IT doesn’t matter if you are a plumber, teacher, butcher, veterinarian, secretary, hospitality worker, doctor, accountant, public servant or whatever, you will have a tale to tell about some funny encounter at work. The tragedy is we don’t bother to write them down, with memories of those humorous exchanges often lost in the mists of time.
WORKING in local government for a while I really do regret not having compiled a more comprehensive list of things that have caused amusement over the years.
Dealings with dog owners, for example, would have provided a veritable book full of tales.
Like the lady who came in to register her “tan Datsun bitch.”
Another registered her dog and wanted a deduction because it “had been dissected by the Vet,” and a bloke claimed his dachshund was used for mustering and farm work only.
OUR tourist office staff were mystified by a Sydney visitor who wanted to know if he could get the ferry from Manly to Bundanoon.
Another tourist phoning from Sydney asked, “Will there be any bushfires this weekend?”
A farmer complained about a rural road suggesting, “There is a hole there all the time and I think it should be dug out and looked into.”
And just after election day someone wrote in saying, “I‘m sorry I didn’t vote,” offering the interesting excuse, “I spent all day in bed with a vomiting wog.”
Or when we had problems with water quality coming out of the old Robertson reservoir, some cocky complained, “The bloody water’s too thick to drink and too thin to plough.”
AND it is no different in England. We really must share some classic comments offered by British council flat tenants, when they wrote complaints to their local housing authority. Here is a taste:
My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand?
Will you please send someone to mend the garden path? My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant.
It's the dog’s mess that I find hard to swallow.
I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.
I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage, and their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.
I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof and I think it was bad wind the other night that blew them off.
I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.
I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.
50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster and 50% are plain filthy.
The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.
Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.
Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces.
I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man on top of me every night.
Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.
I have had the clerk of works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.
This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broke and we can't get BBC2
SO if you too have any good yarns about the lighter side of your working life, send them down the line to geoff.goodfellow@bigpond.com and we can share the humour with our readers. After all work and life would be pretty dull if we can’t occasionally have a bit of a laugh.
*Geoff Goodfellow has lived his life in the Southern Highlands, works for Wingecarribee Council and is well known in local sporting and social circles.
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