we were on a fair sized site we low life apprentices were not allowed to share bait rooms with the journeymen, at the time I thought it was stupidly unfair but thinking about it I suppose it was a chance for them to escape the daft questions, well daft to them anyway.
The apprentices were basically skivvys for the qualified blokes and were treat like shyte, victimised in a lot of cases and outright bullied in others
When I was freshly qualified I hit a problem I wasn't sure how to get round so I went to see the guy I'd been apprenticed to to ask him his advice. He asked me why I was asking him because I was now qualified and should know or be able to figure out the answer. I walked off cursing him and swearing never to be reliant on idiots like him again. It was only much later that I realised he did me a favour by forcing me to stand on my own two feet.
Would I treat an apprentice like that now? Not a chance, not because they are protected in ways we weren't but because I think there are more productive and effective ways of teaching someone. Do I resent the way I was treat? No, not really. I think that the time I spent with him made me into a half decent electrician and I'm grateful for all the knowledge he passed on to me, so much so that a couple of years back I saw him in a bar and bought him a couple of beers. I don't think he had much idea who I was but I also don't think that matters.

 

[Rockingit]

I was on a small site back in the summer, and at one point in the grub hut the foreman said to me 'ere, 'av a watch o' this......and the played back the CCTV footage of them having gaffa wrapped the apprentice before dumping him in the water barrel. So, it stills goes on.

 

[trev]

Was there a reason for that though Chris? A while back we had an apprentice who was just being an annoying little git (although he was quite funny with it at times) he generally just wanted to fanny around and have a laugh rather than doing anything so we taped him up from feet to shoulders and forced him to watch how things were done.
He even said that he learnt something that day and his tendency to fanny around pretty much disappeared apart from as an when it was appropriate.

 

[Rockingit]

Was there a reason for that though?

Not as far as I could make out. I think it was literally just them (brickies, btw) having some Friday afternoon fun at his expense.

 

[Slowhand]

Yes, well by modern standards it would be classed as such. Nothing like being punched etc... having a length of conduit pushed through the arms of overalls and cable tied in position was always a favourite.

It was character building, everyone had it.

I was getting cheeky, answering back and being generally bolshy one Friday morning in my first year and I got the conduit through the overalls and hung out of a first floor window for the whole dinner break.
The Boss turned up, never said a word to me he just leaned out of the window and put my wages in the breast pocket of my overalls.
As he passed by on the path below me he said loudly " Don't be late Monday lad."
I was as good as gold all afternoon and wasn't late on Monday.
I have to say the blokes I worked with looked after me like I was family if anything got dodgy with other trades onsite and instilled good work practices in me. Nothing was ever too much trouble to explain. To this day there is no such thing as ' F**k it! that'll have to do " It’s right or it isn’t.

 

[Knobhead]

As an apprentice I had a run in with a chargehand on a site I had transferred to for three months. The guy was a bully, not physical, but a bully none the less. It festered between us for over 20 years.
He knew I was going to see the great white chief to see about donating a mercury arc rectifier to the Manchester science museum. That very afternoon he put a sledge hammer through it. The boss agreed it should be donated so the dig at me back fired.

He then transferred as a foreman to the main plant where I was based, now I could be the thorn in his side. I’d transferred out of the engineering department and had a small department of electricians and fitters attached to production. We were out of his grasp and unfortunately for him five out of the eight of us he had bullied at some point.
Nothing nasty but he got pulled up on everything. He went from golden b******s to shyte very rapidly.

Before I left the engineering department I usually took charge of any transformer installations. Not now, he had charge of them. Four transformers and not one was right and I let it be known.
One he was very pleased with, he’d got a second hand 1000KVA 11/.44KV transformer from another works. Inter works asset transfers were usually £1 so he’d got a bargain and let everyone know. Something like that would normally go on the open market so I was curious why it had been an asset transfer. So I had a look at it on nights and nearly wet myself laughing.
Luckily I was on shift when it was made live. I had to go in to the switchroom and there he is trying to make sense of the cross phasing at the bus-section switch. “Having trouble are we?” “F*** off I don’t need your help!” “OK suits me. But if I were you I’d have a look at the vector groups.”
No wonder it was cheap, it was such an odd bod thing no one would want it. It would be OK as a stand alone, he’s trying to tie it in to a bank of transformers.

The company did break up our little department eventually and he was gloating. He got the other lads in the end, but not me, I’d applied for voluntary redundancy so they couldn’t change my job. I was totally immune to him and so carried on needling him and there was nothing he could do about it.

 

[Slowhand]

I know its off topic but I'd love to have seen a mercury arc rectifier working. I've seen one but not working.

 

[Diddy]

I was getting cheeky, answering back and being generally bolshy one Friday morning in my first year and I got the conduit through the overalls and hung out of a first floor window for the whole dinner break.
The Boss turned up, never said a word to me he just leaned out of the window and put my wages in the breast pocket of my overalls.
As he passed by on the path below me he said loudly " Don't be late Monday lad."
I was as good as gold all afternoon and wasn't late on Monday.
I have to say the blokes I worked with looked after me like I was family if anything got dodgy with other trades onsite and instilled good work practices in me. Nothing was ever too much trouble to explain. To this day there is no such thing as ' F**k it! that'll have to do " It’s right or it isn’t.

Same as this really. there were a couple of ----ers but worse seemed to happen to others. By the time i was in my 3rd year I was one of the team....the guys went out of their way to teach me the real sparking trade. We were passed from commercial to domestic and to light industrial so we all worked with lots of sparks.
One thing I did realize pretty early on was the sheer amount of "arrogant" sparks around....I just hope I am not one of them now lol......Can't put my finger on why so many seem arrogant....it's just what I have found across various sites on my travels.
I completely agree on how it shaped me and how I approach teaching other apprentices....I would say 8/10 of the boy's I have had work with me have wanted to either continue to do so or they have completed their training under me. I would usually get them where they were told to rush rush rush and "it looks ok"....when they got to me I would be "Take it out and do it properly lad"....usually to their abject horror. Do it right do it once...speed will come when you can do it properly. Neat tidy job before speed any time and if the company I work for don't want that then they don't need me lol.

 

[KWCFC]

Fair enough if the apprentice is a little toerag, but otherwise I think electricians who feel the need to bully lads for no other reason than "they're an apprentice" need a good smack themselves. No young lad is ever going to learn if he's getting the confidence knocked out of him for no reason and turned into a nervous wreck, like me at times when I did my apprenticeship.

Those blokes who get an ego boost from it should of become a copper, rather than a sparks!

 

[gnuuser]

had one real git who would spoil or steal your lunches when you were out on the line
he had a love for my wifes chicken salad sandwiches and would scarf them up any chance he could

i got back by treating the sandwiches with powdered alum (mayonnaise hides the taste).
can't burp, can't fart, can't barf and one hell of a gut ache:devil: