The Chuckle Brothers

April 1994.

It was apparent that Ken Marlton was not enjoying the new responsibilities or consequences of being Stress Office manager. That's not a reflection on Ken, who was a great chap, but I suppose part of his daily burden was the subtle office psychological onslaught from a group of bored permies.

If I think about it though, we were making fun of ourselves in the process, mainly as most of the permanent members of the group acknowledged that the contracting life had definite benefits, usually associated with a lack of responsibility or consequence with the added seasoning of lots of money.

There were a few jobshoppers that I talked to on a regular basis. There had been the legendary Tony Burgess, a great chap who had moved up in the world to head TDM technical services, a contracting agency and who was my agent back in 1990 when I had my brief stint at Menasco.

John Jefferies of course, Pete Malaguti, Jim Collins and even though Ken Marlton was now a manager, I still considered that he was a jobshopper at heart.

Frank Sapala was another great guy, who's motto was "We don't talk about Frank" when it came to what rate he was on. In my time learning PATRAN in the CAD room, I would talk to Frank about life, the universe and everything. When the weekly contractor pay envelopes would come around, Frank would open his, smile insanely and then methodically rip the pay slip into fifty pieces.

Then there are the two that I am affectionately nicknaming the Chuckle Brothers.

Dave Rutherford and Pete Clark held varying places either side of me on the Dowty squash ladder, and we had great battles over at the sports centre of a lunch time. Dave was installed on a desk near the back of the stress office and Pete was usually in the CAD room. The friendly competition on the squash courts resulted in a lot of office banter that was especially comical when either one of them had beaten me, or vice versa.

The light teasing that I was applying to Ken paled in comparison to the quality work that Dave and Pete were subjecting me to on a daily basis, it was a similar process though, a couple of competent jobshoppers provoking a permanent member of staff. It was not always about performance in the squash arena either, their speciality seemed to focus on ridiculing career decisions, failed jobshopper attempts and the general financial struggle.

It seemed like torture at times, office bullying I suppose they would call it nowadays, but what they effectively did was change my state of mind and I suppose what we permanent staff were subjecting Ken Marlton to had the same effect.

The countdown was on.