u/space_keeper

I say that to people when they ask me what it was like. Worked on the doors for a few years, 20 years ago, in a very rough town.

I tell people, you'd come up to me thinking you're going to challenge me because I'm much bigger than you or you're pissed off because of something or other, and you'll probably walk away thinking I'm sound. I'll figure out what's winding you up and work on it if I can. Or you'll wonder why I'm not reacting to anything you're doing and start questioning yourself while I stare at you, because you're not even remotely the scariest cunt I've run into.

Been in hundreds of random scraps. Very few I would call "fist fights". People who say that don't know what fighting is like. People start throwing hands properly, it doesn't last long. I have been hit by furniture and shit a fair few times though.

All flanges over 4" really should be done with a torque bar and a spec sheet. 4" and under you can just rattle them.

JSP EVOLite skyworker.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

When all you need is a hammer, everything looks like a hammer.

Cold milk with hot porridge.

I tried to use launch system on my first character. Was really weak, and the multishot attack is not good.

Started hearing about DWDM in 2006 or so. People talking about measuring speed on fat lines in DVDs per second as a joke. And then it actually deployed, and now it's on a huge scale up.

Some older pipefitters I've worked with still use inches and fractions, purely because all steel fittings, especially weld fittings, are based on inches and work well with them.

But actually doing steel with millimetres is also very easy.

Wye is a water fitting. Tee is a vent fitting. You can poke your finger into the branch of a tee and touch the opposite side of the pipe. That's the air path. You can't do that with a wye.

I've had a few good laughs.

I have a special tape about that size that I hand to anyone asking me to borrow a tape. It's a soft tape in a case that looks like a fox, with a fluffy tail. The retract button is his nose. Or if there are people watching me fit pipe, I'll pull it out to take a size.

Or it'd go flying away to nowhere while you're carrying something big.

Epoxy it to the pavement somewhere. Film the results.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

A horrifying thought that keeps coming back is that it's not a bubble. The horse has bolted, and instead of popping, it'll be a very long, wet fart that leaves us all wretching.

Shut up, buy your spyware laden smart TV, and play games on five different cloud gaming subscription services.

A pipefitter I work with has worked on half the Tescos in Britain. He'll say things like "that's a pattern F Tesco, I worked on one just like it in..."

I remember back when I worked on the doors, everyone knew someone who was "a kickboxing champion" at some point. How many championships are there?

It's okay they can just buy new legs.

get pretty good at it and viola! 

Who has time for music lessons when they're trying to youtube their way into being a fake plumber?

Dominos.

And Subway.

I've been on three sites recently where guys have had fake tickets. Or guys doing things that are supposed to be skilled work on red cards with blatantly stolen tools which they're figuring out how to use on the job. I've personally met guys who brag about having dodgy blue cards.

I have to pass a barrage of right-to-work checks every time I go for a job. I don't know how they're getting around it. SIA badges is another one. In a past life when I worked in security, there was a period of a year or so where the number of stewards appearing who spoke zero English went through the roof.

In joinery, there's been a massive influx of guys from Ukraine and Central Asia. On almost every job I've been on in the last 3-4 years, the drylining is being done exclusively by them. Current site, I'd wager it was around 20 Ukrainian guys at one point, a couple of Uzbeks, and a few guys from somewhere like Dagestan or Chechnya. Almost all their labourers are Africans. Big job last year, it was about a dozen guys from Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, a couple of Uzbeks, and half a dozen Ukrainians. All their labourers were Indians.

Joinery has been parted out into lots of separate trades, which are considered semiskilled. Like you'll get random guys on some jobs who only do skirting, paid by the metre. None of them will be joiners, and the price is so bad no one in their right mind would do it.

The answer to how they live is the same as it was for Polish and Romanians and Bulgarians before them, or Indian delivery guys now: they're living packed into flats that should only have a few people in them. My flatmate at the moment is Polish, has been here for 15 years. For the first few years he was in a 2 bed flat with 6 people. There are Polish guys I've met on sites who are late 40s/50+ that have been living this way for a long time, never really learned much English.

Africans will work two jobs. Day shift in care home and night shift in a hotel or something. A Nigerian guy I made friends with on a site a couple of years ago was doing days as a joiner's labourer, then nights in a hotel in a different city. He was sleeping for a good bit of the night shift.

Some industries are used as a feeder for immigration. Security at this point is totally saturated with people from India and Africa (you'll have seen that yourself, supermarkets and elsewhere). Same with general site labour and things like vehicle marshalls and slinger signallers. I don't know for sure, but I suspect there's a financial incentive at play there, like the government is subsidising wages and tickets.

I don't need to, the word comes from my country.

Never personally used them, but there are some lying around in the store room of the job I'm currently on. Viega megapress repair couplings for steel?