Attitudes to the abuses done to me as a young person

Back in the 1980s, when it was even more unfashionable for men to have emotions than it is now, it was commonplace for apprentices and trainees to have practical jokes played on them.  So often those jokes went too far and physical and psychological harms were done.

The things done to me as a 16-20-year-old included:

§     Being held down by a couple of bigger men so another man could give me a haircut... with metal-cutting tinsnips.  As they laughed, I laughed.  At the time it seemed very funny, except there was part of me that turned away as the event unfolded.  I was seventeen and I used to tell this as a party story of my ‘toughness’.

§     On a regular trip away to a bore field, engaged in manually pulling a bore pump from 30 metres underground, on an over 40 degree (105 Fahrenheit) day, leaving the large steel pipe columns in the sun to cook off the protective tape, I was held down and had the hot black plastic tape wrapped around my legs.  Little blisters later formed.  But it was all very funny.  I remember laughing through the pain.

§     A new pumping station was commissioned, and I was working on it.  I thought my tradesman had told me to throw out an old plastic valve.  You think nothing of it when you’re doing what you’re told.  The truth was this plastic valve was irreplaceable and could only be replaced ex-Germany.  Two days after I disposed of the valve they asked where it was.  I told them it was in the bin.  I’d done what I’d been told.  The large bin had since been emptied.  I was told to ‘look’ for the valve in the bin until they had the replacement flown in from Europe.  I spent three days in that bin.  They were about the longest three days of my life.

§     My very first memory of laughter at my expense was the de-ragging of a sewage pump.  This job involved opening up a pump and removing the material that had stopped it from working.  To do this job it’s very important to shut off flow from both inlet and outlet pipes.  I was told to do this job with no instruction whatsoever.  When I opened the inspection plate I was literally washed with raw sewage at pressure.  It went everywhere, including in my mouth, through my hair, saturating my clothing.  All the tradesman said with a snigger was, “Now you’ve learned a lesson.”

These are only the stories that are notable and that linger on the memory, and they don’t appear to be the reasons I was affected by workplace trauma, for there was a far more insidious undercurrent than what’s depicted in these stories.  The truth is that workplace was pretty toxic, but it was normal back then.  None of us questioned it.  It was what it was, even if it were wrong.

One thing we must remember about today’s #MeToo era is it’s for the truth that we stand.  Nowhere again should there ever be vulnerable people abused in the name of fun.  Nowhere again is trauma to be done on young lives that rely on the safety of those who should keep them safe.

Yet, for the record, I’m thankful for these experiences overall, for they have shaped who I am today and what I have achieved as an advocate against violence in the workplace, home or elsewhere.