Delayed Time-delay SNAPSHOT:
"
When I worked for them, maybe twenty-five years ago, we had decent union
reps and a solidarity culture (you watch my back and I'll watch yours --
bottom line [and, OK, maybe this wasn't absolutely ideal] was you'd be
looking at six months in the slammer, at the worst, covering for your mates.
Bastards were blacklegging putting in illicit lines. AND getting paid well
more than us poor idiots running the lines.
Funniest moment was (this goes back to the early seventies), I was doodling
away and I looked up and there was this 18 year old Metropolitan PC looking
over my shoulder [sheesh, he even had his hands clasped behind his back
Dixon-of-Dock-Green style].
"What's up then, mate?"
"That looks complicated. Bomb warning."
"Bomb warning? WHAT FUCKING BOMB WARNING?"
Then about twenty of us went ballistic simultaneously.
WHERE'S THE BLOODY UNION REP?
(He was about five seats down the isle, trying to explain to three rozzers
how you answered a 999 call.)
Fun, them times.
Gave me a taste for non-hierarchial instututions.
(Real problem was overtime -- the older people had this totally sewn up. Not
all that serious, as this was the Edmonton [North London] exchange and then,
as it was the only automatic exchange in the country, there weren't +all+
that many of us who could work overtime.)
Did this get through?
"
Robin Hamilton
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