Biography, Autobiography, Old Steve of Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

1. But is the world full of honest men? Of course it is. So why then did some of the Draymen, who delivered our beer etc to us, steal anything they could lay their hands on? How come they often had a barrel of beer, still on their wagon, that they could not take back as a Dispatcher would end up in trouble for simply mis-counting and loading them up wrong. But the sale of the barrel, for cash, would make it all right. Or the delivery of cases of soft drinks that either had a full case missing or several bottles from numerous cases and for which, if you noticed them and drew attention to them, a Credit Note would generously be offered declaring that all of them were breakages. Or I could buy, for cash, some extra that had mysteriously turned up, probably my own and some of those 'broken' at other pubs. How many crates did I want 'dropping down' full of empties at £1 per crate, cash, that I could enter on next weeks Return Sheet and have taken away with a Return Allowance of £2-50 per crate. They all came from pubs and clubs where there was no one in attendance while the loading and unloading took place and it was rife among Private Clubs with absentee Stewards and only cleaners there, at the time of deliveries, That didn't give a damn. One driver got caught, by his employers, after he had been involved in an accident and where it turned out that neither he nor his full load should have been out, let alone where it was found to be. Another pair got caught out when an 'Off-license Shop,' way out in the country, rang the Company Office to ask when someone was going out to collect empties. It turned out that he was not even a customer and that no one had officially agreed to supply him cheaply for 'cash on delivery,' the company having no such trading policy. Then the roving, mobile mechanics who went out to the Dray Wagons when they broke down. It was staggering how much stock would go missing from a wagon, in the short time, before mobile phones, that it took the driver and his mate; please note, not just one of them, to walk to the nearest phone and report his problem. The biggest headache, for all of them, was getting rid of the stuff, not getting it in the first place. When Draymen delivered bulk beer, which they did to many pubs, for a short time, part of their job was to clean and flush out the system before refilling it. Turn your back for a second and the filling would start while there were still quite a few gallons of water still in the system. All for sale and for cash later. Bar fitters, mechanics and maintenance men were all not averse to overstating losses on Credit Sheets for the odd favour in return. Yes they were all honest. It is how you define honesty that screws it.

Steeped in history and with a long track record, dishonesty is nothing new. Sometime, many years ago and during the reign of Queen Anne, 1702 to 1714, a Scarborough Burger went to London and persuaded the Queen to grant 400 guineas (£440 pounds stirling) for the local authority to improve Scarborough Harbour, which in those days serviced part of the Royal Navy, and to this day the law still hasn't found him or the money.

Robbery, in this present day and age has become an art form; firemen with two or more full time jobs threatening and demanding more money for a job that allows them to have a second and a third. Bin men; those waste disposal and invironmental technicians, on 'task and finish' who fly round and only do half a days work having covered the allocated area in half the time allowed because they have missed large portions of it out or only taken away that which can be moved quickly. They never seem to be able to catch up after holiday breaks unless paid overtime for working in the hours they would normally do, if they did the job properly in the first place. Highway departments where the management are as bad as the workforce, and where when the temperature drops to zero, get out the road salting vehicles and paying overtime rates, which is what it is all about, throw out vast volumes of salt so that when the really bad weather comes there is no salt left and so no one has to work in it. Not true, an exaggeration? I wouldn't know and I am only repeating what a yard foreman told me one night, in the pub, when the weather was particularly bad and there were no gritters out.

2. At one time we got really fed up of people trying to break in and so in order to keep Insurance Premiums at slightly below their astronomical norms, we had to spend a fortune on a very sophisticated burglar alarm system. It didn't deter them, as they had the usual twenty minutes before the police would get there, but at least it alerted us to the fact that they were in the place and that if we were quicker than them, and we could get through all the locked doors in time, we might catch a glimpse of them disappearing round a corner and away into the dark. All good fun and something to break the monotony of a well deserved night's sleep and to claim on the Insurance and find the next premium had gone up by a greater amount than the value of the claim.

3. There were other 'security problems,' like the one where a smartly dressed guy, in his late twenties, early thirties, came in just after opening time, one lunch time, to casually enquire how much, per week, I was prepared to pay him to prevent my bar from being smashed up, a minor inconvenience that he could easily arrange? He got the shock of his life when I picked up a large beer bottle and grabbing him by the tie, pulled him onto the bar and demanded to know how much he was going to pay me, there and then, to prevent me from putting thousands of stitches, from a broken bottle, in his face. When I relaxed and he pulled free, he turned to run from the bar, stumbled and cut his head open on the corner of a pillar. I am still waiting for him to come back and talk terms.

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