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

2. A large proportion were claiming, at some time or another, some sort of State Benefits and then subsidising it and adding to it, through bar work for 'Cash and thank you very much,' or 'Cash in the hand,' as it was often called. Any legitimate earnings being deducted from any state handouts and thereby being highly undesirable. Now bar work entails long hours, at un-sociable times, and therefore often the only means of getting good ones would be to pay cash, keep no records and pay the tax etc, as if it were cash earned by yourself. They were not all like that and many were legitimately employed and paid their just demands to the state, as they went along. But as far as the things they would and could get up to, they didn't particularly belong to either group.

3. The gorgeous girl we lost when her husband found out that we didn't keep her back, serving after hours, until three or four in the morning was just one example.

4. The girl, earning cash in hand, until she fell pregnant and then wanted to be legitimately employed, in order to qualify for Maternity Grants, but who then delivered prematurely and before she had accumulated the requisite number of National Insurance Credits. She blamed us and told the National Insurance people that it must have been us that had failed to declare her credits as she had been employed 'x' number of months. We came under investigation and she never came back.

5. The barmaid who wanted a television and was promised one very cheaply if she would lend her car to go and collect it. She did and was told her TV had been delivered to her flat, as arranged, so she borrowed the money from me and paid for it. When she got home that night it was to find a note telling her to select and make her choice from about a dozen, which were all there along with numerous other electrical goods. Later she was told that part of the deal, for a very cheap TV, was that she should store the 'suppliers' stash until it could be offloaded to other 'customers,' transport being some sort of a problem at the time.

6. The barman, who was not sure what to do, when he refused to serve a guy who had claimed he had no money, but who then left, to return a few minutes later, with a substantial amount, all in ten pence pieces. Dumping them all on the bar he demanded drinks for everyone while also bragging that there was plenty more where that came from, as all the meters, in all the flats, were full around that time of year and they, the occupants, were all down on the beach.

7. Doormen were a strange breed and often a law unto themselves. I didn't employ 'Bouncers' as such, as I always believed that to do so set them up as a challenge to the idiots floating about outside and they, of course, would guarantee their own employment by having trouble every night, that required their attention, by starting it. But often it was necessary to stand the door for short periods and so during the very busy times I would take on a 'doorman' for a few drinks and 'cash and thank you very much.' One produced, at one time, a cosh and hit a guy over the head and then calmly handed it to me and when I took it from him then asked whose fingerprints where on it then? Another who took a barmaid into the Ladies Loo and much to the disgust of the punters demonstrated, with her full cooperation, the techniques of breeding. Both went and the girl was a sad loss for she had been an excellent barmaid, but with what ever else it was, that she was offering, my wife was not going to take any chances.

8. What about the Doorman arrested, charged and found guilty of the rape of a school girl and who had assured his lawyer that I would state and vouch for him, in court, that he had been working for me at the time and I was supposed to do all that for him while paying him 'cash in hand,' and him not existing according to my records. The way these trials and allegations went, on occasions, he might have got away with it and I would have been the next one up in the dock, charged with some offence under the employment acts. For those in doubt, he was not working for me at the time the offence took place. Another who fell out with his wife and either his or her parents and then barricaded himself into his parents bungalow and held the Police at bay, for hours, with a shotgun and then stood up in court and claimed mistaken identity as, although he admitted not actually working for me at the time, he had never the less been in my place at the time of the alleged offence. I found myself having to admit that I did not know if that was true or not, but they found him guilty in any case and he went away for a few years.

9. Barmaids who simply got sacked for leaving early with blokes, or arguing with them, or with their husbands or their loved ones and all while working and causing a scene. One for refusing to top up drinks for 'Weights and Measures Inspectors,' claiming the Landlord said it was not their job to give away drink. Talking of which; what about the new bloke who, on his first night, produced a bottle of rum and installed it on one of the end optics (spirit measure and dispenser) and who, when challenged, claimed 'barman's perks' and that when the bottle was empty he intended to take the retail value of it from my till, as his 'little extra' and if I didn't like it, as he did it everywhere he went, he would go. He went but not before demanding payment for that night, which he didn't get but might have been entitled to, had he been legitimately employed in the first place. One of those areas where 'cash and thank you very much' can work against them but I don't suppose he cared. He later went on to run several pubs, as a manager, in the town, so I wonder if I was alone in having this thing about people robbing me or taking the piss.

10. A barmaid, legitimately employed, but off sick, never to return after I and my wife overheard, on numerous occasions, punters saying such things as, 'Bloody hell, so and so is off. We will have to pay for these bloody drinks.' Or another guy who openly said, to another member of staff, that he never paid for his drinks as he supplied this particular barmaid with wet fish and she sorted the till out. This same barmaid always had unlimited drinks 'at the back of the bar and all paid for,' and one day a dear old soul, said he could never understand why every time she went to an optic and drew herself a drink, she would loudly call across the bar, to him, and say, 'Cheers,' when he had never bought her a drink, although she had given him quite a few.

11. One night, in the bar and shortly after closing time, we were talking among ourselves; I think the chip shop lads were there, and this fairly new barman was describing how he and a colleague had worked at some previous place and had taken vast volumes of beer and never got caught. They would steal only lager and either drink it or give it away and at the same time keep a very accurate record of what they had taken between them and only stop when they had taken exactly thirty-six gallons, the exact amount in a full barrel, and then take no more until after the next stock take. At the next stock take it would show up as exactly one full barrel short and they, the stock takers and management, would look everywhere except down throats, and inevitably it would be written off and blamed as an administrative error. I thanked him for the tip and useful information and he didn't last long after that. I valued my lager stocks and although it would have been difficult for one person to work it alone I was not prepared to have him recruit 'help.'

12. We had, working for us, at one time, on 'early doors,' that is late afternoon, early evening and before it gets really busy and where one person can easily run the bar single handed, a smashing, intelligent and very smart, barman. He knew his stuff and knew how to handle people and we were particularly pleased when trade picked up slightly around this time and noted that a lot of those who came in seemed to be his friends and they were all good drinkers. We only parted company after I went into another part of the bar, just as they were all coming in, and overheard one of them say, 'Set them up. It's your round, as you didn't get your second one in yesterday.' I waited, out of sight, until the next round was called for and had been rung in. Then I went behind the bar and opened the till. He looked at me and smiling said, 'Sorry chaps but it looks as if we will all be leaving together. Good while it lasted.'

13. The guy who took pound coins out of the till float, at the beginning of the night, and fed them into the cigarette machine and gaming machine and then through short changing the punters, replaced them as the evening went along.

14. The barmaid who willingly worked afternoons on the understanding that her daughter could come into the pub, to report, on her way home from school. Weeks later someone complained to me that they thought someone had been short changed and that I aught to know about it and when I expressed my doubts, they demanded to know that if that was not the case, then why, everyday, that child as given a five pound note, out of my till, to buy fish and chips and then get a taxi home, because if my till was not wrong then where was it coming from to make it balance?

15. Husband and wife teams were a nightmare and after you have been caught once or twice, you learn. The wife behind the bar and the husband, a waiter, with a float on his tray, serving customers at their tables were the worst. Now the rules were that all drinks, he ordered, he had to pay for, at the bar, thereafter he was allowed to add on one or two pence to each drink, for table service, and to keep all his tips. It was very lucrative, in a busy pub during the summer, and that is basically why they would do it; that and the fiddling. The number of times 'he' would be that little bit short when it came to paying over the bar or the note he tried to tender was a large one and she would decide, possibly correctly, that to change it might compromise the till, or she would say the till was short of change in any case and give him only the notes and state the till owed him so and so. All with innumerable written notes and chits being placed in the till and in pockets etc. He or she might then add to the confusion by introducing, from out of pockets, some of their own money and then make complicated calculations, which would later be challenged by one or the other of them and so recalculated and all this to create confusion so that they could work some wonderful scams with the tills. The worst one would come towards the end of the night, when several punters would come forward claiming they were owed money, as the waiter could not change a twenty at the time, and had left the change for a ten and with the promise of the other ten 'in a moment and as soon as I get change.' and now where was the waiter? Gone. Not feeling too well, according to the message left, or the heat having got to him, he had left that bit early, when it started to quieten off and after all he was not getting paid by the hour, he was only earning a few coppers that the house allowed him to add to drinks. More than likely he had to be in the Night Club, down the road, before the rush started and it was funny but it was never that quiet, in our place, that we would see them go and if you said anything to the wife she would claim he had fallen out with her over something and walked out and if you pushed it too hard then she too would walk out. They could afford to do it and drifted round during the whole summer and not only were they ripping off the pubs and their customers but by living, temporarily, in the area for long enough they would demand, and get, housing benefits from the state, for the winter. They might even be claiming some benefits through the summer as they were only casual workers and earned, according to them, very little money, or that would be their story and no one could, or would be bothered to prove otherwise. But they were not on their own as every year train loads would arrive in town, at the beginning of the summer, on tickets paid for by other authorities with high unemployment problems and who were only too glad to assist them in finding work, in other words to be rid of them. They were, in the main, from up north, and would obtain kitchen work and menial cleaning jobs in the large hotels and on the caravan sites etc and all make similar claims on the state. Then a few 'do-gooders' would bang the drum loud enough and they would all be allowed to stay, even those who might have moved on, were encouraged to stay with claims that it was better to be unemployed at the 'sea side' than in the towns and cities and the petty thieves could see, for themselves, that the pickings were much richer. Eventually all this would play a major roll in the downfall and decline of Scarborough.

16. But it was not all bar staff, as far as we were concerned, in the pub trade. We had chefs that did a runner with the kitchen takings. We had chefs who bought all their own produce and raw materials for cash until all the bills came in later and they were no where to be seen. You could always tell when something was about to happen as their own set of knives and personal tools would be noticeably missing from the kitchens.

17. We had one who made no money, either for us of for himself, as all his family came daily and collected hot meals from the back door. Then we had a Lady Chef who had a special gentleman who had his own reserved table and who came in, seven days a week, at both lunch time and early evening. She even provided wine and a fresh flower on the table, until one week, when it happened to be exceptionally quiet and she had little to show in her till, it came out. Oh no the gentleman didn't pay, as he was her husband and that was one of the terms and conditions under which he let her work for us.

18. Enough of staff, they can be quite depressing.

FAVOURITES.