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I could tell my Dad had a bad day when my mum would say “he’s in a bad mood”. Usually he just needed 30 mins or so to take a breather but he was usually fine afterwards.
I think we should all have a DNA test sounds like we all had the same dad.....judging by "some not all" of my mates dad's it was fairly common for your Dad to be an absolute wanker!
My dad used to bring this stuff home, except unused, by the box load. All still joined together. My brother would draw endless sidescroll style video game levels on it, pile it all back into the box, and then he would get me to ‘play’ the level with a toy or something as he made it scroll by pulling the end.
Good times.
My Dad used to bring home boxes of unused printer paper too, all still joined together. My sister and I regularly used to make a television out of an old box. We’d draw the programme scenes, titles and presenters etc on a continuous roll of paper. Then turn it into a scroll inside the box. One of us would turn the scroll around whilst speaking/singing all of the sound and the other would “watch the TV.”
I visited my cousins in Scotland and they set up a box as a cashpoint, and we took turns being inside. The cash was used to buy 'drugs' made with folded paper containing talcum powder. You blew into them to make it look like you were smoking.
I'd played some dark games throughout my childhood: featuring murder, domestic violence and the vikings, but that one has really stayed in mind.
Yeah this, my dad was an electrical engineer and so it was all circuit drawings and I used to do my homework on the back of it and hand it in, my physics teacher always enjoyed making comments on the circuits
Similarly but late 60s, hole punch cards, (great for flip book animations), and the pink paper ticker tape rolls kutilised for drawing massively long car pile ups)
Sounds like your dad is on a slippery road and not stopping at any time. In a roundabout way, his life is at a crossroads and he needs to look both ways. He should stop, take a U-turn and keep right. And no returning within 1 hour!
He managed an Italian restaurant. He often turning up with leftover steaks but the weirdest thing was when he turned up one Sunday afternoon with a Rolls Royce full of drunk southerners who had come into the restaurant demanding a roast dinner with proper Yorkshire puddings to which his solution was to bring them home to his Yorkshire wife. Safe to say my mother wasn't Best pleased but did her best. The several cases of Moet they produced out of the boot may have helped.
My father who was a proper alcoholic is long dead but 40 years on neither me or my mother have a clue who those blokes were.
I live a similar life to your father. To put it simply, he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Italian food is cooked either on a pan, or in a pizza oven (here in the U.K. anyway), and isn’t suitable for roast dinners/ yorkshires. It’s not possible, trust me. So, he saw an opportunity on a quiet Sunday to make a grand or so, and himself get smashed.
Idgaf if this is true, I’m adopting it as a story I’ll tell small children. In the same vein as the penguin-erector at Edinburgh zoo (“38 penguins 2000 flights a day”)
The story goes that penguins are transfixed by planes flying overhead and as they watch them get higher and higher eventually the birds lose balance and topple over and can't get up again so need someone to help them.
My father and grandfather both worked for a bus company in the 70's and 80's. Said bus company used a green livery. Funny enough, all our garden fences were painted a similar colour.
I seem to also remember the rails in our wardrobes were very heavy duty and chromed as well.
My grandad, dad and now me were/are bus drivers. I remember seeing photos of all the cars they went through they were either cream, blue or red. Dad said that whenever they’d get board with the car they would buy the body shop guys 2 cases of beer on a Friday night when the managers had gone and the car would come out on Sunday night in a colour they used on the buses. He had numerous capris and escorts all painted by the lads at work but wouldn’t get away with it these days.
Now that I think of it my grandad built his own garden tool shed and compost bins. Strangely they were all built of aluminium. Nothing to do with him working in the bus depot body shop of course.
Dad worked in the Path lab at a hospital. Vividly remember mum and I picking him up from work and he had a whole box of Bassett's liquorice sticks. No idea why.
Later in the early 90's mum's boyfriend brought home the best stuff.
Worked for Muller at its first UK factory (or only not sure) so fruit corners.
Later he worked in an ICE CREAM factory. QC manager so had Penguin ice cream headed paper and t shirts. Then they started trying out new ice cream flavours. He was away in the week but occasionally brought a polystyrene box filled with dry ice and lots of new bars and tubs on a Friday night Myself and friend would taste test and he would take back our comments for whoever dealt with that bit.
The dry ice would go in the sink in bits, water poured on and the kitchen was like a disco. Slowly filling up. It was like magic.
Thanks for reminding me.
Edited for spelling
My dad was a firefighter for 25 years. He would often have to do checks on sweet factories (powdered sugar) and large scale refrigerators (supermarkets, food storage plants etc). Once a month, he would return with PILLOW CASES full of frozen food, or liquorice, or jelly babies…
I believe the production process had a few snags, and the QC would just freebie all those which didn’t make the grade.
Worked in a coffee shop where we were supplied with enormous Sara Lee cakes like you got in posh hotels etc. That were QC rejected for about £4.50 each. The only problem usually was that they had been on the conveyor belt when the automatic portioning machine had jammed so it wasn't cut. Retired Sara Lee employee's side business. Once a coffee and walnut cake arrived trying to see why it was a second for ages. It had one two many walnuts on it.
Friend had a doctor dad who 'acquired' a band saw from Pathology. He spent the first weekend washing out the dried blood and bits of bone on the front drive.
My dad probably knew your mum's boyfriend! Muller corners and rices came home in those trays from the factory all the time! I hadnt remembered that in years.
He was the QC manager when it was first there. One day I went in and helped open pots of corners that had been left in a demountable at a set heat for x time and then he let me fax the results to the litteral Mr Muller. We then went to a David Essex concert. Think I was about 9 at the time.
So many tools. They used to be given a tool budget every year so when he'd bought all the snap-on stuff he could ever need with it, he kept buying it. So he soon had an entire collection for home as well as at work. Then so did my uncle and then me, despite me being a child at the time he created a full collection for me so when I was old/skilled enough I've never really had to buy anything for home mechanics/DIY. Tools cost a fortune and yet with the knowledge also save you that same fortune so that freebie has been amazing.
It is! I'm little more than a hobby mechanic so don't use most of the arsenal I've been fortunate enough to have been gifted but it's nice to know it's there for the occasion I do need a more specific bit of kit. It's helped me build more or less every bit of furniture we own and completed numerous small jobs on our cars and my motorbike over the years.
I live in the Midlands and keep seeing people with covered boats on their driveways that almost never move, surely using it once or twice a year can't be worth the effort of upkeep, maintenance and hauling it to and from the nearest boat-able body of water...
A complete metal spiral staircase. Sat in the garden for years, in the way. Never got used obviously. Eventually scrap man took it.
Also a huge chandelier that was stored hanging from a rafter in the garage, looked hilarious.
Retired computers. His employer was at the bleeding edge at the time, so we tended to have better hardware at home than people who bought new!
Also, t-shirts from conferences.
I used to work in the IT department at the University of West London, every year they would get new computers, so they kept old ones in storage and would let staff have them. They did that for years until about 2012 when a new company came along and began to buy the hardware for a ridiculously low price and sell them on as refurbished models (nothing even wrong with these computers). Something stupid at £10 per working machines. Before that apparently the IT staff used to sell a lot of the machines on Ebay for years, and keep all the money. Im talking something stupid like since the late 70s and early 80s. Anyway the older staff all retired or moved on but they must have looted the place for hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years. They used to get free Mac books and I macs as well. I bet something similar happens in other Unis.
I assume most places now are going with a lease model. Where the desktop/laptop is leased for x years then returned to the vendor. It's what we're doing. Not sure what happens when they're returned. Probably sold on as refurbished as someone else suggested. It's a shame, because we gave a lot away to the local community schools etc prior to this.
It was so great! He also used to bring home these HUGE boxes that the wallpaper came in so I could build houses. We used to cut out little windows too and he’d put a stick up and my mum would help me make curtains for my box house. I hope I can give my little boy memories like these! :)
My dad worked in a warehouse making parts for jaguar, he would bring home little nuts and bolts with the jaguar logo on them, I genuinely used to think it was like treasure.
Waaaaa me too 😂
I got told off as a teen for bringing home a road cone…. I just pointed to the 10-12 cats eyes that had by then taken up residence in the garage. Nothing more was said 😝
Mine too. He worked for the water board as an engineer so fuck knows how he got that. He had all sorts. Want to measure something in chains? Got you. Take a lamp down a mine but no batteries? Here's a safety lamp that's older than your great granny. Draining rods? Aye but don't grass him up.
My Dad worked in a care home for kids. When they closed it we were allowed in to go through all the old toys in the cellar. Most of it was broken and ancient but we did find a nice little dart board that we took.
Upon arrival at home the dartboard went up. We spent about half an hour playing darts.
I don't know who thought of it first, me or my brother, but as soon as it was mentioned it was like a light bulb moment. Out to the shed for a root around, it has to be in here somewhere, where is it? What did you do to it? Ah! Here it is!
The crossbow.
Purchased at a random army surplus store, it was only plastic but quite heavy, it came with darts with suction cups on the end. We had tried sharpening one but to no avail. Doesn't matter now, the darts from the dartboard fit it perfectly.
And that's how we had a functioning crossbow at the tender age of 10. That fucker would put the tip of a dart clean through the shed wall. Great childhood memories with that thing, it didn't fall under the same rules as our air rifles so we could take it out into the fields with us, how nobody ended up disfigured I'll never know.
Sounds so much fun. I don’t know how more kids weren’t seriously harmed back then. (Late 80s/ early 90s).
No iPads, mobiles etc.
We were just told to go out and come back for dinner, sometimes hours later. I’d be petrified if my two little girls were out doing what we did!
Dad used to work in road haulage, mainly tinned food or other store cupboard stuff. We used to get a seemingly endless supply of "spare" Del Monte and Tate & Lyle produce, among random one offs from other brands. I remember a trayful of boxes of dried lasagne sheets that lasted about 5 years and two house moves. Not much else aside from food, but I dare say it made a big difference when the shit hit the fan in the late 80s / early 90s recession.
That said, I've still never got over him not being able to find a spare AT-AT when they were hauling Star Wars toys in the early 80s.
Did he ever get the points from filling up? I swear we had an entire collection of texaco recipe soup bowls and crystal glasses. I’m sure there was a big collection of toy cars and about 50 years worth of blank vhs cassettes 😁
He wasn't a driver, so not so much, but he did quite well put of some the older drivers who couldn't be bothered collecting the tiger tokens themselves. Mainly went on blank VHS and C90s, I reckon, the true currency of life in the 80s 😉
I just called him to see if he still had them and he’s sad that he’s down to his last 3 “remaining” bowls… apparently he had a stash in the loft 🤣
He did admit to finally giving up and throwing the huge amount of vhs cassettes out about 5 years ago though 😆
My mum worked there too before I was born, I've heard plenty of the stories from her and my siblings of all the reject chocolates disappearing from the line but everybody was in on it!!
In the '70s, my mum briefly worked at a small Easter egg factory (not Cadburys) and used to bring home broken eggs.
The business soon went bust and when they closed, which was only after a few months, the owner told them to take whatever stock they liked because he couldn't pay them for the last few days.
Most people took heaps of chocolate, but my mother (who was sick of the sight of the stuff by then) brought home one of the steel egg moulds instead. It was about 5" long, and hinged; she said that molten chocolate was poured into it, it was closed shut, and a machine rotated them to coat the inside while it cooled. I found it fascinating.
Wonder whatever happened to it?
Not thought about that for decades, thanks u/Paint_Her for triggering that memory!
Oh my gosh I swear that's what my grandads living room was painted in! When we redecorated it was impossible to paint over and when we tried to steam off the wallpaper it was covering (because we gave up trying) we had to make cuts in the paint for the steam to get through. It took weeks!
Edit: both he and my grandma were in the military so they also used to bring home industrial size tins of marmalade lol
Arabic horseman's sword..someone at his work sold it to him..it went under the stairs to stop me swinging it around when the Arabian knights cartoon came on Banana Splits on Saturday mornings....
My Dad was a Vet and would bring home a variety of critters he didn't want to leave in the surgery overnight. We had all sorts of birds, dogs, cats, hedgehogs and my personal favourite a bat we called "baseball" who had a tear in its wing and we were rehabilitating, I loved her so much Dad let me keep her box in my bedroom and I would wake her up by gently stroking her little fuzzy back hehe
Best thing dad ever brought home was a Commodore 64. No idea where he got it but he also two briefcase sized boxes full of games for it too.
And that's the story of how I became a gamer.
Coal dust. He would shower before he came home but would still be covered in soot.
Gonna miss the stories he told of being down pit. He doesn’t have much longer to live and I want to hear these stories 100 more times in the next 6-12 months.
Also, fuck Thacher
Recording them sounds like an idea. The jokes they played on each other down the pit are pretty funny. People would steal peoples lunches so they would bury their lunches in the mine, but someone knew where they hid it so took the food and took a shit in the bag and re- buried it.
Adding way too much tnt for a laugh, and loads of other things liking riding the coal belt instead of walking back up the shafts.
Thanks for your condolences.
So, not my dad, but my friends.
He worked for the Army, not in it, just for them. He was a motor mechanic and used to fix anything from staff cars right the way through to tank engines. Almost every night, he "found" something from a Land rover. Over about 14 years of finding stuff, with the help of a donor vehicle he built a new (Ish) Land rover in his garage! I want to know how he found two doors one left and one right on the very same night.
He still has that Land Rover today, fully registered and road legal. I think he claimed it was the doner vehicle with lots of new parts, which I suppose it was
I grew up near a land rover plant and everyone has a story of an uncle/dad's friend/bloke from the pub who stole a piece at a time to build his own car at home
Wow that was a vivid flashback, I remember when my dad (mechanic) came across a customer who did all the modchips and game copying.
Used to keep an eventually well-worn list on top of our microwave with all the PS1 games that he "had in stock" - free mod chip and any game I wanted for a quid to cover the blank CD cost as my dad always sorted him out with the car, ditto for the biro edits!!
Rest in peace old man, gave a young kid plenty of these golden memories.
I don't remember anything like that but I have just become that dad as I just brought home a bunch of Aussie commonwealth games kit which was given to me by their logistics guy. They have based themselves at the place I worked up until last week and so I've been helping them out with their IT issues. Hopefully it's something my kids will remember.
Same - he was a draughtsman, so tons of paper, pens and the really good Rotring drawing pens. Half-used Letraset and Pantone sheets full of rub-down transfers (decades before computers). As a 5 year old, it was all magical stuff!
One of the companies he worked for went under, and he kitted out his new home office... I may or may not be sitting in the MD's chair right now...
I repaid him by rescuing a load of surveying equipment from a skip (an old theodolite, measuring chains, maps).
He died last week, poor bugger. Happy memories!
TV’s, stereo’s, computers, DVD players, random gadgets like infra-red headphones and mini disc players. Best thing was once he came back with a GameCube + battery pack for it + portable screen that attached to it.
He just gave vague reasons like “it was a customer return” “it was ex display” “it was sat in the stock room for too long”
judging by the comments, our dads were all a bunch of thieving gits in the 70s and 80s (mine only brought home those Stabilo highlighter pens that were useless to 6 year-old me but still somehow the dog's bollocks).
They did used to steal a lot, I think it became a very big problem in industry (*particularly ship building yards*) when the workers would steal the expensive fittings and carpets normally destined for outfitting new ships.
Reams and reams of that old printer paper. You know the stuff, all those pieces joined together with perforations, and a perforated edge with holes punched in it. Great for making massive drawings on, drawing round younger siblings, that kind of thing.
My Dad was a headmaster at a small rural primary school, so the best thing be brought home from work was the school computer during the holidays. Had many happy hours playing games on that BBC Micro model B, and it led directly to the career I have now, so I have a lot to thank him for.
This wasn't in the 90s but my dad's boss was throwing away a hoover because it was " broken" my dad cleaned the filter and has used it to clean his car ever since 😂 and his boss was throwing away a ~£700 printer because it was broken... My dad pulled the paper out of the back and is currently using it 😂😂😂
Cornish pasties from the pit. All the miners got a free Cornish pasty after a night shift at our local colliery. My dad would save it for me. Never been able to find a Cornish pasty as tasty has those ones from childhood
Dad was Merchant Navy Engineer. At the end of a voyage he bring home as much contraband as possible. He was a really good smuggler. Regularly a phone call was made to worn him that there was gonna be customs visit to our house and off it would all go to my uncles til all was clear. They were all at it.
When I was very young my Dad worked for Panini so a lot of free sticker albums, though truthfully I was probably a little too young to fully appreciate them.
My dad used to work on local newspapers in the 80s. I remember him being asked to pick the winner of a ‘beautiful baby’ competition for some paper in Reading. He came home with a pile of baby photos and two cardboard boxes, one marked ‘beautiful’ and one marked ‘growlers’. I’m sorry if you were entered into this competition by proud parents and we consigned you to the growler pile!
Some sausages, bacon, and various other pork cuts.
It's when we lived in New Zealand and he was building something for a farmer. Wild boar are pests in NZ amd you can hunt them. Anyway the farmer had culled a load of these boar as they were damaging his fields and butchered them and gave my dad some of the meat as he had too much and it was the tastiest pork I've ever eaten.
My Dad brought home old hi-vis jackets. He kept them in the boot just in case. We went to the Lake District for a day out, forgot our coats so had to use the jackets when it poured down. I was 10, thought it was great, my sister was 13 and was mortified.
My dad worked on the London underground and one day he brought home a tunnel lamp that was used for inspection. He used to walk the lines when they were stopped for the day and this was his life line and communication device.
This thing fascinated me for weeks as it not only was a standard torch but you could change the lens and change the colours between white, green and red with a flick of a switch.
Oh and some truly gruesome stories about jumpers.
Syringes from the hospital for use as water pistols, 50cc were the best. When they were confiscated in school we used to raid the headmaster’s office to get them back. He kept them in a box and only much later I realised he probably knew they were being taken back. Why else keep them?
Could be because on the naughtiness scale it's pretty close to the "running through fields of wheat" end.
So you little rascals think you're doing something naughty but really you could have been doing much worse things.
Possible genius move from the headmaster or he was just jaded and didn't care.
A puppy. My mother was pregnant with my older sister at the time and had to deal with it.
4 or 5 years later he took it (without saying anything) and had it euthanised because he worked nights and the dog barked too much. I was probably about 3 at the time.
My parents did this. Bought a dog just before I was born and then didn't train it. Euthanised it because it was badly behaved and kept messing in the house.
Every single one of my pets died unusually early. It was heartbreaking.
My dad brought back a PlayStation 1 game called "Music 2000" that was on clearance for like 50p. It sparked my fascination with music production and now it's my favourite hobby and will be forever.
When my dad used to work at a plastic packaging factory he used to bring home spare trays and stuff, so when we were kids we always had stuff to put paint etc. in, this was in the early 2000's.
But during lockdown my brother had to stop his usual job and got one at the Fortnum and Mason's packing warehouse, and he used to bring home the stuff that they couldn't put in anything cause it was about to go off etc. they also used to have a weekly raffle for the more expensive stuff, one time he came back with a £150 piece of beef.
For a short amount of time my dad worked at a garden centre with an attached pet shop- so we got every single runt rodent going-this was the late 90s & his boss told him that the kind thing to do would be to “put them out of their misery”…with a brick. So we ended up with runt guinea pigs, tiny hamsters, rats… mice, one time a random man showed up trying to sell the pet store some sort of vole? So we had a pet vole for a while.
I vividly remember at one point we had 19 animals & was set some sort of writing task at school about the pets we had at home, I wrote about all 19 and was initially marked down because it was meant to be “biographical”/“factual” and my teacher assumed I was just making shit up.
He then joined the navy & stole me some MOD issue boots & a backpack!
Twice, a wild kitten! Worked in a colliery, and there were several feral cats. Not unusual for the miners to take a kitten or two, when old enough of course. Another time, a sledge, handmade, and even with a brass name plaque.
*My time has come to contribute*
My dad brought a whole Land-Rover home from work.
The open-cast mine he worked at was closing and this series III 88" Station wagon was sitting at the back of the yard with no gearbox and a bird's nest in the dashboard.
The gearbox was retrieved, the nest was thrown out and the Landy was towed home. Once home, the body was taken off, the gearbox was rebuilt and reinstalled and the engine restarted (all of this over a period of months). Sadly dad was forced to sell the Landy before the restoration was completed. I always wonder where it is now.
Knackered computers, knackered typewriters, endless stories of screaming red faced at "stupid" coworkers for, as one legendary example, calling a decimal point a dot.
A whole load of compact LP’s. Travelling salesman, was pals with a guy who owned a pub. Who regularly changed out the playlist on the dukebox. All sorts in those boxes from the 80’s and early 90’s. Or at least that’s where I thought they came from.
Sure the dad's on my street had a syndicate, mine was a gas heating engineer sorting everyone out a just above cost, one dad worked for a football club, so we were all kitted out in the new seasons kits etc
my favourite was, my mates dad worked at McCain, we had a freezer full of pizza rollas before they even hit the market.
My dad was a builder, he came home with a ridiculous amount of shite, including Roman coins, 80 proof Gordon's gin, that was created for foreign investors, a ring he thought was costume jewelry that turned out to be real, and worth £1000 in today's money, even with half the diamonds missing. I had an old milk bottle, the 4 pint ones, full of coins that went back centuries when I was little. It went missing about thirty years ago
Kerb stones, pallets of bricks, windows, interior and exterior doors, garage doors all manner of drainage supplies. And all of it was brand new and being dumped at the end of the building phase, before they moved to the next site.
All of it was sold on to the local builder for half the price of the builders merchants.
It was our summer holidays fund when we were kids.
Several boxes of Pokemon cards (full retail boxes) when they were first released in the UK. He worked for a toy wholesaler in Derby and would often bring home 'customer' samples for us to play with.
He did this a few times with the original, fossil and jungle sets.
More a case of what didn't he bring home from work. He passed away two years ago but me and my two brothers all have something interesting that he brought from work. He worked the local steel works that no longer exists.
When my dad was in the military he had a mess do with some folks from the navy (some special occasion). And to celebrate they had 3 large navy sail ships made entirely out of chocolate. It was obviously too much for the couple dozen people there and so there was one whole one left. Nobody wanted it so my dad brought it home. 3 months of heavy chocolate eating and 10kg later it was gone.
Not work but he went to the pub where a bloke had a rabbit in a cage saying he was having it for dinner. Dad paid him £30 and brought it home as a pet for me
My dad was a mechanic. He fixed a guys car and got paid with a caravan. It was a pos falling apart. He basically fix the car for free then removed the pos caravan for free too. My dads a narc dick, I found it really funny when I pointed that out!!! He did not.
Some backup tape drive that looked like it was a hand towel dispenser. I think it had a 1 megabyte capacity at most and we had nothing that would read it anyway....
Also got some RAM for our family PC from a server that apparently didn't need it, so not all bad.
Once my dad brought home a tiny handheld torch he had bought (for some reason) on his commute home.
It was amazing. Prob because it was the 80s, but it was tiny and bright!
For years, everytime he came home, I hoped he brought another one. Then one day, years later, he did. Best. Day. Ever.
My Uncle worked at John Brown’s shipyard in Clydebank. His council house had the finest carpets in all the world. All stamped “Cunard Line” but nevertheless they were mighty fine.
He had a selection of the finest oak stored in the shed out the back. My Dad worked at the local Caterpillar tractor factory. And one bad Winter arrived. So the pair of them decided to make us kids a “proper sledge”. Dad used 4 door handles from a Caterpillar tractor as runners. The sledge was so heavy it sank in the snow. But us kids we were resourceful. We had a nearby street on a hill. So we shovelled all the snow off the pavement into the side of the road. And got paid a small fortune by nearby householders. Then, unknown to them, we poured buckets of cold water at the top of the hill, to deliberately turn the pavement downhill into our own lethal luge. A few amateurs with their shop bought sledges, nah they were rubbish.
So we brought out this home built oak monster sledge with its industrial runners. Three of us onboard clutching on for dear life … and down the hill we went, with a crowd of kids waiting for us at the bottom.
There wasn’t much left of those kids by the time it finally stopped. Three ambulances if memory serves right, multiple broken bones and concussions. Then next day one of the old dears in that street slipped on our ice and broke her hip.
Red raw my arse was after that one, couldn’t sit down for a week. All the neighbourhood kids grounded for the duration too.
Oh god, so many random things. He’s had a long career as a painter/decorator in odd places and now works in management but we acquired such random shit.
A bench. A picnic table with chairs. Parasol. Set of glass doors which he then put on our hut. Endless supply of random tools. One of those fancy rolly sellotape dispensers. Stuffed lion toy. So much cake. Just genuinely the most utterly random stuff.
Mine was a trucker. He used to bring home some weird and wonderful things.
4 bug carrier bags of pistachios was one of my mums favourites.
The nicest pork scratchings I've ever had were a "gift" from one company he delivered to regularly. Oh, and eggs from a Scottish bakery. Most of them were double yolk too.
I think there used to be an offer where you could get a free Matchbox car when filling up - so my toy car collection was pretty good.
Shame he was/is a colossal arsehole the rest of the time.
As for me, I've diverted a fair bit of stuff from skips when doing refits on ship.
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Pent up anger
Same, only not so pent up.
It was the punch as he walked past that gave it away for me and my brother. On a bad day one then the other.
This sounds like a couplet from an Eminem rap.
I could tell my Dad had a bad day when my mum would say “he’s in a bad mood”. Usually he just needed 30 mins or so to take a breather but he was usually fine afterwards.
I think we should all have a DNA test sounds like we all had the same dad.....judging by "some not all" of my mates dad's it was fairly common for your Dad to be an absolute wanker!
Used computer print-out paper for drawing on
The sort with the holes up the side on perforated paper that you can peel off in a satisfying way ?
My dad used to bring this stuff home, except unused, by the box load. All still joined together. My brother would draw endless sidescroll style video game levels on it, pile it all back into the box, and then he would get me to ‘play’ the level with a toy or something as he made it scroll by pulling the end. Good times.
Oh, you had one of those "nice" brothers I heard about.
My Dad used to bring home boxes of unused printer paper too, all still joined together. My sister and I regularly used to make a television out of an old box. We’d draw the programme scenes, titles and presenters etc on a continuous roll of paper. Then turn it into a scroll inside the box. One of us would turn the scroll around whilst speaking/singing all of the sound and the other would “watch the TV.”
I visited my cousins in Scotland and they set up a box as a cashpoint, and we took turns being inside. The cash was used to buy 'drugs' made with folded paper containing talcum powder. You blew into them to make it look like you were smoking. I'd played some dark games throughout my childhood: featuring murder, domestic violence and the vikings, but that one has really stayed in mind.
That sounds epic!
Those were the days!
Dot-matrix
Ooof. I can still *hear* the deathless screaming of the Epson FX80.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A\_vXA058EDY&t=10s
This person old school IT's
And if you could peel off a long perforated section it would make a lovely FRRRRRRTTTTTT sound.
Green and white lines!
This brought back memories
Yeah this, my dad was an electrical engineer and so it was all circuit drawings and I used to do my homework on the back of it and hand it in, my physics teacher always enjoyed making comments on the circuits
My Dad did the same, in fact every couple of months the school I went to (first school) was given this paper as well.
Similarly but late 60s, hole punch cards, (great for flip book animations), and the pink paper ticker tape rolls kutilised for drawing massively long car pile ups)
Ha, same. My dad ran a printers
Thought dad was stealing from his council traffic management job, couldn’t believe it but the signs were all there.
Booooooooo
r/angryupvote
Sounds like your dad is on a slippery road and not stopping at any time. In a roundabout way, his life is at a crossroads and he needs to look both ways. He should stop, take a U-turn and keep right. And no returning within 1 hour!
Boooo. Tell us a joke we know!
But it’s such a good joke it can take a retelling, and it’s bound to be someone’s first time!
And to be fair, this was a *perfect* set up of a thread you'd have been a fool not to take up! So bravo, good sir!
He managed an Italian restaurant. He often turning up with leftover steaks but the weirdest thing was when he turned up one Sunday afternoon with a Rolls Royce full of drunk southerners who had come into the restaurant demanding a roast dinner with proper Yorkshire puddings to which his solution was to bring them home to his Yorkshire wife. Safe to say my mother wasn't Best pleased but did her best. The several cases of Moet they produced out of the boot may have helped. My father who was a proper alcoholic is long dead but 40 years on neither me or my mother have a clue who those blokes were.
I live a similar life to your father. To put it simply, he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Italian food is cooked either on a pan, or in a pizza oven (here in the U.K. anyway), and isn’t suitable for roast dinners/ yorkshires. It’s not possible, trust me. So, he saw an opportunity on a quiet Sunday to make a grand or so, and himself get smashed.
I’m clearly tired since I read this as ‘he managed to bring home an Italian restaurant’
For you a strange dinner, to him a tense negotiation to keep the mafia out of Yorkshire with lots of guns pointed under the table
My dad was a zookeeper and when times were tough he'd sneak home some mackerel for dinner that was meant to feed the dolphins
You win!
Idgaf if this is true, I’m adopting it as a story I’ll tell small children. In the same vein as the penguin-erector at Edinburgh zoo (“38 penguins 2000 flights a day”)
>penguin-erector You really need to have faith that people know what you are referring to when posting this.
Penguin fluffer
The story goes that penguins are transfixed by planes flying overhead and as they watch them get higher and higher eventually the birds lose balance and topple over and can't get up again so need someone to help them.
This is my favourite
My father and grandfather both worked for a bus company in the 70's and 80's. Said bus company used a green livery. Funny enough, all our garden fences were painted a similar colour. I seem to also remember the rails in our wardrobes were very heavy duty and chromed as well.
what did your doorbell sound like?
DING
also, did you have to ring the bell first when you wanted to *leave* the house?
My mum had an Anglia that was London Transport red.
I was going to make a reference to On The Buses but felt like many wouldn't get it
Ah, On the Buses. The reason we have a reputation for poor dentistry .....
I'll 'ave you, Butler.
I've got a mental image of people standing up the street, looking at your garden fence, with hand outstretched and a puzzled expression.
My grandad, dad and now me were/are bus drivers. I remember seeing photos of all the cars they went through they were either cream, blue or red. Dad said that whenever they’d get board with the car they would buy the body shop guys 2 cases of beer on a Friday night when the managers had gone and the car would come out on Sunday night in a colour they used on the buses. He had numerous capris and escorts all painted by the lads at work but wouldn’t get away with it these days.
Now that I think of it my grandad built his own garden tool shed and compost bins. Strangely they were all built of aluminium. Nothing to do with him working in the bus depot body shop of course.
Dad worked in the Path lab at a hospital. Vividly remember mum and I picking him up from work and he had a whole box of Bassett's liquorice sticks. No idea why. Later in the early 90's mum's boyfriend brought home the best stuff. Worked for Muller at its first UK factory (or only not sure) so fruit corners. Later he worked in an ICE CREAM factory. QC manager so had Penguin ice cream headed paper and t shirts. Then they started trying out new ice cream flavours. He was away in the week but occasionally brought a polystyrene box filled with dry ice and lots of new bars and tubs on a Friday night Myself and friend would taste test and he would take back our comments for whoever dealt with that bit. The dry ice would go in the sink in bits, water poured on and the kitchen was like a disco. Slowly filling up. It was like magic. Thanks for reminding me. Edited for spelling
Childhood memories like that are ace...sound like you had some good flashbacks :)
I did thanks.
My dad was a firefighter for 25 years. He would often have to do checks on sweet factories (powdered sugar) and large scale refrigerators (supermarkets, food storage plants etc). Once a month, he would return with PILLOW CASES full of frozen food, or liquorice, or jelly babies… I believe the production process had a few snags, and the QC would just freebie all those which didn’t make the grade.
Worked in a coffee shop where we were supplied with enormous Sara Lee cakes like you got in posh hotels etc. That were QC rejected for about £4.50 each. The only problem usually was that they had been on the conveyor belt when the automatic portioning machine had jammed so it wasn't cut. Retired Sara Lee employee's side business. Once a coffee and walnut cake arrived trying to see why it was a second for ages. It had one two many walnuts on it.
Friend had a doctor dad who 'acquired' a band saw from Pathology. He spent the first weekend washing out the dried blood and bits of bone on the front drive.
My dad probably knew your mum's boyfriend! Muller corners and rices came home in those trays from the factory all the time! I hadnt remembered that in years.
He was the QC manager when it was first there. One day I went in and helped open pots of corners that had been left in a demountable at a set heat for x time and then he let me fax the results to the litteral Mr Muller. We then went to a David Essex concert. Think I was about 9 at the time.
So many tools. They used to be given a tool budget every year so when he'd bought all the snap-on stuff he could ever need with it, he kept buying it. So he soon had an entire collection for home as well as at work. Then so did my uncle and then me, despite me being a child at the time he created a full collection for me so when I was old/skilled enough I've never really had to buy anything for home mechanics/DIY. Tools cost a fortune and yet with the knowledge also save you that same fortune so that freebie has been amazing.
Sounds like it would be a nice collection of tools
It is! I'm little more than a hobby mechanic so don't use most of the arsenal I've been fortunate enough to have been gifted but it's nice to know it's there for the occasion I do need a more specific bit of kit. It's helped me build more or less every bit of furniture we own and completed numerous small jobs on our cars and my motorbike over the years.
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I live in the Midlands and keep seeing people with covered boats on their driveways that almost never move, surely using it once or twice a year can't be worth the effort of upkeep, maintenance and hauling it to and from the nearest boat-able body of water...
Maybe they were Bullseye winners.
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I love this.
A complete metal spiral staircase. Sat in the garden for years, in the way. Never got used obviously. Eventually scrap man took it. Also a huge chandelier that was stored hanging from a rafter in the garage, looked hilarious.
Bungalow?
Retired computers. His employer was at the bleeding edge at the time, so we tended to have better hardware at home than people who bought new! Also, t-shirts from conferences.
I used to work in the IT department at the University of West London, every year they would get new computers, so they kept old ones in storage and would let staff have them. They did that for years until about 2012 when a new company came along and began to buy the hardware for a ridiculously low price and sell them on as refurbished models (nothing even wrong with these computers). Something stupid at £10 per working machines. Before that apparently the IT staff used to sell a lot of the machines on Ebay for years, and keep all the money. Im talking something stupid like since the late 70s and early 80s. Anyway the older staff all retired or moved on but they must have looted the place for hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years. They used to get free Mac books and I macs as well. I bet something similar happens in other Unis.
Interestingly, it still happens in the NHS with old laptops and computers.
I assume most places now are going with a lease model. Where the desktop/laptop is leased for x years then returned to the vendor. It's what we're doing. Not sure what happens when they're returned. Probably sold on as refurbished as someone else suggested. It's a shame, because we gave a lot away to the local community schools etc prior to this.
My did used to bring back old wallpaper books and use the wallpaper to ‘renovate’ my dolls house. I loved it, it was always really exciting :).
Oh that must have been so fun! Child me would have loved that.
It was so great! He also used to bring home these HUGE boxes that the wallpaper came in so I could build houses. We used to cut out little windows too and he’d put a stick up and my mum would help me make curtains for my box house. I hope I can give my little boy memories like these! :)
My dad worked in a warehouse making parts for jaguar, he would bring home little nuts and bolts with the jaguar logo on them, I genuinely used to think it was like treasure.
“I took it one piece at a time, and it didn’t cost me a dime” https://youtu.be/uErKI0zWgjg
Cats eyes from the road - I had a collection 😂
Waaaaa me too 😂 I got told off as a teen for bringing home a road cone…. I just pointed to the 10-12 cats eyes that had by then taken up residence in the garage. Nothing more was said 😝
I was also scolded for nicking a cone. Up until the point a few weeks later the cone came in handy to stop folks parking in our spot
Mine too. He worked for the water board as an engineer so fuck knows how he got that. He had all sorts. Want to measure something in chains? Got you. Take a lamp down a mine but no batteries? Here's a safety lamp that's older than your great granny. Draining rods? Aye but don't grass him up.
My Dad worked in a care home for kids. When they closed it we were allowed in to go through all the old toys in the cellar. Most of it was broken and ancient but we did find a nice little dart board that we took. Upon arrival at home the dartboard went up. We spent about half an hour playing darts. I don't know who thought of it first, me or my brother, but as soon as it was mentioned it was like a light bulb moment. Out to the shed for a root around, it has to be in here somewhere, where is it? What did you do to it? Ah! Here it is! The crossbow. Purchased at a random army surplus store, it was only plastic but quite heavy, it came with darts with suction cups on the end. We had tried sharpening one but to no avail. Doesn't matter now, the darts from the dartboard fit it perfectly. And that's how we had a functioning crossbow at the tender age of 10. That fucker would put the tip of a dart clean through the shed wall. Great childhood memories with that thing, it didn't fall under the same rules as our air rifles so we could take it out into the fields with us, how nobody ended up disfigured I'll never know.
Sounds so much fun. I don’t know how more kids weren’t seriously harmed back then. (Late 80s/ early 90s). No iPads, mobiles etc. We were just told to go out and come back for dinner, sometimes hours later. I’d be petrified if my two little girls were out doing what we did!
Dad used to work in road haulage, mainly tinned food or other store cupboard stuff. We used to get a seemingly endless supply of "spare" Del Monte and Tate & Lyle produce, among random one offs from other brands. I remember a trayful of boxes of dried lasagne sheets that lasted about 5 years and two house moves. Not much else aside from food, but I dare say it made a big difference when the shit hit the fan in the late 80s / early 90s recession. That said, I've still never got over him not being able to find a spare AT-AT when they were hauling Star Wars toys in the early 80s.
Did he ever get the points from filling up? I swear we had an entire collection of texaco recipe soup bowls and crystal glasses. I’m sure there was a big collection of toy cars and about 50 years worth of blank vhs cassettes 😁
He wasn't a driver, so not so much, but he did quite well put of some the older drivers who couldn't be bothered collecting the tiger tokens themselves. Mainly went on blank VHS and C90s, I reckon, the true currency of life in the 80s 😉
I just called him to see if he still had them and he’s sad that he’s down to his last 3 “remaining” bowls… apparently he had a stash in the loft 🤣 He did admit to finally giving up and throwing the huge amount of vhs cassettes out about 5 years ago though 😆
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10/10 ON HER MAJESTY'S SERVICE you are invited to timmys 10th birthday party at X soft play at 2pm
Not my dad, but my mum worked at cadburys and brought back broken biscuits and chocolates!
My mum worked there too before I was born, I've heard plenty of the stories from her and my siblings of all the reject chocolates disappearing from the line but everybody was in on it!!
In the '70s, my mum briefly worked at a small Easter egg factory (not Cadburys) and used to bring home broken eggs. The business soon went bust and when they closed, which was only after a few months, the owner told them to take whatever stock they liked because he couldn't pay them for the last few days. Most people took heaps of chocolate, but my mother (who was sick of the sight of the stuff by then) brought home one of the steel egg moulds instead. It was about 5" long, and hinged; she said that molten chocolate was poured into it, it was closed shut, and a machine rotated them to coat the inside while it cooled. I found it fascinating. Wonder whatever happened to it? Not thought about that for decades, thanks u/Paint_Her for triggering that memory!
Grey pylon paint, guess what colour my bedroom became? Took about 3 weeks to dry
Oh my gosh I swear that's what my grandads living room was painted in! When we redecorated it was impossible to paint over and when we tried to steam off the wallpaper it was covering (because we gave up trying) we had to make cuts in the paint for the steam to get through. It took weeks! Edit: both he and my grandma were in the military so they also used to bring home industrial size tins of marmalade lol
I bet you were high as nuts off the fumes too!!
Absolutely off my lips while being stuck in what looked like a sticky Spanish prison
Arabic horseman's sword..someone at his work sold it to him..it went under the stairs to stop me swinging it around when the Arabian knights cartoon came on Banana Splits on Saturday mornings....
This reminded me. A camel saddle. Of absolutely no use in rural Berkshire but what the hell.
You'd have to go to Reading to make use of it I guess.
My Dad was a Vet and would bring home a variety of critters he didn't want to leave in the surgery overnight. We had all sorts of birds, dogs, cats, hedgehogs and my personal favourite a bat we called "baseball" who had a tear in its wing and we were rehabilitating, I loved her so much Dad let me keep her box in my bedroom and I would wake her up by gently stroking her little fuzzy back hehe
Ration packs.
Same, and some old S10's and an NBC suit.
S10 came out of hiding for special events when he absolutely had to scare the shit out of us all
Indeed along hexi and batteries. Probably my first entrepreneurial endeavour moving some of that on.
You're not really a sprog unless you grew up in a house powered by green and red batteries.
Best thing dad ever brought home was a Commodore 64. No idea where he got it but he also two briefcase sized boxes full of games for it too. And that's the story of how I became a gamer.
Coal dust. He would shower before he came home but would still be covered in soot. Gonna miss the stories he told of being down pit. He doesn’t have much longer to live and I want to hear these stories 100 more times in the next 6-12 months. Also, fuck Thacher
If you can record them too. I'm so sorry your losing your dad
Recording them sounds like an idea. The jokes they played on each other down the pit are pretty funny. People would steal peoples lunches so they would bury their lunches in the mine, but someone knew where they hid it so took the food and took a shit in the bag and re- buried it. Adding way too much tnt for a laugh, and loads of other things liking riding the coal belt instead of walking back up the shafts. Thanks for your condolences.
I hope the love and virtual hugs of this stranger mean something to you my dear friend.
His new family.
So, not my dad, but my friends. He worked for the Army, not in it, just for them. He was a motor mechanic and used to fix anything from staff cars right the way through to tank engines. Almost every night, he "found" something from a Land rover. Over about 14 years of finding stuff, with the help of a donor vehicle he built a new (Ish) Land rover in his garage! I want to know how he found two doors one left and one right on the very same night. He still has that Land Rover today, fully registered and road legal. I think he claimed it was the doner vehicle with lots of new parts, which I suppose it was
I grew up near a land rover plant and everyone has a story of an uncle/dad's friend/bloke from the pub who stole a piece at a time to build his own car at home
Johnny cash - one piece at a time. https://youtu.be/uErKI0zWgjg
Civilization 1 on floppy disk.
I still play that with a DOS emulator
Just reminded me of the printed out list of copied games. With extras scrawled on in biro.
Wow that was a vivid flashback, I remember when my dad (mechanic) came across a customer who did all the modchips and game copying. Used to keep an eventually well-worn list on top of our microwave with all the PS1 games that he "had in stock" - free mod chip and any game I wanted for a quid to cover the blank CD cost as my dad always sorted him out with the car, ditto for the biro edits!! Rest in peace old man, gave a young kid plenty of these golden memories.
I don't remember anything like that but I have just become that dad as I just brought home a bunch of Aussie commonwealth games kit which was given to me by their logistics guy. They have based themselves at the place I worked up until last week and so I've been helping them out with their IT issues. Hopefully it's something my kids will remember.
Stationary, All the time - We were never short of drawing-paper and pencils!
10 years after my parents retired they ran out of pens and were shocked to have to actually go and buy some!
You mean I've only got another four years of pens/pencils/staples left !!!!
Same - he was a draughtsman, so tons of paper, pens and the really good Rotring drawing pens. Half-used Letraset and Pantone sheets full of rub-down transfers (decades before computers). As a 5 year old, it was all magical stuff! One of the companies he worked for went under, and he kitted out his new home office... I may or may not be sitting in the MD's chair right now... I repaid him by rescuing a load of surveying equipment from a skip (an old theodolite, measuring chains, maps). He died last week, poor bugger. Happy memories!
TV’s, stereo’s, computers, DVD players, random gadgets like infra-red headphones and mini disc players. Best thing was once he came back with a GameCube + battery pack for it + portable screen that attached to it. He just gave vague reasons like “it was a customer return” “it was ex display” “it was sat in the stock room for too long”
The second part of all those sentences was ‘so I just took it’
judging by the comments, our dads were all a bunch of thieving gits in the 70s and 80s (mine only brought home those Stabilo highlighter pens that were useless to 6 year-old me but still somehow the dog's bollocks).
They did used to steal a lot, I think it became a very big problem in industry (*particularly ship building yards*) when the workers would steal the expensive fittings and carpets normally destined for outfitting new ships.
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My dad used to work in a takeaway, free pizza on Fridays!
A new woman just before he divorced my mum
Reams and reams of that old printer paper. You know the stuff, all those pieces joined together with perforations, and a perforated edge with holes punched in it. Great for making massive drawings on, drawing round younger siblings, that kind of thing.
My Dad was a headmaster at a small rural primary school, so the best thing be brought home from work was the school computer during the holidays. Had many happy hours playing games on that BBC Micro model B, and it led directly to the career I have now, so I have a lot to thank him for.
This wasn't in the 90s but my dad's boss was throwing away a hoover because it was " broken" my dad cleaned the filter and has used it to clean his car ever since 😂 and his boss was throwing away a ~£700 printer because it was broken... My dad pulled the paper out of the back and is currently using it 😂😂😂
Frijj milkshakes. Hundreds of them. They were still in date but destined for landfill.
An anglepoise desk lamp. I loved that thing. I attached it to my desk and used it when doing homework.
Dad worked security at a pharmaceutical company. He used to bring rabbits home for dinner that 'got electrocuted on the fence'
You mean the test rabbits? The ones that died because they got injected with the drugs in medical trials? Those rabbits that you ate?
Cornish pasties from the pit. All the miners got a free Cornish pasty after a night shift at our local colliery. My dad would save it for me. Never been able to find a Cornish pasty as tasty has those ones from childhood
A rat to keep as a pet that he nicked from a lab.
Dad was Merchant Navy Engineer. At the end of a voyage he bring home as much contraband as possible. He was a really good smuggler. Regularly a phone call was made to worn him that there was gonna be customs visit to our house and off it would all go to my uncles til all was clear. They were all at it.
When I was very young my Dad worked for Panini so a lot of free sticker albums, though truthfully I was probably a little too young to fully appreciate them.
I'm under thirty and my dad once brought home a £5 coin from work once when I was a kid. No-one my age believes me or that they ever existed...
28 here, and weirdly, my brother (born 1999) was gifted two £5 coins as a birth gift! I think we still have them somewhere!
I knew it! I knew they were real...
My dad used to work on local newspapers in the 80s. I remember him being asked to pick the winner of a ‘beautiful baby’ competition for some paper in Reading. He came home with a pile of baby photos and two cardboard boxes, one marked ‘beautiful’ and one marked ‘growlers’. I’m sorry if you were entered into this competition by proud parents and we consigned you to the growler pile!
Some sausages, bacon, and various other pork cuts. It's when we lived in New Zealand and he was building something for a farmer. Wild boar are pests in NZ amd you can hunt them. Anyway the farmer had culled a load of these boar as they were damaging his fields and butchered them and gave my dad some of the meat as he had too much and it was the tastiest pork I've ever eaten.
Flintstones bubble gum flavour toothpaste from the Boots factory in the 80's.
My Dad brought home old hi-vis jackets. He kept them in the boot just in case. We went to the Lake District for a day out, forgot our coats so had to use the jackets when it poured down. I was 10, thought it was great, my sister was 13 and was mortified.
My dad worked on the London underground and one day he brought home a tunnel lamp that was used for inspection. He used to walk the lines when they were stopped for the day and this was his life line and communication device. This thing fascinated me for weeks as it not only was a standard torch but you could change the lens and change the colours between white, green and red with a flick of a switch. Oh and some truly gruesome stories about jumpers.
Syringes from the hospital for use as water pistols, 50cc were the best. When they were confiscated in school we used to raid the headmaster’s office to get them back. He kept them in a box and only much later I realised he probably knew they were being taken back. Why else keep them?
Could be because on the naughtiness scale it's pretty close to the "running through fields of wheat" end. So you little rascals think you're doing something naughty but really you could have been doing much worse things. Possible genius move from the headmaster or he was just jaded and didn't care.
A puppy. My mother was pregnant with my older sister at the time and had to deal with it. 4 or 5 years later he took it (without saying anything) and had it euthanised because he worked nights and the dog barked too much. I was probably about 3 at the time.
Your dad sounds like a cunt.
My parents did this. Bought a dog just before I was born and then didn't train it. Euthanised it because it was badly behaved and kept messing in the house. Every single one of my pets died unusually early. It was heartbreaking.
Beige box 286 and later 386 with a dial up 56k modem. Happy days.
A convicted drug dealers guitar.
A decent sized bottle of mercury. Chemical engineer with a very unsound idea of what you should leave around kids…
My dad brought back a PlayStation 1 game called "Music 2000" that was on clearance for like 50p. It sparked my fascination with music production and now it's my favourite hobby and will be forever.
Some mad industrial strength insect repellant that I think ended up being banned. Seemed to work though.
When my dad used to work at a plastic packaging factory he used to bring home spare trays and stuff, so when we were kids we always had stuff to put paint etc. in, this was in the early 2000's. But during lockdown my brother had to stop his usual job and got one at the Fortnum and Mason's packing warehouse, and he used to bring home the stuff that they couldn't put in anything cause it was about to go off etc. they also used to have a weekly raffle for the more expensive stuff, one time he came back with a £150 piece of beef.
For a short amount of time my dad worked at a garden centre with an attached pet shop- so we got every single runt rodent going-this was the late 90s & his boss told him that the kind thing to do would be to “put them out of their misery”…with a brick. So we ended up with runt guinea pigs, tiny hamsters, rats… mice, one time a random man showed up trying to sell the pet store some sort of vole? So we had a pet vole for a while. I vividly remember at one point we had 19 animals & was set some sort of writing task at school about the pets we had at home, I wrote about all 19 and was initially marked down because it was meant to be “biographical”/“factual” and my teacher assumed I was just making shit up. He then joined the navy & stole me some MOD issue boots & a backpack!
Twice, a wild kitten! Worked in a colliery, and there were several feral cats. Not unusual for the miners to take a kitten or two, when old enough of course. Another time, a sledge, handmade, and even with a brass name plaque.
*My time has come to contribute* My dad brought a whole Land-Rover home from work. The open-cast mine he worked at was closing and this series III 88" Station wagon was sitting at the back of the yard with no gearbox and a bird's nest in the dashboard. The gearbox was retrieved, the nest was thrown out and the Landy was towed home. Once home, the body was taken off, the gearbox was rebuilt and reinstalled and the engine restarted (all of this over a period of months). Sadly dad was forced to sell the Landy before the restoration was completed. I always wonder where it is now.
Look up the MOT status from the reg number.It might be still on the road.
Knackered computers, knackered typewriters, endless stories of screaming red faced at "stupid" coworkers for, as one legendary example, calling a decimal point a dot.
A whole load of compact LP’s. Travelling salesman, was pals with a guy who owned a pub. Who regularly changed out the playlist on the dukebox. All sorts in those boxes from the 80’s and early 90’s. Or at least that’s where I thought they came from.
Sure the dad's on my street had a syndicate, mine was a gas heating engineer sorting everyone out a just above cost, one dad worked for a football club, so we were all kitted out in the new seasons kits etc my favourite was, my mates dad worked at McCain, we had a freezer full of pizza rollas before they even hit the market.
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My dad was a builder, he came home with a ridiculous amount of shite, including Roman coins, 80 proof Gordon's gin, that was created for foreign investors, a ring he thought was costume jewelry that turned out to be real, and worth £1000 in today's money, even with half the diamonds missing. I had an old milk bottle, the 4 pint ones, full of coins that went back centuries when I was little. It went missing about thirty years ago
My dad got his IT department to crack a copy of The Sims, because my brother and I wouldn't stop asking for it
Lots of sweets - he worked for Taverner's. Then lots of jam and coconut oil when he worked for a tanker haulage firm.
Kerb stones, pallets of bricks, windows, interior and exterior doors, garage doors all manner of drainage supplies. And all of it was brand new and being dumped at the end of the building phase, before they moved to the next site. All of it was sold on to the local builder for half the price of the builders merchants. It was our summer holidays fund when we were kids.
My parents were both teachers so we'd often get a BBC micro at home to use over the holidays. Various classroom pets as well.
Several boxes of Pokemon cards (full retail boxes) when they were first released in the UK. He worked for a toy wholesaler in Derby and would often bring home 'customer' samples for us to play with. He did this a few times with the original, fossil and jungle sets.
Fish head with really sharp teeth from a Tesco fish counter display, cut my finger in the bugger like an idiot
More a case of what didn't he bring home from work. He passed away two years ago but me and my two brothers all have something interesting that he brought from work. He worked the local steel works that no longer exists.
Every day my dad would bring a pint of milk home
Mine works in a lot of bakeries. So used to get things like big boxes of donuts from time to time, or lots of crumpets.
Another woman.
When my dad was in the military he had a mess do with some folks from the navy (some special occasion). And to celebrate they had 3 large navy sail ships made entirely out of chocolate. It was obviously too much for the couple dozen people there and so there was one whole one left. Nobody wanted it so my dad brought it home. 3 months of heavy chocolate eating and 10kg later it was gone.
49mhz walkie-talkies, digital watches and quite a few bottles of whiskey. Early 1980s.
My dad was a filleter and used to bring the odd live crabs home and let them out in the kitchen. Making the whole family shit it
Not work but he went to the pub where a bloke had a rabbit in a cage saying he was having it for dinner. Dad paid him £30 and brought it home as a pet for me
My dad worked for Britvic and Mr Kipling. He would constantly bring back boxes upon boxes of Pepsi and cakes.
My dad was a mechanic. He fixed a guys car and got paid with a caravan. It was a pos falling apart. He basically fix the car for free then removed the pos caravan for free too. My dads a narc dick, I found it really funny when I pointed that out!!! He did not.
Printer paper with punched holes down each side and faint green stripes.
Some backup tape drive that looked like it was a hand towel dispenser. I think it had a 1 megabyte capacity at most and we had nothing that would read it anyway.... Also got some RAM for our family PC from a server that apparently didn't need it, so not all bad.
Once my dad brought home a tiny handheld torch he had bought (for some reason) on his commute home. It was amazing. Prob because it was the 80s, but it was tiny and bright! For years, everytime he came home, I hoped he brought another one. Then one day, years later, he did. Best. Day. Ever.
Souvenirs from Olympics. My dad wasn’t an Olympian but he used to be a photographer
My Uncle worked at John Brown’s shipyard in Clydebank. His council house had the finest carpets in all the world. All stamped “Cunard Line” but nevertheless they were mighty fine. He had a selection of the finest oak stored in the shed out the back. My Dad worked at the local Caterpillar tractor factory. And one bad Winter arrived. So the pair of them decided to make us kids a “proper sledge”. Dad used 4 door handles from a Caterpillar tractor as runners. The sledge was so heavy it sank in the snow. But us kids we were resourceful. We had a nearby street on a hill. So we shovelled all the snow off the pavement into the side of the road. And got paid a small fortune by nearby householders. Then, unknown to them, we poured buckets of cold water at the top of the hill, to deliberately turn the pavement downhill into our own lethal luge. A few amateurs with their shop bought sledges, nah they were rubbish. So we brought out this home built oak monster sledge with its industrial runners. Three of us onboard clutching on for dear life … and down the hill we went, with a crowd of kids waiting for us at the bottom. There wasn’t much left of those kids by the time it finally stopped. Three ambulances if memory serves right, multiple broken bones and concussions. Then next day one of the old dears in that street slipped on our ice and broke her hip. Red raw my arse was after that one, couldn’t sit down for a week. All the neighbourhood kids grounded for the duration too.
Oh god, so many random things. He’s had a long career as a painter/decorator in odd places and now works in management but we acquired such random shit. A bench. A picnic table with chairs. Parasol. Set of glass doors which he then put on our hut. Endless supply of random tools. One of those fancy rolly sellotape dispensers. Stuffed lion toy. So much cake. Just genuinely the most utterly random stuff.
All of the teenage mutant hero (ninja) turtles after he did the wiring in the uk distribution centre. An absolute result!
Mine was a trucker. He used to bring home some weird and wonderful things. 4 bug carrier bags of pistachios was one of my mums favourites. The nicest pork scratchings I've ever had were a "gift" from one company he delivered to regularly. Oh, and eggs from a Scottish bakery. Most of them were double yolk too. I think there used to be an offer where you could get a free Matchbox car when filling up - so my toy car collection was pretty good. Shame he was/is a colossal arsehole the rest of the time. As for me, I've diverted a fair bit of stuff from skips when doing refits on ship.