Deltic Again

Its Monday and the big countdown starts for me. Next Monday I should be back at work after 10 weeks absent with my new knee. I don’t know whether I’m looking forward to it or dreading it. Both in like measure.

Still on the subject of Deltic Engineering, (see previous posts), we had a young guy, about 28yo I think, who was appointed the installation and service engineer and he had the job of going to Poland to install the machinery I was writing about.
His first trip lasted nearly two months and when he came back the main subject of conversation wasn’t the machinery but the girl he had acquired. Apparently he had persuaded her to leave her boyfriend and move into the hotel with him.
A short while later he had to return for about three weeks and he came back with the same story. A couple of months went by and he had to return for a week and that is where things went pear shape. (No she wasn’t pregnant). The girl told him she had gone back to her old boyfriend so goodbye. He now got upset and got drunk big time. He went unconscious in the taxi taking him back to his hotel and the driver seems to have robbed him of his passport and money and dropped him off at the hospital. He awoke in a straightjacket in a rubber room and lost 3 days work as a result.
The Polish company were naturally upset by this and of course refused to pay his hotel bill for the three days and other incidental expenses.
Back in Manchester he didn’t even get a bollacking and was treated as a hero, booze and women you see. (Or perhaps you don’t?). He had his fiancé to return to as well. Crazy bastard.
While all this was happening our electrician had to go to South Wales to attend a breakdown and failed to fix the problem. He set off back to Manchester without letting the company know and without phoning us, the first we knew was when an irate manager was phoning us to find out what was happening. We tried to phone him on the company mobile he had been lent, this is 1998 and not everyone owned one then, but it was turned off. When he returned he was in so much trouble he was nearly sacked and when he claimed he didn’t know a mobile had to be turned on (crazy?) it was nearly the last straw. Compare that to the treatment of our man in Poland and its no wonder Deltic was such an unhappy place to work. I think it sent me crazy.