The Circus

When the circus erected their big top in Silvio's backyard, they didn't instantly recognise the need for security around the tent perimeter, in order to stop the natives crawling under the tarpaulin, during matinee performances. The inadequate security measures soon became apparent however, when audience numbers far exceeded ticket receipts. In order to help rectify the situation, and restore a sense of balance to proceedings, young Silvio agreed to lend a hand with security arrangements. The roustabouts were clearly out of their league when it came to outwitting the locals, and besides they were otherwise engaged in their clown roles, once the show started. Silvio's career as minder to a travelling troupe of rag-bag performers had begun. Everything went fine for a few days and word spread through the local community that Silvio wasn't clowning around as far as freeloaders were concerned. Takings were up, the ringmaster was happy!. Then the shit hit the fan. After the late night performance one Friday, the male contortionist, clad in his leopard skin leotard, suggested that Silvio accompany him back to his caravan for a nightcap. Thats when Silvio decided to make a hasty retreat into the darkness of the night, and left the contortionist to cry on the clowns shoulder. That was one crap job Silvio will never forget everytime he see's a trapeze hoisted beneath a big top tarpaulin.

The Paper Round

Silvio wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, you may have guessed that already. Life was tough on Silvio's housing estate, so tough in fact that the job description of paper round, may not accurately describe what should otherwise have been quite a civilised first job for a young boy, starting off in the world of work and hoping to pocket some ready cash in the process. You see there was a lot of obstacles Silvio had to negotiate on a daily basis, in order to get the papers delivered. There was the guy who would set his rottweiller on young Silvio if he didn't receive a free paper. There was also the family of glue sniffers, who routinely kidnapped anyone who knocked on their door selling anything of value. The various laneways around the estate, were places you were likely to either end up  being an unwilling participant in a boxing match, or witnessing a cock fight at close quarters. Young Silvio managed to negotiate all of these hazards for six weeks, without being ripped apart by rabid dogs or being kidnapped and held to ransom. Then the shit finally hit the fan, the day Silvio's boss forgot to write the house numbers on each of the papers. This was a fatal error that destroyed another wise flawless career. Without the house numbers on the banner of each paper Silvio was shagged, because he hadn't memorised the houses he delivered too. So who got the papers with no numbers?, you guessed it. The glue sniffers got one, maybe two, the guy with the rottweiller got one and the first seventy houses Silvio came too got a free paper. The boss only realised the extent of the problem when his usual punters showed up at his door that night demanding their papers too. Silvio had an accuracy drop rate of around 10%, which left sixty-three irate customers without their Evening Press. Needless to say Silvio never went back to face the music or the various lunatics scattered throughout the area. That was one crap job he'll never forget every time he picks up a periodical to check the racing results.

The Chimney Sweep

Christmas was closing in fast and I hadn't got a shilling, when suddenly it came to me. The idea that is !,  to get myself a set of chimney cleaning rods, and go cleaning chimneys. In order to build up my clientele I put an advert in the local rag and "Hey presto", the phone start hopping. I was delighted, business was brisk as everyone wanted their chimneys cleaned for the Crimbo. Most of my business came from little old dears, which was great, because I could just ram the rods up the flue, give them a quick spin and then pull them back down. If I walked out the door with a small bag of soot everyone was happy, and the old dears weren't going to bother inspecting the chimneys' afterwards. Then I got a call off a punter who wanted his chimney cleaned because he was relining his flue. "No bother" says Silvio. I showed up the next morning and did the usual, shoved the rods up, quick spin, pull down and filled a small bag with soot. He handed me 70 euro, lovely. I was nearly home and my phone rang. "Get your ass back here", the punter says, "there's still four stone of soot up that chimney", he says. "No way, it's spotless" says Silvio. "I'm after lying down on me back and shining a high powered torch up it and I can see mounds of soot", says the punter. "I'm ringing the Association of Irish Chimney Sweeps about you Silvio", he shouts down the phone. "No need for that, I'll be back in five minutes", says Silvio, trying to avoid being exposed as the chimney sweep from hell. Needless to say he was right, I took a black bin-liner of soot away the second time, and decided to call time on my newest career. That was one crap job I'll never forget for all the wrong reasons.

Landscape lunacy

I was at a loose end, as I often am, when a friend suggested I should help him with his landscaping business. "Great" I said, out in the fresh air, keeping fit, at one with nature, sure what more could you want. Everything went great for the first week, and I was seriously contemplating making a career in the world of landscaping. My mate was delighted with my unbridled, genuine enthusiasm for the job, and congratulated me on my willingness to tackle any task he threw at me. He said I was proving to be a valuable asset to the company. Silvio was chuffed. Then he suggested I accompany him, to acquire a key element for a job we were going to do the following day. He told me to hitch up the trailer, and jump in the van. I did what I was told and we headed to a secret location in Wicklow. The secret location turned out to be a farm yard, with the biggest pile of shite I had ever seen in my life piled in one corner. The boss reversed into the pile at speed, with the tailgate down on the trailer. Then he told me to run up the pile and start shovelling. I did as I was told and ran up the mound until I was knee deep in excrement. Then as I started to shovel, a pungent, lord of the rings, mystic like steam began to envelope me. The stink was eye-watering. It was at that juncture that I decided to terminate my landscaping career as I shouted, "F@*k this, you can shovel your own shite!!", and with that Silvio hastily made for the farm gate making sure not to upset the farmer on the way out. That was way too close to nature for Silvio's liking. I'll never forget that job or the stink associated with it!!.

Pot Walloping

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to let the other half do the washing up after dinner. Thats why I was reluctant to take the job as chief pot walloper, in a busy restaurant in South Dublin. The head chef assured me it was a handy number, so I agreed to give it a whirl. The night started slowly with a trickle of plates arriving at the dishwasher. "This is a doddle" I said to myself. "Washing dishes ain't so bad after all" I thought. I even had time to scrape the dregs out of the Knicker-bocker glory glasses, and finish off the steaks left over by customers. Then the tsunami hit. Waiters suddenly ran at me from all directions, with plates full of discarded food stacked up to their chins. The dishwasher was only half way through the first cycle, and there was already two hundred bone china plates of all sizes stacked up on the counter, not to mention the buckets full of knives and forks at my feet. The chef started to scream for more clean plates. Then he threw eight large grease filled roasting tins at me, and said he needed them back spotless in five minutes. That's when Silvio flipped, no amount of half eaten Knicker-bocker glories or partly chewed T-Bone steaks could keep me in a job like that. "You can wash your own f@*king plates" I shouted as I made for the side door, with a full belly. That was one crap job I'll never forget, neither will the chef in that restaurant. 

The Piano

It was only in latter years that I nurtured any real respect for the piano. Professor Longhair and the Mississipi delta crew are now heroes of mine but that was not always the case, in fact my first encounter with said instrument occurred when I was thirteen years of age. It wasn't at a piano lesson I might add, it was quite the opposite. I was enlisted to break up the up-right piano which had proudly stood in the bar of the Pierre hotel for a generation. Now, anyone who has ever broken up a piano knows the best way to go about it, is to roll it off the roof of a six storey building, unfortunately I had never met anyone so knowledgable in such matters so I decided on a different tact. I arrived in the Pierre at 8.30am on a Saturday morning with a  sledgehammer and a Bushman saw. I gently placed the Bushman on the Tremolo pedal and climbed onto the piano with the sledgehammer. I then swung the 20Ib hammer in a 180 degree arc and hit the upright section of the soundboard full square with the hammer. I fully expected the piano to disintegrate into thousands of un-recognisable pieces beneath me, but no, that was not the case. The hammer merely bounced off the rosewood panel sending the key of C reverberating around the hotel at 150 decibels. Within 2 minutes the entire roll-call of guests had assembled at the reception demanding an explanation for the unannounced early morning alarm call which had unexpectedly echoed around the hotel. Silvio didn't hang around to answer any questions but instead made lively out the back door and lived to tickle the ivories another day. That was one crap job I'll never forget, neither will the guests in the Pierre!!

East Berlin

Herr Grabosch drove me from Nurnberg to East Berlin in his 4x4 at a steady 100mph.The journey was punctuated by slugs from a Jagermeister bottle, and comments about how marvellous the autobahn's were. I think we stopped once for a piss, god knows I needed one, after the amount of weiss-beer I consumed the previous night. When I got to East Berlin I hooked up with two bricklayers and a plasterer, who were going to help me build a basement for a timber framed house. The client was a Eurovision fan, who thought the sun shone out of Johnny Logans arse. And that my friends is were the proverbial shit hit the fan!!. Herr Grabosch handed me the plans and quickly drove off down the autobahn. Just about the same time, we realised that all info on the drawings was in German, unfortunately nobody had considered doing a crash course in German before they flew over. This problem was further exacerbated when deliveries of the wrong materials started to arrive. The delivery drivers insisted on leaving them on site, saying Herr Grabosch had ordered them. We couldn't argue even if we wanted too. The Johnny Logan fan wasn't too happy when Herr Grabosch ordered a lean mix concrete for the ring-beam and we barrowed it in to the formwork. Needless to say the whole lot had to be removed, but by then I was already half way through my fifth bottle of weiss-beer and enthusiastically singing the chorus of 'What's another year?'. That was one crap job I'll never forget.

The Drop Off

When I got a job as a courier I thought all my birthdays had come at once!. Just sit in the van with the radio and the heater on, and drive from A to B. What could be easier?. That my friend is where Silvio made his first mistake. You see normally parcels that are getting delivered to someone have the correct name and address on them, but not my parcels. My f@%king parcels never had the right address or the right contact number for the person they were going too, which meant that Silvio drove around Ireland like a gobshite, paying for his own diesel, while he tried to find people using telepathy. Eventually the parcels did get delivered, which owed more to my powers of detection, than anything to do with the efforts of the courier company. After three days of touring the country against my will, I decided to deliver my notice to the boss. Luckily, he was at the address the company stated!. That was one crap job I'll never forget, nor should you!!

The Fire Escape Caper

Definitely one of the crappiest jobs I've ever had. I was working in a well known hostelry in Dublin when the manager caught me by surprise and asked me to carry all the double beds down from the top floor to the bottom." No probs", replies Silvio," I'll just get someone to give me a hand". Then the boss says "bring them all down the fire escape Silvio, we don't want to be troubling the guests as they're going up the stairs". The job had just shifted from the mild headache category into the major migraine division. Anyway, everything went O.K to begin with, we got three King size beds down by 9.30a.m, bases and mattresses and we decided we'd try for one more before heading for the tea. I hadn't had much of a breakfast to start with and was beginning to feel the weaker for it. We carried a King size mattress to the top of the fire escape fully intending to carry it down to the car-park below, when suddenly I slipped, and accidentally pushed the mattress out the door. I heard a scream from outside, and the noise of someone falling quickly down flights of aluminium stairs. The mattress quickly followed, as I tried to regain my foothold and hold in the laughter. The boss arrived, accused my mate of lying down on the job and sacked him. I left soon after. That was one crap job I'll never forget!!!.