One of the craziest places I ever worked was at a cement plant. It was such a tough place (environmentally) to work you just about had to be nutz to work there, but the $$ was so good it was hard to walk away from, so ....

We had an oiler on our crew that was a helluva practical joker! On one of our midnight shifts the crew was sittin in the break room eatin lunch when in walks the shift foreman, a rather rotund cat named Larry. Now while Larry was a pretty cool headed guy, he was fuming mad when he walked in.

My partner and I worked in a tunnel about 20' below ground level that had a long straight steel staircase leading from ground level to the tunnel floor and just before lunch, Boatman, our oiler decided to have some fun with us by puttin grease all down the top of the handrail thinkin when we headed out to break we'd get it all over our hands. As fate would have it, when break time came we were in the other end of the tunnel and had headed out through a door at the that end instead.

Larry and his shft helper Juan were makin the rounds while everyone was at lunch and had decided to check out our nights progress so he and Juan had headed down into the tunnel via the recently greased staircase from ground level.

Larry was in the lead and when he came through the doorway and grabbed the grease covered handrail had it not been for Juan bein right behind himi he'd have likely become more akin to a human bowling ball as he tumbled down the staircase, though luckily for him Juans quick reaction in havin grabbed him saved him from that painful fate.

Anyway, when Larry came in the break room he looked right at Boatman and asked "Boatman! You been down in tunnel #2 tonight?". Boatman said "Naw boss, haddn made it down there yet tonight".

Larry glared back at Boatman, cleared his throat for added emphasis, paused an extra second or so for effect, then said "Yakno Boatman, there's a lotta goddamned rollers, gearboxes and such in this plant that needs grease on a regular basis to keep from burnin up or wearin out, but .... the fuckin handrail goin down into tunnel #2 ain't subject to ever burn up, nor is it likely to ever wear out either so it damned sure don't need grease! You get my drift?".

Boatman just sheepishly looked back at Larry and said "Yeah, boss, got it"

I could problee write a book about all the craziness I encountered in the 5yrs I worked there. It was a dangerous as hell place to work, but there were sure a lotta funny MoFos there