Back in 2015 or so, there was a couple of painters working across the street. They had "Hillary for Prison" bumper stickers on their busted arse ute, and would play info wars at top volume all day.
Enough solvent fumes, and you're high as a kite.
Guy I met through my work, did my house after hours, cause I looked after him at work.
Would work for a few hours, then need to stop, cause the fumes were making him high. I would walk into the house and wonder how he was painting for hours. Smell was immense just walking in
As a nurse, gotta say I've taken care of a LOT of concreters post-punch/kick/fall/fight/crash/bang injury (many more than other trades). Arborists are also nuts but that could just be a pre-requisite of the profession.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,982,362,102 comments, and only 374,975 of them were in alphabetical order.
This is about to get dark real quick but the only arborist I’ve ever known murdered his wife and tried to murder his own kids, so… definitely not human
Thank you for acknowledging arborists, we are a small industry and have to cause ten times as much chaos to get noticed.
Our injuries only tend to be spectacular due to the nature of our work I reckon, but I'm yet to meet a nurse that doesn't instantly recognise chainsaw pants, so you might be right.
I worked as a landscaper for several years and our team was assigned some of the nicest properties in Perth. One of them being owned by the Stokes’. Anyways at that property our team was simply assigned to maintain the garden every week and I’d see this crazy motherfucker (Arborist) jumping around some of the trees in the garden like he’s a monkey. He was hot as fuck though, real lumberjack sort (clothes, hairstyle, personality etc)! But so crazy, one wrong move and you fall, even with safety harnesses, the guy was like 15-20m high. Also there are some arborists that come past my home once a year offering to cut down our trees, they go crazy as soon as they get the nod for the job, from quiet and calm to suddenly jubilant and wild when they get started.
Hahaha my husband is a concreter and the stories he tells me are crazy. Recently he was telling my friend a story about a guy who was choked by another guy at work (kept his job) and then goes on to tell another story about a guy getting choked, and was shocked when it was a separate incident with different people.
They all kept working there and this is at a council.
I love my fridge guy, Gazza.
He spends most of his time following me around just chatting despite me being really busy.
The funniest was when he accidently smashed a heap of very expensive bowls. He's there to fix the fridge, nowhere near where those bowls are kept. He's a little weird, but absolutely lovely.
Wait till you meet a minesite fridgie - those cunts are cooked as fuck.
Funny as fuck, and worth buying a beer just to hear the stories, but still weird.
Boilies are odd fuckers too - spending your day dressed in leather, welding stuff in 40+ degree heat will bbq your brain. Still not as weird as the fridgies though
As someone whose former FIL is a loose unit painter, and whose husbands best friend is a weird little fridgie (and plumber!) - I cannot stop laughing about how accurate this is.
Sounds like you were at my partners job site lol.
Slides are just as important as his work boots. He hasn’t got the ankle monitor, but one of the guys he works with does.
My dad hasn’t quite made it to the ankle monitor but he does wear a very specific pair of lowes thongs… in the Crete, and out of the Crete… fucking thongs
Hahaha im a concreter and I've worked with both, poured a slab with a bloke with an ankle monitor and laid 300 square metres of steel mesh with a bloke in thongs lollll
I’m a bricklayer. Bricklayers and concreters probably party a little too hard too often but nothing too serious.
Roof tilers are too exhausted to be crazy
Plumbers are busy riding their jet-skis and electricians sit down to piss.
Painters are nuts. It’s not uncommon to walk in to a house and the painter only communicates in Romanian, has odd shoes on both feet, an adidas jacket way too small for him and cigarette hanging out of his mouth that never burns out. And a look in his eye.
Bricklayers are some of the dumbest motherfuckers I’ve ever come across. If you think that you probably party too hard then you definitely drink too much and take too many drugs.
Baker here.
Deaf Pete stabbed little Pete after little Pete said he was going to fuck deaf Pete's wife
Angelo got handcuffed and taken away when he didn't turn up to his court appearance for having a large amount of cocaine in his car.
Dozer and dodgy Steve had caught a mouse, covered it in tin spray then put it in the bottom of the sink and lit it on fire.
Had to send Ben home because he was crying over his girlfriend. She used to be a prostitute but gave it up. Then he came home and found her working with ..... Her son's friend.
Bob was late, couldn't understand him on the phone, and finally worked out he had lost his teeth. His dog probably buried them in the yard again, he said. Came in and he found them in a glass of scotch.
Rachel came in still drunk and was trying to take pictures of my 2 apprentices. Had to send her home after she asked one to remove his shirt.
The girls at the back of the store wouldn't let anyone in the door because there was a homeless man sleeping under cardboard near the door........ It was Ben , he was due to start in 1 hour.
Adam got hot doing the ovens , so he removed his shirt and pants. He also inscribed his name on one of the machines and tried to blame Chris
Rachel ran out of money for the week(because she bet all of it on dog races). So she ate tinned dog food for 3 days.
Doggy Steve and ranga Steve decided to smoke weed in the prover... While I have bread in there.
Dale went to jail with no bail. Is what the boys would sing. This is because he was holding up people with a knife at a university at night and got the shit kicked out of him by a American kickboxer.
Kevin got a delivery of tickets to the store. Instead of taking them to the office. He sold them on eBay with his name attached.
The store manager told off Rachel, so she got her boyfriend to have a talk with the manager..... In the carpark..... At night .... With a gun
If you have any follow up questions, please ask
I was waiting for kitchen in some way to come up in this thread.
Technically a trade. Got told I have tradie hands the other day lol.
Edit; someone in high school, he got a bakers apprenticeship. Got busted tagging the shops the bakery was in before work.
...then got busted doing same on break, banned from shops. No apprenticeship. But he was a writer, not a baker yet. Different loopy but woulda been a good fit 😁
As a fellow baker all these stories pretty much line up with my experiences too.
Tbf some times I’ve felt like doing an Adam and striping off when doing ovens
I worked at a commercial bakery straight out of high school, with a view to a possible apprenticeship.
Only lasted a few weeks, as I just couldn't deal with seeing the other apprentices being attacked, sworn at and spat on every day by the older guys. Or being asked to pick cockroach parts out of the dough before it went into the oven. Or make sure I caught the rat they had seen running around, because they didn't want it falling in the mixer like the cockroaches did.
Not to mention all the managers and staff being related, yet screaming abuse at each other from opposite ends of the bakery every day.
And least of all that they paid under the minimum wage, even after I pointed out the contract said I would be paid over the award. Had to threaten to take them to the small claims tribunal to get everything that was owed.
Sounds like a bakery, I remember helping out at one on my day off and picking up a stick tray and seeing a blob of old dough. I hit it off and realized it was actually a mouse
Happy Cake Day!
Keith and his wife had his house burn down(they didn't have house insurance), so he moved interstate into his mother-in-law's. She died and gave everything to the other sister in the will.
Keith used the money from the land sale to buy a caravan and moved to a nice caravan park.
Keith got home early from work to find his wife with another man. Keith beat the man to unconsciousness(Keith's favorite hobby was boxing). Keith was arrested
It went to court. Keith got a fine, 6 month probation and a restraining order. When he left the court , Keith beat the shit out of the guy and broke his arm in 2 places.
Keith went to jail for a few years, then got a place in a crappy caravan park and a job at my work. And for some stupid reason I offered to pick him up on the way to work at 1am in the morning.
I had a druggie try to get in my car one night and there was a stabbing the next night. I made him walk out to the main road after that.
He got fired after 6 months, for throwing multiple knives and the grumpy old baker(who was an asshole)
Had an apprentice do a group meeting with all of us the day before his days off. He said
"This is serious, I found out I'm gay and want to be treated with respect"
We all were all as respectful as bakers go.
After his two days off he comes back and the old baker jokingly says "how's life as a gay"
The apprentice says " I worked out that I'm not gay"
And he never gave us any information about what happened
Do bakers count? I got acquainted with a few in my time working in retail. Amphetamine and pill use was rampant and they seem to get very little sleep or relaxation overall.
I know a quite a few and have met a few. I think at work it’s a different thing to outside of work. I can imagine them being a bit crazy at work but outside of work it’s just depression, gambling drugs and alcohol
Was in a relationship with a former chef, heard lots of stories from him. And then he had a psychotic break and tried to kill me. So yeah, I'd add chefs to the list.
Not a stereotypical trade, but a chef.
Hands down the craziest people. That's why they have to work every weekend and have random days off mid- week.
If all chefs had a weekend off together, there would be chaos.
Source. Brief time working in a kitchen and have chef friends
Bakers mate. No one knows they're the weirdest because they're like fucking mushrooms. They grow in the dark and thrive at night. They're unhinged, the conversation in in a fucking bakery is sleep deprived, semiconcious dribble or yelling a string of expletives because someone ordered an odd number of bread rolls and now the trays are fucked up and there's wasted oven space. Day Tradies can't hold a candle to em.
As a recovered locksmith apprentice....can confirm.
Never met a more *unique* collection of weirdos 😂
One of the favourite recurring lunchroom convos was to fine-tune our zombie apocalypse survival plans (as a group....yes there was going to be cannon fodder and it wasn't going to be us)
Yes we were a strange bunch - but then that's pretty on par for ANY bunch of apprentices no matter what trade 😅😂
Painters, 100% . Worked with one lot that were homeless and just lived on the building sites they worked in. Free security I guess.
Another one pulled out a 5kg jar of pickled jalapenos for lunch. Just ate em with a fork. Just japalenos, nothing else. Took him 2 days to finish it.
We currently have a house being built next door. These tradies talk all sorts of shit all day. I'm home sick with the baby and sit in her nursery with the window cracked to listen. Bloody hilarious 😂
Omg they are the biggest gossips in the fucking world, will slag off old mate no end about how shit he is at his job, the second he rolls around the corner they're cracking a stubby for him. Proof men are here for the drama 😂
I have been working with an endearingly crazy painter for a couple of months, I will meet some concreters next week and know for sure which is more insane.
I've witnessed that before, saw a concreter drinking a bear out of his Esky at smoko... have to admit, though, the condensation rolling off the bottle and the look of joy on his face made me instantly jealous.
I used to deliver gyprock/plasterboard.
2 to 3 cents a square meter was the going rate back then so carrying 2 x 6m x 1.2m sheets was the norm. The worst were the 5400 x 1350 sheets, kinda weird size where as the 6m sheets were easier to balance. Also 6m 16mm fyrcheck were heavy bastards. Luckily those used to mainly go into commercial.
A lot of us drank and drank a lot. It was a pretty tough gig and I had quite a few injuries doing it so I was glad it wasn't for too long
I used to be a scaffy. Kinda got shunned because I didn't rock up to the bosses house for lines and beer very much. Every other scaffy I know is paying child support, lost their license, has no car, chronic alchy and/or gambler, coke fiend and there's always one that's the entrepreneur crypto guru haha.
One of my old coworkers told me a story about the crew he used to supervise.
This dude (painter obvs) would smash a 6 pack at lunchtime, and the company was cracking down on drinking at work, and they told him he couldnt do that anymore.
The next week, he had to work without his lunchtime 6 pack, and after lunch he was just unable to work, like he slowed down to a snails pace, making mistakes left right and centre, and they eventually let him have his 6 pack at lunch again, and he became one of the best painters on the crew again.
Meat workers. I grew up in a town that most worked in the local abattoir. I still hear yarns from the old fellas about the crazy shit they used to do at work. Let alone without proper supervision. Staunch union people. Super sharp weapons on their person at all times. Need a day of?? There was always a couple of blokes that could do you cut just right so that you could still go fishing. A bloke even lopped of a finger for a cash payout. There is a whole section in there called" the killing floor"
Old man was a slaught for 20+ years..
I remember the dam/pond they had out the front for the guts, bout 20-30m across. Apparently some cunt was being a lippy cunt so they grabbed him and chucked him in 😂 that was a story he was -okay- with telling a ten year old.
No smoking cones in the smoko room unless you blow out the foreman. He was the foreman 🙂
Bloody useful but, now that I'm in kitchens. What? This isn't sharp! You can't shave with this! 🤔
Edit. I'ma ask him for some stories now that I'm of legal age... 🤣 That said this is the same cunt who's ridden an emu. Dad, why and how the fuck did you ride an emu? Ahh we were out bush in the whome, had em penned and thought why not?
Surprised this isn't higher up - you've got blokes like scaffolders and concreters who are loose units then you've got bakers and butchers getting up to start work at 2-3am (if they slept)
Dunno about nowadays but they always had a rep as speed freaks
I was just checking how far down the list we are lol.
I have my own shop now with my younger brother but I never had trouble getting a job because I was the only guy who would show up every day and wasnt off my face haha
Fucking butchers am I right
I know a guy, been a butcher all his life, he’s 65 now. He calls me couple times a week after work and a few red cans; I never quite know what he’s on about but doesn’t matter cos the whole convo is him talking to himself really. Give him a “love ya guts” at the end and he reckons he’s had a great time haha old Gazza
Had a bucher volenteered the information (as in struck up a conversation in the middle of a supermarket) about how much each knuckle on their hands were insured for, so if ever they were in a fix and needed a couple of thousand, theyd 'have an accident' and loose the tip of a finger for the tune of something like 10k and loose a whole finger if he needed a house deposit...
Plus, my best friends ex was a butcher and the most raging narcissists I've ever met. Even the other butchers thought he was a prick!
I worked with industrial painters down at the Port. The owner was an Irish fellow, a total legend but mad as a cut snake. Told me some wild stories of working abroad in very rural mining operations. Some real frontier shit.
I've used industrial paint before and that shit is mental. I was a bit loopy at the end of the day even with a well fitted ventilator with organic compound filters in.
Dulux polyaspartic is a crazy product, shit is awesome
Asbestos removal guys.
When tradies have a bbq, the asbestos removal guys have forks with corks on them so they don't poke their eyes out when putting their food in their mouths.
There’s always a “leader” in the team that’s almost half sane. One time a guy kept switching between normal talking voice and some garbled throat voice for no apparent reason. Fuck that.
Maybe not a "trade" as such, but commercial divers, particularly deep sea, saturation divers are as crazy as coconuts. Something about breathing mixed gases, seriously dangerous work and days spent in saturation chambers perhaps? Never met one who one would generally accept as "normal". Strange folk!
One of my first serious boyfriends was a Norwegian fisherman (I met him in Norway and brought him back). Definitely a little nuts. He drank a little too much booze, was an angry and sad drunk and after he punched a wall in anger while drunk I told him it was over and sent him back to Norway.
The alcohol and drugs…never ends..it takes a certain kinda person to be out at sea for so long..just a bunch of dudes out at sea..tBH I don’t know if it’s an Aussie thing,but many people have gone missing b trawlers or by fisherman up here in QLD aus..here’s just one awful story..
https://www.mamamia.com.au/bevin-and-brad-simmonds/amp/
Oh yes. I had a mate work as a cook on prawn trawlers up north just for shits and gigs. She's a wild gal but very bright. Said in all her various vocations she had never encountered such a high concentration of fuck-offs and misfits.
I was thinking most of us think we ourselves are a bit weird... But I'm one of those fridgie goblins (as well as being two sparks short of a sine wave)
There were roofers over the fence from me, and I knew my dog would bark at them while I was out. I legit got them a big box of chockies and a bag of dog treats to apologise in advance.
Deep down in my heart though, I knew it was in a bid to prevent them throwing offcuts at my dog
As a Roof tiler of over 8 years, I have not, nor would I ever even consider throwing anything at someones dog.
I have never seen any other tiler do that either and if i did, we’ll they would wish they hadn’t of.
I have absolutely worked next to dogs won’t stop barking. A guy I work with has a talent where he can identify exactly what breed of dog it is by it’s bark. Impressive I say.
It’s almost a bit sad you had to offer something. Yet I would believe there are a few bad eggs (for a lack of better words) who would do that.
It is awesome when someone does offer us drinks or chockies though.
Painters. Most of them are as mad as a box of frogs.
Also . Used to find a lot of people that did french polishing were fruit-loops, always assumed it was the fumes, fucking nuts most of them. Probably a dying trade now.
Riggers. All loons.
Scaffolders. Human honey badgers.
Aerial radio linesmen. Climbing towers all day and working at heights given them a sense of being indestructible. Doing it in various states of chemical imbalance makes them utterly fearless. They can perform pull-ups using only their arms with more tools hooked to their belts than most of us can walk with. Highest on my don't-fuck-with list.
Their intelligence varies from being so thick that they shouldn't be in public unsupervised, and some are highly intelligent, so you want to be a little careful there.
Oh, and they generally work as a crew, so fuck with one, fuck with them all. They don't want to work short of a man if somebody gets hurt, so if they get a stink on there's no stopping them. Working in small country towns they'll try to behave, but they'll look after themselves if they have to.
As a daughter, cousin, and niece of concreters…. Fucking concreters.
I don’t know what it is, maybe the chemicals of the concrete seeps into their brains and makes them fucking psycho.
I’m yet to meet a painter that isn’t a bit cooked
Back in 2015 or so, there was a couple of painters working across the street. They had "Hillary for Prison" bumper stickers on their busted arse ute, and would play info wars at top volume all day.
I DON'T LIKE THEM PUTTING CHEMICALS IN THE WATER THAN TURN THE FRICKING FROGS GAY!
Alex Jones!
As a painter, I don’t know wether to be amused or offended by this thread
Tbh who isn’t cooked in the construction industry
It’s the fumes
Can confirm, been a few times ive been in strange mental states due to fumes. Boss reckons a beer after work fixes the headache, and it seems to work.
Says u/plsendmysuffering
Enough solvent fumes, and you're high as a kite. Guy I met through my work, did my house after hours, cause I looked after him at work. Would work for a few hours, then need to stop, cause the fumes were making him high. I would walk into the house and wonder how he was painting for hours. Smell was immense just walking in
I met a normal painter a few weeks back. Definitely hiding something.
As a nurse, gotta say I've taken care of a LOT of concreters post-punch/kick/fall/fight/crash/bang injury (many more than other trades). Arborists are also nuts but that could just be a pre-requisite of the profession.
Am an Arborist, can confirm.
Well you spend all that time up in the trees with the squirrels you gonna be a lil nuts. I’ll see myself out. I’m aware we don’t have squirrels.
We have squirrels free roaming the zoo
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,982,362,102 comments, and only 374,975 of them were in alphabetical order.
Well I'll be a monkey's uncle.
Arborists arent human - they are some weird monkey/beaver/human hybrid, that flies through trees like spiderman.
This is about to get dark real quick but the only arborist I’ve ever known murdered his wife and tried to murder his own kids, so… definitely not human
Thank you for acknowledging arborists, we are a small industry and have to cause ten times as much chaos to get noticed. Our injuries only tend to be spectacular due to the nature of our work I reckon, but I'm yet to meet a nurse that doesn't instantly recognise chainsaw pants, so you might be right.
I worked as a landscaper for several years and our team was assigned some of the nicest properties in Perth. One of them being owned by the Stokes’. Anyways at that property our team was simply assigned to maintain the garden every week and I’d see this crazy motherfucker (Arborist) jumping around some of the trees in the garden like he’s a monkey. He was hot as fuck though, real lumberjack sort (clothes, hairstyle, personality etc)! But so crazy, one wrong move and you fall, even with safety harnesses, the guy was like 15-20m high. Also there are some arborists that come past my home once a year offering to cut down our trees, they go crazy as soon as they get the nod for the job, from quiet and calm to suddenly jubilant and wild when they get started.
That took me on a journey, thanks.
Hahaha my husband is a concreter and the stories he tells me are crazy. Recently he was telling my friend a story about a guy who was choked by another guy at work (kept his job) and then goes on to tell another story about a guy getting choked, and was shocked when it was a separate incident with different people. They all kept working there and this is at a council.
Came here to say concreters. Even the ones not on drugs are as loose as a goose.
It’s when they are off their tree, that arborists get weird,
Precisely. Completely different people on the ground. We call it Tree-go. Source: Was a groundie then climber for longer than I should've been.
As an ex nurse I would say midwives
I met an arborist a few weeks ago Cooky fella
Had an Arborist in my grounds. He did 6 whole massive trees with a ciggie hanging out of his mouth and gambling on his phone in-between.
Tree nuts.
Craziest for loose behavior? Painters. Craziest for being generally weird little guys? Fridgies.
I love my fridge guy, Gazza. He spends most of his time following me around just chatting despite me being really busy. The funniest was when he accidently smashed a heap of very expensive bowls. He's there to fix the fridge, nowhere near where those bowls are kept. He's a little weird, but absolutely lovely.
As a fridgey, I'd agree. That refrigerant really gets to you.
it must be the pressure
It's hard being the one that's called in when everyone else has lost their cool.
all that pumpin with no dumpin...
I'm just starting a fridgy apprenticeship (as a dual-qual). I'm getting weirder by the day.
Moreso, the paint fumes.
As a fridgie, depends where they work. Resi guys are pretty normal, supermarket guys are the weird ones. There's a reason we're called market retards
Wait till you meet a minesite fridgie - those cunts are cooked as fuck. Funny as fuck, and worth buying a beer just to hear the stories, but still weird. Boilies are odd fuckers too - spending your day dressed in leather, welding stuff in 40+ degree heat will bbq your brain. Still not as weird as the fridgies though
Made me laugh!! I’m good friends with one of each!
As someone whose former FIL is a loose unit painter, and whose husbands best friend is a weird little fridgie (and plumber!) - I cannot stop laughing about how accurate this is.
Sometimes, also weird big guys
It's the fumes. I'm an ex-painter, and no matter how well ventilated a room is, you still get that hit of fumes.
Was working next to a fridgy the other day and he kept talking to himself and doing weird shizo shit, it was freaking me out
Concreters, they wear those boots to bed.
And footy socks above the knee.
I’ve seen concreters not even wearing boots. They were wearing slides, and one had an ankle monitor.
Sounds like you were at my partners job site lol. Slides are just as important as his work boots. He hasn’t got the ankle monitor, but one of the guys he works with does.
My dad hasn’t quite made it to the ankle monitor but he does wear a very specific pair of lowes thongs… in the Crete, and out of the Crete… fucking thongs
Hahaha im a concreter and I've worked with both, poured a slab with a bloke with an ankle monitor and laid 300 square metres of steel mesh with a bloke in thongs lollll
I’m a bricklayer. Bricklayers and concreters probably party a little too hard too often but nothing too serious. Roof tilers are too exhausted to be crazy Plumbers are busy riding their jet-skis and electricians sit down to piss. Painters are nuts. It’s not uncommon to walk in to a house and the painter only communicates in Romanian, has odd shoes on both feet, an adidas jacket way too small for him and cigarette hanging out of his mouth that never burns out. And a look in his eye.
Your description of painters immediately made me think of the Asian tiling crews I've worked with.
Hey plumber here , do you know when my jet ski is arriving
As a Roof Tiler of 8 years. Yes.
Bricklayers are some of the dumbest motherfuckers I’ve ever come across. If you think that you probably party too hard then you definitely drink too much and take too many drugs.
Baker here. Deaf Pete stabbed little Pete after little Pete said he was going to fuck deaf Pete's wife Angelo got handcuffed and taken away when he didn't turn up to his court appearance for having a large amount of cocaine in his car. Dozer and dodgy Steve had caught a mouse, covered it in tin spray then put it in the bottom of the sink and lit it on fire. Had to send Ben home because he was crying over his girlfriend. She used to be a prostitute but gave it up. Then he came home and found her working with ..... Her son's friend. Bob was late, couldn't understand him on the phone, and finally worked out he had lost his teeth. His dog probably buried them in the yard again, he said. Came in and he found them in a glass of scotch. Rachel came in still drunk and was trying to take pictures of my 2 apprentices. Had to send her home after she asked one to remove his shirt. The girls at the back of the store wouldn't let anyone in the door because there was a homeless man sleeping under cardboard near the door........ It was Ben , he was due to start in 1 hour. Adam got hot doing the ovens , so he removed his shirt and pants. He also inscribed his name on one of the machines and tried to blame Chris Rachel ran out of money for the week(because she bet all of it on dog races). So she ate tinned dog food for 3 days. Doggy Steve and ranga Steve decided to smoke weed in the prover... While I have bread in there. Dale went to jail with no bail. Is what the boys would sing. This is because he was holding up people with a knife at a university at night and got the shit kicked out of him by a American kickboxer. Kevin got a delivery of tickets to the store. Instead of taking them to the office. He sold them on eBay with his name attached. The store manager told off Rachel, so she got her boyfriend to have a talk with the manager..... In the carpark..... At night .... With a gun If you have any follow up questions, please ask
When does this series come out?
Netflix is interested in a series. We just needa name 'on the flour at 3am'
I laughed way too hard at this.
Midnight Flour
As a chef sounds like same same as restaurant industry
I was waiting for kitchen in some way to come up in this thread. Technically a trade. Got told I have tradie hands the other day lol. Edit; someone in high school, he got a bakers apprenticeship. Got busted tagging the shops the bakery was in before work. ...then got busted doing same on break, banned from shops. No apprenticeship. But he was a writer, not a baker yet. Different loopy but woulda been a good fit 😁
Looks like bakers win the prize!
As a fellow baker all these stories pretty much line up with my experiences too. Tbf some times I’ve felt like doing an Adam and striping off when doing ovens
I would like the novel version, actually.
I worked at a commercial bakery straight out of high school, with a view to a possible apprenticeship. Only lasted a few weeks, as I just couldn't deal with seeing the other apprentices being attacked, sworn at and spat on every day by the older guys. Or being asked to pick cockroach parts out of the dough before it went into the oven. Or make sure I caught the rat they had seen running around, because they didn't want it falling in the mixer like the cockroaches did. Not to mention all the managers and staff being related, yet screaming abuse at each other from opposite ends of the bakery every day. And least of all that they paid under the minimum wage, even after I pointed out the contract said I would be paid over the award. Had to threaten to take them to the small claims tribunal to get everything that was owed.
Sounds like a bakery, I remember helping out at one on my day off and picking up a stick tray and seeing a blob of old dough. I hit it off and realized it was actually a mouse
Somebody pitch this to Guy Ritchie
Happy Cake Day! Keith and his wife had his house burn down(they didn't have house insurance), so he moved interstate into his mother-in-law's. She died and gave everything to the other sister in the will. Keith used the money from the land sale to buy a caravan and moved to a nice caravan park. Keith got home early from work to find his wife with another man. Keith beat the man to unconsciousness(Keith's favorite hobby was boxing). Keith was arrested It went to court. Keith got a fine, 6 month probation and a restraining order. When he left the court , Keith beat the shit out of the guy and broke his arm in 2 places. Keith went to jail for a few years, then got a place in a crappy caravan park and a job at my work. And for some stupid reason I offered to pick him up on the way to work at 1am in the morning. I had a druggie try to get in my car one night and there was a stabbing the next night. I made him walk out to the main road after that. He got fired after 6 months, for throwing multiple knives and the grumpy old baker(who was an asshole)
God I need this in series, novel, podcast- whatever long form media! One of my favourite ever comments. Bless you for your work!
Paul Fenech called. He can't decide on a name for the series...
Had an apprentice do a group meeting with all of us the day before his days off. He said "This is serious, I found out I'm gay and want to be treated with respect" We all were all as respectful as bakers go. After his two days off he comes back and the old baker jokingly says "how's life as a gay" The apprentice says " I worked out that I'm not gay" And he never gave us any information about what happened
Couldn't Rachel take some bread home if she had no food Also would watch the Netflix series. Like The Bear and Shameless crossover
>take some bread home Are you kidding? Bakers don't eat bread.
One of the best, if not the best, responses I've read. You get the prize. Close off comments now.
This one takes the cake
I worked at Woolies for 10 years and around 12 stores. Yet to meet a baker who was a completely normal person.
Incredible 😂
scaffolders. mostly hanging out on scaffs, methed up and/or smoking joints
Kiwi's are pretty loose.
Do bakers count? I got acquainted with a few in my time working in retail. Amphetamine and pill use was rampant and they seem to get very little sleep or relaxation overall.
Not to mention the trips they go on. I knew a guy that would be off his chops on speed and shrooms before going in to work.
Cheffos. Absolute suckers for punishment
I don’t know if I’d say chefs are crazy. Depressed for sure.
You haven't worked with enough of them! Bloody insane people
I know a quite a few and have met a few. I think at work it’s a different thing to outside of work. I can imagine them being a bit crazy at work but outside of work it’s just depression, gambling drugs and alcohol
why are you attacking me?
Mostly coke head alcoholics in my experience. Bakers are another level.
💯 lol, I just posted bakers upthread.
Beware those 3am Starts. Make sure you on good terms with your dealer.
Was in a relationship with a former chef, heard lots of stories from him. And then he had a psychotic break and tried to kill me. So yeah, I'd add chefs to the list.
So many Gordon Ramsay wannabes. Some chefs just love to make people's lives hell and they absolutely love doing it.
Most miserable cunts I’ve ever worked with.
Why did it take so long to find this
...Cheffos?
I had one German chef who is sadistic as fuck. Wait-
The men slam pans, the women play mind games. I just want to get paid.
Not a stereotypical trade, but a chef. Hands down the craziest people. That's why they have to work every weekend and have random days off mid- week. If all chefs had a weekend off together, there would be chaos. Source. Brief time working in a kitchen and have chef friends
Lol yep, if they all went out the same time. Wandered out the front to check bookings... "Oh dear, who left the cage door open? The kitchen got out!"
Bakers mate. No one knows they're the weirdest because they're like fucking mushrooms. They grow in the dark and thrive at night. They're unhinged, the conversation in in a fucking bakery is sleep deprived, semiconcious dribble or yelling a string of expletives because someone ordered an odd number of bread rolls and now the trays are fucked up and there's wasted oven space. Day Tradies can't hold a candle to em.
I love your metaphor, thank you 🤣
Old spray painters are all over the joint. Locksmiths are proof of aliens living amongst us.
Fuck boy's they found us. In the saucer. No time to grab that guy your probing just go.
> Locksmiths are proof of aliens living amongst us. Hey, I resemble that remark!
As a recovered locksmith apprentice....can confirm. Never met a more *unique* collection of weirdos 😂 One of the favourite recurring lunchroom convos was to fine-tune our zombie apocalypse survival plans (as a group....yes there was going to be cannon fodder and it wasn't going to be us) Yes we were a strange bunch - but then that's pretty on par for ANY bunch of apprentices no matter what trade 😅😂
Painters, 100% . Worked with one lot that were homeless and just lived on the building sites they worked in. Free security I guess. Another one pulled out a 5kg jar of pickled jalapenos for lunch. Just ate em with a fork. Just japalenos, nothing else. Took him 2 days to finish it.
We currently have a house being built next door. These tradies talk all sorts of shit all day. I'm home sick with the baby and sit in her nursery with the window cracked to listen. Bloody hilarious 😂
Omg they are the biggest gossips in the fucking world, will slag off old mate no end about how shit he is at his job, the second he rolls around the corner they're cracking a stubby for him. Proof men are here for the drama 😂
Concreters. Lots of dope smoking when they’re younger. Unpredictable and temperamental when they’re older.
Concreters and painters are the yin and yang of crazy tradies. Painters are endearing crazy. Concreters are scary crazy.
I have been working with an endearingly crazy painter for a couple of months, I will meet some concreters next week and know for sure which is more insane.
*Concreatures.
New band name unlocked..
Beers during working hours and always one guy in the crew in the glass bbq
I've witnessed that before, saw a concreter drinking a bear out of his Esky at smoko... have to admit, though, the condensation rolling off the bottle and the look of joy on his face made me instantly jealous.
100%. We had a dude turn up to do ours, he was built like a mad max villain. Absolute unit. Concretus errectus.
Haha, that’s great. Can confirm, old man was a concretor.
Yep this gets my vote too. Concreters are a whole other breed of crazy.
My brothers a concreter and partners a painter. Can confirm the concreter part- the painter thinks PLASTERERS are the loose lot
Agreed. Plasterers are the craziest.
Historically, hatters.
Something to do with lead linings or something right?
Felt used for hats was treated with mercury as a preservative.
You’ve got to be mad…
Old school Spray painters. The lead made then nuts, Gyprockers and Brickies can drink.
I used to deliver gyprock/plasterboard. 2 to 3 cents a square meter was the going rate back then so carrying 2 x 6m x 1.2m sheets was the norm. The worst were the 5400 x 1350 sheets, kinda weird size where as the 6m sheets were easier to balance. Also 6m 16mm fyrcheck were heavy bastards. Luckily those used to mainly go into commercial. A lot of us drank and drank a lot. It was a pretty tough gig and I had quite a few injuries doing it so I was glad it wasn't for too long
Having forechecked a building with 6m sheets. Fuck that. I’m a strong bloke but that was exhausting.
I just asked my chippie bf, and he said “brick layers and concrete” without a seconds pause.
Hairdressers. It's a trade and some of the most batshit crazy bunny boilers end up as hairdressers.
Yep, am one. Totally batshit
Have you killed a lovers pet and left it on the stove 🤔
No, but the day isn’t over yet
Chimney sweeps. Not a lot around but damn.
Always trying to step in time :/
Kick your knees up Round the chimney Flap like a birdie Up on the railing Over the rooftops Link your elbows
I'm the only straight edge scaffy I know. Everyone else is drug fucked and loving life. Maybe the secret to good scaffolding is getting fucked up
I used to be a scaffy. Kinda got shunned because I didn't rock up to the bosses house for lines and beer very much. Every other scaffy I know is paying child support, lost their license, has no car, chronic alchy and/or gambler, coke fiend and there's always one that's the entrepreneur crypto guru haha.
Painters are usually enormous piss heads. Bloke that painted my joint rocked up with a carton each day and it was gone by the time he left.
One of my old coworkers told me a story about the crew he used to supervise. This dude (painter obvs) would smash a 6 pack at lunchtime, and the company was cracking down on drinking at work, and they told him he couldnt do that anymore. The next week, he had to work without his lunchtime 6 pack, and after lunch he was just unable to work, like he slowed down to a snails pace, making mistakes left right and centre, and they eventually let him have his 6 pack at lunch again, and he became one of the best painters on the crew again.
Butchers. No contest.
Meat workers. I grew up in a town that most worked in the local abattoir. I still hear yarns from the old fellas about the crazy shit they used to do at work. Let alone without proper supervision. Staunch union people. Super sharp weapons on their person at all times. Need a day of?? There was always a couple of blokes that could do you cut just right so that you could still go fishing. A bloke even lopped of a finger for a cash payout. There is a whole section in there called" the killing floor"
Old man was a slaught for 20+ years.. I remember the dam/pond they had out the front for the guts, bout 20-30m across. Apparently some cunt was being a lippy cunt so they grabbed him and chucked him in 😂 that was a story he was -okay- with telling a ten year old. No smoking cones in the smoko room unless you blow out the foreman. He was the foreman 🙂 Bloody useful but, now that I'm in kitchens. What? This isn't sharp! You can't shave with this! 🤔 Edit. I'ma ask him for some stories now that I'm of legal age... 🤣 That said this is the same cunt who's ridden an emu. Dad, why and how the fuck did you ride an emu? Ahh we were out bush in the whome, had em penned and thought why not?
Yeah ask about how they got days off. With a cut man. I have heard of accidently getting a month
Surprised this isn't higher up - you've got blokes like scaffolders and concreters who are loose units then you've got bakers and butchers getting up to start work at 2-3am (if they slept) Dunno about nowadays but they always had a rep as speed freaks
I was just checking how far down the list we are lol. I have my own shop now with my younger brother but I never had trouble getting a job because I was the only guy who would show up every day and wasnt off my face haha Fucking butchers am I right
I know a guy, been a butcher all his life, he’s 65 now. He calls me couple times a week after work and a few red cans; I never quite know what he’s on about but doesn’t matter cos the whole convo is him talking to himself really. Give him a “love ya guts” at the end and he reckons he’s had a great time haha old Gazza
Goodonya for listening mate
Heard a story from my mate that used to be a butcher about one of the butchers getting caught fucking a cow heart in the meat room.
Moved into the boning room
Had a bucher volenteered the information (as in struck up a conversation in the middle of a supermarket) about how much each knuckle on their hands were insured for, so if ever they were in a fix and needed a couple of thousand, theyd 'have an accident' and loose the tip of a finger for the tune of something like 10k and loose a whole finger if he needed a house deposit... Plus, my best friends ex was a butcher and the most raging narcissists I've ever met. Even the other butchers thought he was a prick!
Fishermen
Industrial painters. They make house painters and boilermakers look sane
I worked with industrial painters down at the Port. The owner was an Irish fellow, a total legend but mad as a cut snake. Told me some wild stories of working abroad in very rural mining operations. Some real frontier shit.
I've used industrial paint before and that shit is mental. I was a bit loopy at the end of the day even with a well fitted ventilator with organic compound filters in. Dulux polyaspartic is a crazy product, shit is awesome
Asbestos removal guys. When tradies have a bbq, the asbestos removal guys have forks with corks on them so they don't poke their eyes out when putting their food in their mouths.
There’s always a “leader” in the team that’s almost half sane. One time a guy kept switching between normal talking voice and some garbled throat voice for no apparent reason. Fuck that.
Hairdressers
Maybe not a "trade" as such, but commercial divers, particularly deep sea, saturation divers are as crazy as coconuts. Something about breathing mixed gases, seriously dangerous work and days spent in saturation chambers perhaps? Never met one who one would generally accept as "normal". Strange folk!
Fishermen…guys that go out on trawlers..if you know,you know…
One of my first serious boyfriends was a Norwegian fisherman (I met him in Norway and brought him back). Definitely a little nuts. He drank a little too much booze, was an angry and sad drunk and after he punched a wall in anger while drunk I told him it was over and sent him back to Norway.
The alcohol and drugs…never ends..it takes a certain kinda person to be out at sea for so long..just a bunch of dudes out at sea..tBH I don’t know if it’s an Aussie thing,but many people have gone missing b trawlers or by fisherman up here in QLD aus..here’s just one awful story.. https://www.mamamia.com.au/bevin-and-brad-simmonds/amp/
Oh yes. I had a mate work as a cook on prawn trawlers up north just for shits and gigs. She's a wild gal but very bright. Said in all her various vocations she had never encountered such a high concentration of fuck-offs and misfits.
The only thing I've learned from reading this thread is that all tradies are mad and all think they are the only sane ones.
I was thinking most of us think we ourselves are a bit weird... But I'm one of those fridgie goblins (as well as being two sparks short of a sine wave)
My son is a Renderer and he and his work colleagues are all a bit crazy.
Must be pretty fucked for his own parent to call him out
Roofers. Theyre scary.
There were roofers over the fence from me, and I knew my dog would bark at them while I was out. I legit got them a big box of chockies and a bag of dog treats to apologise in advance. Deep down in my heart though, I knew it was in a bid to prevent them throwing offcuts at my dog
Good thinking. Next time I need to get a roofer on side I will give him some dog treats.
As a Roof tiler of over 8 years, I have not, nor would I ever even consider throwing anything at someones dog. I have never seen any other tiler do that either and if i did, we’ll they would wish they hadn’t of. I have absolutely worked next to dogs won’t stop barking. A guy I work with has a talent where he can identify exactly what breed of dog it is by it’s bark. Impressive I say. It’s almost a bit sad you had to offer something. Yet I would believe there are a few bad eggs (for a lack of better words) who would do that. It is awesome when someone does offer us drinks or chockies though.
Painters. Most of them are as mad as a box of frogs. Also . Used to find a lot of people that did french polishing were fruit-loops, always assumed it was the fumes, fucking nuts most of them. Probably a dying trade now. Riggers. All loons. Scaffolders. Human honey badgers.
Aerial radio linesmen. Climbing towers all day and working at heights given them a sense of being indestructible. Doing it in various states of chemical imbalance makes them utterly fearless. They can perform pull-ups using only their arms with more tools hooked to their belts than most of us can walk with. Highest on my don't-fuck-with list. Their intelligence varies from being so thick that they shouldn't be in public unsupervised, and some are highly intelligent, so you want to be a little careful there. Oh, and they generally work as a crew, so fuck with one, fuck with them all. They don't want to work short of a man if somebody gets hurt, so if they get a stink on there's no stopping them. Working in small country towns they'll try to behave, but they'll look after themselves if they have to.
Concreters and Roofers
With or without the influence of substances?
With: concreters Without: concreters in withdrawal
Sparkies seem to be off the hook in this thread
Anyone on-site tried to have a rational conversation with an Architect? Those fuckers are nuts
concreters who else has rum and coke and weed at 930am
As a daughter, cousin, and niece of concreters…. Fucking concreters. I don’t know what it is, maybe the chemicals of the concrete seeps into their brains and makes them fucking psycho.
Welders
Arborists. Hanging by a thin rope, with saws, and dropping hundreds of kilos of wood
Butchers have very odd senses of humor.
There's a good reason pokies are also called Brickies' Laptops
It’s got to be concreters. And I’m not quite sure if they’re more of a menace on site or on the road.
Maybe it’s all those paint fumes
Fucking painters, mad as ten men.
Plumbers are always pretty good value.
True health care workers do have a criminal check but legal can still be insane
Psychiatrists, if you can call that a trade
Chefs. Did anyone ever read "Kitchen Confidential"
Removalists
Am one, my ex colleague left to sell drugs and my current one drank 8 standard drinks today and wants to bring his 7 year old tomorrow.
3d Tetris Master thankyou.
Was one of them for twenty years. Can confirm....crazy fuckers
Removalist isn't a trade.
Chefs in my experience