Jobs for a Junior

My first proper job (excluding YTS slavery) was with a firm of consulting engineers in Birmingham.

  I was a junior working in the drawing office. 'Drawing office' was a loose description and the lads frequently took on the roles of handymen and general dogsbodies.

  These other duties included changing light bulbs and shifting sacks of rubbish down to the skip. I often wondered why we didn't wear boiler suits rather than shirts and ties.
 
 Occasionally more novel tasks would crop up. I once fetched a bottle of scotch for the chief draughtsman (12 year old single malt no less) and placed a horse racing bet on the strength of a tip (PG?) from the tea-lady (came nowhere -  must have read her tea leaves wrong). However, the job that sticks in my mind was when the juniors did a stint of 'guard duty'.

  The firm had been involved in the design of an unpopular road bypass. As a result, protestors had shown their dissaproval by scrawling graffiti and daubing s**t over several of the firm's offices. This triggered a minor panic amongst the Birmingham management. We could be next - the Goths were at the gates of Rome! (well Goths in Brum, possibly).

  I was first on the sentry rota. Armed only with the office mobile phone, (which could have doubled as a club) and a Colin Dexter Novel, I sat in the foyer awaiting an invasion of New Age protesters. If they had decided to storm the office Bastille style I don't know what I could have done. Perhaps fended them off with a cleaners mop while frantically phoning, 'Help! The Crusties are here!'

 In any event nothing happened, Morse solved his case, and I went back upstairs to a boring afternoon  at work.