Thursday, June 25, 2009

On the House! (by law)

A customer knocks off $90 from the Wayside Tavern when the staff are not looking, swifly exiting the premises.

The theft is captured in high resolution digital video format by the camera surveillance system.

The customer denies the offence.

The customer/offender is then advised to pay the $90 to avoid police involvement.

A month passes, no payment is made. Police are called.

The offender then writes a letter (written by a solicitor) admitting nothing, offering to pay $90 as a "goodwill gesture" on the condition Mine Host withdraws the complaint to Police.

$90 is the only currency acceptable to Mine Host. The letter is ignored.

In court the offender pleads guilty, but says he has no memory of the incident as he was "too drunk to know what was happening"

(This contrasts with the video evidence, where he is shown consuming Two glasses of beer in Two hours, reading the newspaper, then furtively glancing left/right before committing the offence.)

The Magistrate imposes a fine of $400.

The court handled the debt to society, but ignored the debt to the Wayside Tavern.

Until the $90 is paid, the offender will be refused admission, for eternity if need be.

The average citizen will try to tell you that Magistrates have brains, perhaps even common sense.
A claim not supported by decisions such as the one above.

Friday, June 19, 2009

*Oink*Oink*

People not turning up to work is the bane of the hospitality industry.

People not turning up to work and blithely expecting to keep their job is one of the amusing anomalies of the hospitality industry.

Actual reasons for not turning up to work:
Too lazy to get out of bed,
Too drunk,
Had a party to go to instead,
Took lots of drugs and didn't wake up in time,
etc etc etc.

Reason given to the boss for not turning up to work: "Sick".

The day after blowing a shift, they all take action to retain their job. Thus Mine Host has quite a collection of "medical certificates" (issued by a tame doctor the day after the no-show for work) stating "an unspecified medical condition"

For staff who live on the job this is more difficult. There are credibility issues if one spends the day exhibiting boisterousness in a hale and hearty manner at home, whilst simultaneously claiming to be too ill to make it downstairs to for work.

The husband of a couple living and working in the pub, a big hearty chap, (Three weeks into the job and fast approaching his "use-by" date - even more faster now) failed to front for work yesterday.

It was as if he had been abducted by aliens, he was absent, his wife knew nothing (or may have known something as some people, and she is one, are inarticulate to the point where they are incapable of giving a straight answer to anything, even if they want to)

Today he appears (having thought first to pop into the handiest GP's surgery) brandishing a medical certificate stating "an unspecified medical condition".

Mine Host, who knows very well when someone is too ill to work, eyeballs him and says "Big strong man like you, bouncing up & down the stairs yesterday and this morning, too crook to work - in a pig's eye!"

Straight-faced and without a hint of guile, he states "I thought I might've had Swine Flu, played it safe & checked"

You couldn't make up stuff like this!

This time next week he won't be on the payroll.

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Queen's Birthday

Mine Host breaks with the protocol of this blog & tells a tale that did not happen to him in person:

In 1954 Mine Host's father was in the Army & tasked with Royal Guard duty in Sydney, for the occassion of the Royal visit.

Each day they would follow exactly the same routine:

At 2am they were marched into position along a parade route. They stood in position from 2am, at attention, lining the route until mid-morning/midday/early afternoon when Her Majesty passed by.

Shortly after the motorcade conveying Her Majesty had passed they were dismissed by an officer & were then on leave until 2am the following day. (use one's own imagination to fill in the details of this daily leave)

The first day nobody knew what to expect, so the troopers were armed with a .303, bayonet and Three rounds each, to handle any "attack that may be launched upon Her Majesty".

It was patently obvious the first day that by far the greatest risk Her Majesty faced was being swamped by enthusiastic loyal crowds.

Thus the second & subsequent days the .303 and bayonet remained in the armoury. Instead, dressed in full webbing only, each trooper gripped the belt of the trooper to either side, forming what was (hopefully) an unbreakable khaki chain, in an attempt to keep the adoring crowd from crushing Her Majesty & party.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

It is, It was, It holds, It held

No stranger to making statements to police, Mine Host is able to rattle off a statement verbatim, without any need for said statement to be moulded into format by the officer taking the statement.

The police officer taking the statement has only to type fast enough to keep up. This rarely happens. Despite now being able to type, modern police are no faster than the pre-historic police who typed two-fingered.

Recently when making a statement, Mine Host was forced to make more than the usual amount of corrections to his statement.

Mine Host at first did not grasp the problem:
The Constable did not understand the difference between past and present tense. The statement was about an event that happened a considerable time ago, in a business no longer operating, in a premises since demolished.

Thus the statement must be in past tense.

The officer persistently typed the statement in present tense. Mine Host told the Constable that being as today nothing is the same as it was at the time of the event, the statement must be in "past tense".

.....Blank look.....

Oh no! The Constable doesn't even know what "tense" means.

Mine Host gingerly went through the statement correcting tense.

The Constable's spelling was unreliable unless the word was phonetic, reverting in several instances to asking Mine Host to spell the words he was dictating.

One of the qualifications required to be sworn in as an officer in the Queensland Police is to have obtained a university degree.

Mine Host is tending to believe this to be a "claytons" degree, and not one requiring proficiency in the English language.

Yet Mine Host is expected to believe that this person, with such pitiful grasp of their native language, is able to grasp the law.

(Mine Host does not believe that Constables have much of a grasp of the law, or even much grasp of what their job is supposed to be, experience has taught him this)