When I worked during holidays on a building site in the UK, the older men thought it hilarious that when I was asked to fetch a 'sky hook' and an 'oak staff'' I went and asked for them.

Their reasoning was that a hook would not fix to the sky and oak is too expensive to use for levelling off concrete. My reasoning was that these are just names they give to objects - I wonder what they think now that we have Sky TV (not much as I guess most are now dead).

 

Tartan paint was one I was asked to fetch, another was a bottomless bucket most new boys on a site get this treatment

 

Reminds me when I was an apprentice painter and decorator, they would send me out for a bucket of steam or bubbles for the spirit level.

 

Did they also try to hang you from the rafters and paint your nuts white? I fought back but would have had shiny white ones had an older brother who also worked there (nepotism! lol) not told them to back off.

(Note: If not used elsewhere, 'nuts' are a masculine reproductive item which, if kicked, lead to a very severe crippling pain!)

 

They wouldn't do anything like that, as a 15 year old I was bigger than most kids my age.
Must have been the tripe and onions.

 

I have heard many euphemisms for the 'tackle' but tripe and onions is a new one.

 

I put a wooden fencing post through a clay sewer pipe once - does that count?

 

Building sites years ago was short on health n safety.
But I remeber one incidence were electricians played a trick on one of the painters, they drill a hole in his mug ( cup ) and screwed it to the floor.
When he discovered what they had done, they all ran for the door, so did I, only trouble was they had nailed my haversack to the floor too!

 

A load of sissies (not in the non-pc sense) - they should have nailed you to the ground. And was that in Liverpool???

P.S. The bit about nailing a person was not meant.