The Victoria, Victoria

Worked there during the early 1990's. Due to poor management, the pub group bought in this psychotic nutter who promptly sacked all the staff. I was one of the skeleton crew who replaced him. The group insisted that they cut their waste down from 16,000 per quarter and didn't care less how. He slashed it down to 9 pounds per quarter. As it was close to Victoira station, people were regularly buying a pint, sipping a little and then leaving it on the table, so he had all his staff keep topping up the abandoned pints and then reselling them. I sold one pint four times over to four different customer. You could actually see the spittles hang translucently in the beer if you looked carefully enough. But if that was bad enough, to cut cut costs by cleaning the toilets with his bare hands then served beer with them. Quit this awful secondary job as soon as possible.

17 Feb 2010 06:03

The Little Brown Jug, Chiddingstone Causeway

Worked there during 2000 for one brief summer when it was run by an Irishman who is probably the kindest man that I ever did meet, yet no-one's fool. At the time, they had a fabulous idea for food that made the pub a mint - not baked potatoes but roast potatoes, just like your would receive with roast dinner. People came from miles around and it was a great crowd of people there over lunchm many from a number of welder's shop with many a great tale ot tell.

17 Feb 2010 05:54

General Smuts, Shepherds Bush

The General Smuts was a supremely scary place, located in the midst of the White City estate. Barely a night went by without a knife fight or someone being injured outside it. I used to work at the General Smuts at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall which seemed appropriate as its location made the staff feel as if they were in a West Berlin surrounded by the dangerous East Germany of the White City estate. Each night I would have to take a different route ot work, yet still regularly had bottles chucked at my head. The second largest pub in London, its bars curiously divided precisely on ethnic grounds, with the public bar always being 99% West INdian and the Saloon bar being 99% Irish. In between its two bars, there was an off licence which I used to run and quite successfully - by giving the customers charm, something that they hadn't had at the pub for years, I ended up with queues up the street for people coming in to buy their kids a chocolate bar along with their cans of hard liquor. The unique feature of the off licence was that even if someone had been barred from the pub or anywhere else, they were always welcome in the off licence. I had people attack the three inch thick oak pillars that divided me from the public with clubs and baseball bats on more than one occasion. On the most part however, people were keen to remain calm as it was the absolutely last place left for many alcoholics where they could buy their booze. One evening, they held a romany wedding reception - the evening deteriorated so badly that it ended with two van loads of riot police turning up to drive them off the estate like some Medieval army.

17 Feb 2010 05:39