Four Yorkshiremen go to Work

The ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ is a famous parody sketch by the Month Python team parodying humble beginnings or difficult childhoods.

It features four Yorkshiremen who each try and best the previous persons comments by showing that their life was far worse. One person saying ‘we got up at 4am’ the next saying ‘we got up at 3am’ then the final one saying ‘we got up before we went to bed’ …

The sketch always comes to me mind when thinking about working practices from the past. The team here at JKSL travel all over the country and set off at all hours of the morning – they work late and often aren’t home till dark.

They put in a good days work and they get the job done. No complaints.

However …in the not toooo distant past …I ran a landscape construction company where the teams were not given vehicles and were expected to make their own way to site and start work at 7.30am.

They were then expected to work till 5pm… then make their own way home.

If a van was available the driver would pick up the teams and they would bundle into the back of the transit with no seats and no safety belt – and then travel at great speed to the next project.

Again not tooo long ago – PPE was unheard of and the teams were expected to buy their own boots and waterproofs.

Now I’m not saying that any of this was ‘good practice’ and obviously it wasn’t …but it set me to thinking – anybody else got any examples of what we used to do before Health and Safety took over*???

*Names and dates can be changed to protect the innocent.

Mike C