The ace powers that be at work, or Allan as we all call him, decided everyone who works here should go on work-related courses.

In order to establish whether these courses would be of benefit, we had to all sit a brief exam.

Calculators were not allowed. Phones were not allowed either. If I had an abacus, then THAT would have been allowed apparently, but I didn't have one.

So it came to my turn to sit the exam. I took my exam paper into the test room, sat down, and started to panic.

I know it was against the rules, but I decided to call a very clever friend on my mobile. Who could I ring? Who would know the answers to all the questions on this test? Only one person sprang to mind. The most intelligent man on the planet, Stephen Hawkins.

I rang him, he picked up, and I blurted out:

"Hi Stephen, it's Craig, listen, I'm doing a 30 minute test at work and I need to borrow some of your intellect, I need help with a few maths questions, a few grammar things and some spelling. Any chance you can give me some help?!?"

And he replied,

























OK. Fire away.

Oliver Cranfield was not fat by any means, but he did have a very round face. Bear this fact in mind towards the end of the story, and all will become clear why it is relevant.

So, back when I was about 18, 19-ish, my semi-cousin Ivan and I went to a pub, referred to by locals as the Athy Arms.

After purchasing a pint, we noticed Oliver was also in, so we went to sit with him. I hadn't seen him much since leaving sixth form a few years back, so it was nice to catch up with him. He hadn't changed much, other that he now had spikey hair. We sat there, chatting. We chatted and drank for a few hours.

Back then, you could smoke in pubs. Oliver was a smoker, and his cigs were on the table next to his lighter. He announced he would be "back in a minute" and ventured towards the toilets.

The lighter he left on the table was one of those cheap disposable ones that you can take to pieces, tamper with, and make the flame massive. When I say "massive" I mean change the flame from 2cm to about 30cm, so that it roars as it burns just like they have on oil rigs. You could make the flame that big that you can see the gas bubbling and draining through the translucent sides. It is very dangerous and I do not advocate doing it.

I thought it would be amusing to do this, just for a laugh. Obviously the moment he went to use it I'd stop him. I'd stop him and say something like "Oli! I've made your flame massive, so watch out when you light it!"

So, Oli came back and sat down. He picked up his cigs, took one out and put it in his mouth. I was poised to jump in and warn him just at the most amusing time....... Then he suddenly put his left hand over his cigarette end, like you do when you're outside trying to shield the flame from wind, and whooshed the lighter up in his other hand. If he lit his lighter now, his hand, his nose, his eyes AND his cig were all in severe jeopardy.

I blurted out "WHOA! NO!" which made Oli jump. He froze and stared at me. I said "I've made your lighter flame massive! You'll burn your face off!"

He took down his left hand, gave me a sarcastic look, didn't move his lighter from directly under his cigarette, then suddenly lit it.

The flame WHOOOOSHED up literally 12 inches, singed his cigarette, scorched his eyebrow, and up over his head. He jumped back, not really realising initially what had hapened.

Bear in mind that everyone around the table was just a little bit "very drunk", including me. Oliver looked at me, and I looked at Oliver. In fact everyone at our table looked at Oliver, amazed he'd survived. We were all drunk, so we all slowly tried to make sense of what just happened.

Although we could all see, Oliver hadn't yet realised that a few strands of his spikey hair at the front were on fire, and that the flames were slowly burning their way towards his head. WE could all see, and none of us could comprehend why he didn't also know. So we just stared at him.

He didn't change his sarcastic expression at all. He just sat there, staring at me, smoldering.

With his spikey hair slowly burning down onto his round head, honestly, my initial thought was "Oh my GOD! OLIVERS HEAD LOOKS LIKE A BOMB!"

We all stared at him for what seemed like minutes, with him staring back at us. We all watched the flames slowly descend. Finally, he must have felt the burn, and he brought his hand up and smacked his own forehead to extinguish the flame.

He was mightily displeased, which I thought was unfair. He'd brought joy to many spectators, but still seemed quite grumpy. After a few minutes of me apologising, Oli checking his hair in the mirror, we agreed that it wasn't really noticable. Only a couple of strands had been removed, and unless you knew where to look, you really couldn't tell.

We finished our drinks, I apologised to Oli for igniting his head, and Ivan and I left.

The day after, Ivan told Neil about what had happened. Neil found it funny and decided to also tell everyone that he knew about what had happened, but that they shouldn't tell Oliver that they knew about it. Instead, they should stare at his head and say "What the hell happened to your hair?!?"

So for the next three months, every time Oliver saw anyone that he knew from school, they ALWAYS asked why his head looked odd, which probably made him hate me more.

Wesley is a very good mate that I met about 10 years ago, when I worked where I used to work.

But he doesn't appreciate stupid people.

He lives in Manchester, and we were due to meet up at the Middlebrook shopping estate in Bolton, so on this occasion he decided to drive to come to me.

All he knew was that "Middlebrook" was near "Bolton", so he followed the signs from the motorway for Bolton. When he reached Bolton, he couldn't see any signs for Middlebrook, so pulled into a car park to ask someone directions.

He wound the window down, and called across to a nearby man.

"S'cuse me mate, I'm trying to get to Middlebrook. Where am I now?"

The man looked around for a minute..... "....Netto."

Instantly, Wes became enraged, but trying to control his temper replied, "I know I'm in Netto car park, yeah? But where AM I? Am I near to Middlebrook?"

"Ooooh, Middlebrook...." the man pondered.

"Yeah, Middlebrook. It's a big shopping thing, yeah? DO YOU KNOW WHERE I MEAN?"

(At thie point, Wes briefly blacked out with anger. Don't worry, no people were harmed.)

Wes, after getting no nearer to finding answers a few questions later, waved at the man, smiled through gritted teeth, wound his window up and wheel-span off the car park. Then he rang me, just to rant about the conversation.

One hour later, he turned up. I was starving after waiting for so long, so he bought me a Burger King meal.

Shirley was one of those ace mysterious people who, even after talking to for months, you still knew very little about.

4 years ago, the business that I worked at moved buildings. We went from a small building with no ameneties into a massive 3 floored one. This new building had many new luxuries, like a bistro, a lift and a massive car park.

The following brief story starts after we'd been in the new building for about a year, and easily found our way around everything in there.

Sheila noticed one time that in the lift, on the floor, there was a puddle. She went to tell Shirley about it.

"Shirley, there's been a spillage in the lift," she informed her.

Shirley became puzzled and asked "Which lift?"

Sheila became puzzled too. "THE lift..." She pondered for a moment, wondering if there was a second lift that she didn't know about.

"No, the lift on which floor?" asked Shirley.

Sheila broke it to her about the lift... "It's the same lift on all floors....it's just one small room on a wire that goes up and down behind the wall."

Peter Lewis was a short man, who wore exceedingly long, high trousers. There used to be an in-joke that when he went to buy trousers, they didn't ask what size waist he was, but what size neck.

Many of the people who worked for him, (for he was in charge of a huge department where I used to work,) didn't like him. He was more often than not angry at people. He stomped around shouting abuse, and he used to sack people on the spot, years before all the HR nonsence was brought in that made it illegal.

But I thought he was great.

I realised, after working there for a year, that he only shouted and screamed at you if you worked on commission. If your earnings directly affected his, then he didn't like you working slowly. I was on a salary, so his reasoning must have been that if he did shout at me, I still wouldn't have brought any more money in. It would have been pointless.

So I like to think that we became friends.

He used to ask the sales people to work weekends on a rota basis. One Saturday he asked Matt to man the phones. While Matt was in on the Saturday, rather than do any work, when the phone rang he'd cut the caller off by picking up the receiver and putting it straight back down again. Legend has it that Peter came in one Saturday, peered through the door, rang reception himself and caught Matt cutting callers off.

The next working day, Matt came in and took his normal place on the desk and started doing normal work. When Peter came in, he called over to Matt across the office and said "Matt! You're going on a BIIIG journey!" Matt, thinking he was doing an errand somewhere in the building for Peter, shouted back "Shall I leave my coat?" to which Peter shouted "Nope!"

Matt left 50 seconds later.

Pete asked me to go to fit his new car stereo one time. While I was there, with all manner of wires hanging out of Petes car, my mobile went off. I read the text, and headed back to work to tell Pete I had to go home urgently.

"I need to go home." I said to Pete when I got back, breathless. "Bev's gone into labour!"

Pete became annoyed and shouted "NO! This is not the best time to change political parties!"

"No, I mean, she's...."

"Best you be off then!" he butted in and winked.

Another ace things that Pete did one day was to go into his office and draw the blinds. This meant that there would soon be a sacking.

He came out a few minutes later, wearing a full suit. When sacking people, he always liked to look his best. He called in one of the lads. They went in, they were there for a couple of minutes, then they came out, grabbed their coat and left. They'd been sacked.

Then Pete popped his head out again and called another person in. They were soon on their way too.

This went on for a few people, until he popped his head out, and beckoned me with his "GET IN HERE HIPPY!" call. I was slightly puzzled, as I walked to the office. I hadn't done anything wrong, hadn't cost the company money, hadn't been caught cutting people off..... why was I being sacked?

When I stepped in, he barked "CLOSE THE DOOR!", which I did.

All the preceding visitors had all been sacked, so I stood there, looking at him, expecting to be given the chop.

He looked at me..... "..... You know in Excel?" he finally said, enjoying the silence slightly too much.

"..... yeah?" I replied, puzzled.

"How can I get the numbers to add up across here?" he said, pointing at his screen.

I went over, clicked and typed a few things, and said "like that."

"Oh! Thanks, Hippy!" he smiled, and pointed towards the way out.

"Was that it?" I questioned.

"Do you WANT to be sacked?" he asked, jokingly.

"Well.... I feel a little let down really," I admitted. "Everyone else has."

"Sorry, not today."

"Well, can I at least pretend I've been sacked? Can I stomp out, shout something back at you, slam your door and stomp off for a bit?"

He grinned, "Whatever turns you on, you weird hippy man!"

So I opened his door, stepped outside muttering something in a disappointly quiet tone about "keeping his flippin' job", slammed his door and walked back to my desk. For the next 4 hours, people were not sure whether they could talk to me, or whether I had been sacked or not.

Peter Lewis rocked!

I met a bloke called Alan C about 14 years ago. He is one of the weirdest sense-of-humoured people I know.

I hadn't seen him for about 4 years, and a couple of weeks ago while I was off work on holiday, I bumped into him ouside Sainsbuys. (Someone nicked the "r" from the sign.)

"What are YOU doing here?" I shouted as I approached him.

"What do you mean what I am doing here at Sainsburys? I'm shopping!" he laughed.

"Oh yeah..... shopping....... is THAT what you call it these days?"

Then we both laughed and chatted for about 10 minutes about random things, before his taxi arrived.

"Good to see you!" I said as I started to walk away. "Enjoy your.... shopping." I said as I raised my eyebrow at his bag.

"It IS shopping!" he insisted, laughing but worried.

I'm not sure what he thought I was hinting at, and I'm not even sure what I was hinting at, but his reaction made me think that he thought that I knew something that I shouldn't.

Glad I cleared THAT up so well!

You know on Facebook, where you can change your status to tell everyone on the internet what you're up to? Always remember that EVERYONE on the internet can see it.

My cousin updated her status the other night.......

Jane has licked wine off angies tits, oh yeah, waiting for her to spill some more.

Interesting.........

My Dad, who has that knack of knowing exactly what to say in every possible conversation, replied....

red or white?

Obviously, Jane had obviously forgotten how the whole "on the internet" thing works....

shit,i forgot family cud get this too

and shortly after, added this....

white of course, but dont tell my dad, he would want to do the same

My dad, being helpful, informed her of the following....

You can alter who sees things in your settings @ top right.

Now, I know her Dad. He's my Uncle. I've known him for years. Because of this, I have loads of embarassing photos of him from the 70s, so I linked to one of them and said this....

I don't think he noticed - http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3960456&l=c485f&id=668240164

At the time, I'd just bought an Xbox 360. MY profile at the time said "Craig has bought an Xbox 360". My Dad, who must have seen me online and seen MY status, decided to start a conversation with me about consoles. Unfortunately, he put his message to me on Janes status comment, rather than on mine....

xbox 360 any good? How does it compare to the other games machines on the market,... or in the shops.

Luckily Angie, who was the subject of the original conversation, was now online to provide some much needed advice...

Xbox 360 is good, graphics good. some say ps3 but I prefer 360 !!

I thought I'd join in and said....

What an odd place to ask! But as Angela says, it's good. Been playing PGR3 for the last week against random strangers. I think we all know what it's like sharing random facts with random people on the internet...... ;-)

Angie came back with....

Lol yeh being friends with Jane I know that feeling well .I defo rate 360 !!

Now you know the background behind why people said what they did, this might make more sense...

Just dropped my car off for it's MOT, with the lovely John. Whenever I ring John up to book my MOT he ALWAYS knows who I am. Typically it's only ever 12 months that I ring him, but whenever I say I want to drop my car off for it's MOT, he always asks "Is that Craig?"

"YES, JOHN! YES IT IS!!!!"

Until this year. He's done it every year up to now, and people didn't believe me. So I rang John up from work and booked in while being listened in to by Sheila. This, ironically, is the first year he didn't have a clue who I was.

John hasn't aged at all over the last 7 years. I suspect him to be of alien descent, or an android.

Whenever I take my car for it's MOT they always, ALWAYS, write down 5 things that need doing.

ALWAYS 5. Never 4 or 6, but it's ALWAYS 5. How odd is that?

As I pulled in to drop the car off, he told me that one break light wasn't working, my front left type looks too worn and my exhaust sounds rough. So I can guarantee there will be 2 more things on top of these current 3.

Also, oddly, the bill is ALWAYS around £150. ALWAYS.

At the minute, there is an exhaust (£40), a change of tyre (£10-ish ?) and a new bulb (80p). Oh, and labour costs of about £30.00. So that's £80.80 in my opinion. (This is pure guesswork by the way! I'm not qualified to fix cars!)

3 things totalling £80.80.

I absolutely guarantee there will be 2 more things totalling around the £70.00 mark meaning, as ever, my MOT repairs will be £150.

I went to Asda today. I go every Sunday. And every Sunday that I go, I see the same man. I have no idea who he is, what he is called, what he does for a living, where he lives, how old he is..... I know nothing about him, other than he shops at Asda on Sunday. And I know that he's happy to see me, because he nods at me.

It started about two years ago, when I accidentally got in his way with my trolley. I apologised, thought little of it, and continued shopping. A couple of aisles later, we crossed paths again, but this time he got in my way. I joked "Your turn now!", he laughed and agreed, then we carried on shopping seperately.

I didn't see him again that day, but the week after I saw him again. He saw me, and nodded a hello. I nodded back, as it seemed the polite thing to do.

Since then, every Sunday in Asda, I get nodded at by the same man.

It occured to me earlier that this has happened before, with another mystery nodder.

I used to go to a government initiative, called a Job Club. I got sent there for being lazy and not getting a job.

I met loads of people there, who sadly I no longer keep in contact with. Alan C had a friend there, called Frank. So Frank was a friend of a friend.

I have no idea about any Frank-related trivia, but for the past 12 years every time he has seen me, he has nodded and smiled. One time, he even crossed the road specially to nod at me.

I used to have a mate called Glen. He used to play the bass guitar.

He had longish hair for the first few years that I knew him, but then he shaved his head. From that moment on, he seemed to have an endless supply of girls fancying him.

Anyway, I lost touch with him and hadn't seen him for years.

Then, about 8 years later, I was working in Manchester. I was walking through a few Mancunian side streets as a short cut to get to the food shop, and I saw Glen washing windows. He had a bucket full of soapy water, a ladder, a massive sponge, a squeejie (if that is how you spell it) a van saying "Window Cleaner" on it.... in fact everything that he had on him or with him pointed towards the fact that he was a window cleaner.

He saw me, dressed in a suit, striding towards him. He stopped cleaning, turned towards me, did a massive grin and shouted "Craig mate! How you doing?"

"I'm good! How the hell are you?!"

"Are you working around here?" he asked me.

And I replied, "Yeah. you?"

..... which was a stupid question.........

At work, I take many phone calls a day, as we have hundreds of clients. In general, I get on with all of them. Most of them recognise my voice, and I often recognise theirs. Most clients are happy to talk to any advisors here, which makes chatting to them fun.

All except for one client, who used to absolutely hate me. He hated speaking to me so much that one conversation went like this...

Him - "Hello, who is that?"

Me - "It's Craig."

Him - "Craig... ahhh.... can I speak to someone else please?"

Me - "Certainly. Who would you like?"

Him - "Anyone."

He was that desperate not to talk to me, that absolutely ANYONE else on earth would have been a better choice. THATS how much he hated me.

He often used to get confused, so I put it down to senility.

He once sacked someone, and asked me to send him their MOT, not P45.

He once spelt out someones name, and said "C for Sarah"

He wanted me to send out a summary showing everything for 1908, not 2008.

So I believe it's just that he is mental.

Where I used to work, there was a lad that we used to called Aussie Rob. We used to call him that because his name was Rob and he was from Australia. I'm not sure why we added the 'Aussie' prefix, as there was no one else there called Rob, so it wasn't as if we were distinguishing him from anyone else.

There were also 2 Mikes. One we called Mike K, and one was Mike B. We called them that because Mike Ks surname was Kennerk, but Mike Bs suffix was just because he was the second Mike to work there. A bit like listing things. A, B... etc.

One of my other mates was called Matthew Jackson. Another of his mates started working with us, and he didn't know Matthew was called Matthew. For years he had been calling him Jim.

I shop at Asda, and I have done for years.

Every Sunday when I go, there is ALWAYS a plump guy at the front of house with a microphone, greeting people as they come in and announcing things over the tannoy. He always greets women of any age, and older men. But he never greets me. Maybe I look too scary. Or too young. (Or too straight.)

He announcements are always really special, in that he'll usually mispronounce a word, or get a few 'errr's in the middle of his improv. They always make me smile.

One thing that has always baffled me is that he never says 'gentlemen'. He'll ALWAYS start his announcements with "Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter...."

Who is Gemma? And why is SHE so special? Why does SHE get her own announcement?

Anyway, a typical announcement goes as follows....

"Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter. Over in our foyer we have a range of reduced fruits. We have oranges starting from as little as 10p, and grapefruits starting from... other prices. Fank you."

Genius!

"Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter. In our bakery department we have a fantastic range of reduced bread. Fank you."

Reduced bread? What, like, little loaves?

"Good morning Ladies and Gemma, my names Peter the in-store greeter. On aisle 48 we have a range of reduced items starting from...... errr..... suntan lotions and aftersun creams, and these can be found on aisle 36. Fank you."

No price given, and two different aisles named. Perfection!

When he said this, initially I was imagining loads of people all stood on aisle 48, looking for sun creams. That was until I realised they don't have 48 aisles.... He made up his own aisle! (so to speak...)

So Peter, the in-store greeter, I salute you. May your random announcements cheer me up for years to come.

This lady started working where I work in July 07. She was one of those people who always had a worse story than everyone else. If you had a sore knee, she'd have had a knee replacement. If you had a headache, she had a history of migrane that she would tell you about. Plus, she'd always turn every story around so that it was about her. When the Diana tribute was on TV over lunch time, they played a song that she hated. She hated it because at HER dads funeral they played it too. If you were upset because your child was ill, she'd ask how they were before saying that she'd had the same thing recently.

Within her first week, EVERYONE on our floor knew that she had been "clutched from the jaws of death twice" (her words) been in a bad car accident weeks before starting work, couldn't have kids due to her hysterectomy, had a history of rashes, was registered disabled, had 4 'fake' teeth and was on morphine. She'd just blurt out how bad her life was for no reason.

"Hi I'm ***. I'm new!"
"Hi ***, I'm Craig. How are you finding it?"
"It's ok. I was in a bad car accident 5 weeks ago..........."

It became a personal challenge to mention, in passing, illnesses that she would be unable to better. I used to sit within earshot of her, and talk about times that I was ill, naming various made-up illnesses and exaggerating previous real ones. I once told my boss quite loudly that when I was young, I had to have me adenoids removed after they swelled up to the same size as "some dice". I openly mentioned that I once got 3 papercuts within 5 minutes of each other, 2 from paper and one from some cardboard. At one point I claimed that my stigmata was acting up. She could better none of them. Maybe she didn't hear my boasts. Her ears might have been bad at the time.

Oddly, she looked very much like 2 people that I know. She looked very much like my Aunty, AND my Uncle.

In my experience, whingers don't tend to stay in a new job for more than 6 months. I had a bet with my colleague that she would have left by Feb 4th, which would have been around the 6 month mark. She ended up leaving on March 12th, so I was out by over a month. NOOOOOOOO!

I met Dave in 2003, when I started my new job. I still work there now, but Dave left a few months ago to go and work in Canada.

He was into film music, (as in musical scores not musicals,) and b-movie horrors. He once made me a tape of many of his favourite film scores, which I still have in my car and still regularly listen to.

Most of the time he looked kind of like a Russian terrorist. He had about 10 shaves and 1.5 haircuts per year. I say haircuts, but they were full head-shaves really.

I used to give him a lift part-way home. The ritual kind-of started one night when it was bad weather. Seeing as the weather was bad on this one day I offered to drive him to as far as I could, and he jumped in. Every afternoon from that time on, he just got into my car. I had no option but to drive him part-way home.

He once said that he had a mate whose brother had killed his own mum. I asked him about it, because my mate Gary had killed his mum a few years ago. It turns out that I knew Gary and Dave knew Garys brother. Degrees of seperation, and all that. Fascinating.

One of the most memorable conversations that I ever had with him was when we went to Burger King drive thru at Middlebrook two years ago. We both sat in my car, tucking into bacon double cheeseburgers, and Dave suddenly said "Oh yeah, I won't be in next week, and probably for a few weeks after. I'm turning Jewish." I'm not going into what he meant when he said that, and I can't tell you why it is still funny to this day, but at the time it did put me off my burger.

We had some bad weather last year. It blew a gale for about a week. He went out to get some lunch one day and on his way back to work the wind whipped his glasses off his face. They flew over a 12 ft fence and within 3 seconds they were a good few hundred meters away, making their way back into town.

Dave didn't tell many jokes. He had a hard time stopping himself laughing when saying punchlines. The best joke that he did tell me was....

"Are you a bummer in a cage?"

"No" I said,

"AAARGH! THERES A BUMMER ON THE LOOSE!"

I made a public apology to Dave about a year ago, after doing some mean things to him. This can be viewed on the main badlyspelled site, under "public apology". Even though I apologised for absolutely loads of things, the majority of things were pre-agreed beforehand. A few of them were completely made-up. Dave is such a funny bloke that he helped come up with many of the apologies in that section. Without his input, I wouldn't have been able to apologise to him.

I'm sure there a good few hundred other things and memories that I could add to this list, but I'd prefer to leave you with this...