Greybeards tale

[George - I seem to remember in one of your comments you saying that you were thinking of opening up the board to experiences of initiations etc. outside the nursing profession, but I can't find it now. Perhaps you thought better of it when things got busier. Anyway, I offer this contribution somewhat outside the guidelines, and if you choose to delete it then I won't be offended in any way. Feel free to edit these first paragraphs if you wish.
"Greybeard"]

Taking up George's thoughts to maybe open up this board a bit more, this experience has nothing to do with nursing, but with his permission I could recount the events which introduced me to this sort of activity, and gave me a lifelong interest in similar happenings. Before the internet made such information easier to come by, there used to be stories of works initiation ceremonies in the various men's magazines, which I always enjoyed. I've looked for sites with these on recently, but with no success. Also, this story is perhaps not so much initiation as retribution!

When I was a student in the mid-sixties, I worked for a smallish wine, beer and spirit wholesalers as a summer job. I was young and fit, and spent most of my time in the warehouse taking crates of newly-bottled beer from the bottling plant to the storage area and stacking them, hard physical labour. When I started, I was looked on as something of an oddity - "Who would want to come here and work in their holidays?" - but I needed the money! Most of the staff were quite tolerant of the new, naive, still-wet-behind-the-ears employee, probably because I was doing the job they most disliked without complaint. After a few weeks settling in, and making friends with the storemen and lorry drivers, I was seriously warned never to go into the bottling plant on my own. I was slightly surprised at this, as a lot of the staff had been in the Forces, and seemed unafraid of anything or anybody. However, when I looked in, I could understand why. It was hot, steamy, noisy, and staffed entirely by about a dozen women, with the exception of the foreman, Harry, who was short, fat, in his fifties, and with a resigned air about him. The women were all old to me, but looking back were probably in their late twenties to forties, and very uninhibited. I certainly learnt a lot of new words listening to them, and heard of activities I had never even dreamt of (this was the sixties, after all) as I collected the crates of beer from where they were stacked just outside the plant doorway.

There was another student working there, Roger, who had started the week before me. He had far more confidence than me, and had to go into the bottling plant three or four times a week with some documentation. He would be whistled at by the women, and then cheek them off by implying that they were too old for him, and married. Harry mentioned this during one teabreak, which he often took with the warehouse staff as it was cooler and more peaceful, and as he said, "Things get a bit rough in there sometimes. He shouldn't wind the girls up - I have to suffer for it, and he will too." Nothing more was said or thought about this until Roger came in one Monday morning, and announced that this was his last week, and he couldn't wait to get back to the student life of drinking and chasing young girls. That didn't win him any friends among the staff, who thought all students were living off the tax they paid, and had an easy life. He was also foolish enough to say this to the bottling plant girls, with some remark that he was tired of seeing wrinkles and sags. Even I thought he was living dangerously.

About the middle of the Friday afternoon of that week, the warehouse was quiet, as most of the office staff and draymen had gone off to set up the bars at a nearby racecourse, where the company had the bar franchise for the weekend. The bottling plant was having its end-of-week cleanup and the girls were in a frivolous mood, judging by the shrieks and laughter coming through the plant doorway. Roger and I were clearing the last of the morning's production from the plant, and I had just set off with my sack-truck loaded with the last crates when I heard a rumpus behind me. I looked back to see Roger being dragged into the plant by some of the girls - he didn't look too worried, although even if he had, I had no intention of going up against that lot to rescue him. I went off to find some of the other staff, and told them the tale. "Oh no, they haven't started that again, have they? I though it had gone too quiet recently! " was one comment, and after rounding up the few people left, a party set off to the bottling plant.

Picture a doorway, with about five faces peering cautiously around the corners, wondering what what sight would meet their eyes. What they did see a few yards away was literally a scrum of women, with a figure on the ground in the middle, and three others kneeling around it. There were some buckets of water placed nearby, and I could see someone was in for a soaking. The noise was deafening, almost like a pack of hounds and their quarry. Roger was being held down, stretched out by two of the older women, one at each end, while the third was tickling him, asking him if he still thought that they were old and saggy. He was shrieking with laughter and trying to escape. During all this his shirt inevitably rode up and some bare ribs appeared.

"Oh dear, that's all we needed" said a head next to mine, and he was right. The mood of the party subtly changed, and became more loaded. "Undo his shirt, so's we can see more" said a voice, and buttons were quickly undone and then Roger was barechested. There was a slight lull in the proceedings while there was a unspoken debate on whether to go further, and then another voice said "Strip him - us old women like younger men". A look of complete shock and horror crossed Roger's face when he realised that it was going to happen, and there was nothing he could do about it. The girls saw us looking from the doorway, and one or two actually moved back a bit to give us a better view, daring us to come and attempt a rescue. The watchers had no intention of doing anything of the sort, and were taking an almost guilty enjoyment in seeing what happened next, and thanking their lucky stars that it wasn't them in that predicament. Looking back, the interesting thing was that the next actions were taken in a well controlled and orderly manner, almost rehearsed, as if it was agreed to make the most of the opportunity. Roger's shoes and socks were taken off, and his feet tickled with a big pasteing brush used for putting glue onto labels, and then his ribs and under his arms. Then the buttons on his trousers were carefully undone and the garment slowly removed. The pack got noisier, and then Roger's last protection was removed. After a few seconds for contemplation of the view before them, the comments came thick and fast.
"Those girls aren't missing much this summer!"
"....and he's got the cheek to call us wrinkly!"
"I didn't think it was that cold in here"
From where we were, I personally didn't think they needed to be quite so unkind, but hell hath no fury like women scorned, etc.

Then the charge-hand, a middle-aged woman, said "Right, fetch the brooms" Brooms? My imagination started working overtime, and the thought of some of the possible options made my eyes water. One broom quickly appeared, but a second couldn't be found. "Never mind, turn him over" said the boss. Roger was put face down on the floor, and one or two girls took the opportunity to fondle and smack his bottom. Then, with great care, the broom handle was fed up one sleeve of Roger's shirt, across his back, and down the other sleeve, leaving him with his arms out horizontaly, like a scarecrow. He was carefully helped to his feet, stood against a wall, and two buckets of cold water thrown at him. He couldn't duck or turn, or hide his embarrassment (or anything else!).

At this point, Harry the foreman who had been looking on from his office, took pity on Roger and called out "Tea's up". The girls' priority changed from baiting a helpless male to the much more important refreshment, which nothing was allowed to interrupt, and they trooped off to their tearoom, chattering loudly. A couple stayed behind to throw Roger's clothes and shoes at the onlookers and then followed.

Roger slowly staggered towards the doorway and us, and we managed to extract the broom and let him dry off a bit and dress. He was in a daze, and was very grateful for the cup of tea which came next. There was obviously no more work going to be done that afternoon, and more stories were told. Apparently, before management had found out about this activity, and tried to put a stop to it, Friday afternoons were a time when the warehouse staff tended to move around in threes! Anyone with a birthday coming up, leaving the job or just on their own was liable to be grabbed, and then reappear some time later wearing only a broom or two, and in various degrees of personal excitement, depending on how young or goodlooking he was, and how long the girls had taken with him. Previous victims had complained that the worst problem was trying to remove animal glue from the pasteing brush from hair, where it tended to stick like, well, glue. The use for the second broom was interesting - with only one, the girls had found that their victim could push the handle of the broom against a wall and extricate themselves. A second broom inserted in the opposite direction to the first made this almost impossible, and the victim definitely needed help to escape. An alternative was to use one broom and tie the victim's wrists to the broom with his socks or underwear. My ride home on the bus was very thoughtful that day.

There was never any retaliation by the male warehouse staff - for one, they were outnumbered, and I think they understood that anything like that would cause more trouble that they could handle. However, careful observers had noticed that the girls would usually strip and tease one of their number who was leaving, but only in the plant behind closed doors, and never advertise the event. Solidarity amongst women. Harry tended to be the only male allowed, but if he let it become known to a select few that someone was leaving, then those in the know would creep off and find a vantage point on top of some crates in the warehouse, and look in the ventilation gaps set high in the plant wall for a free show.

The next week, I had to take over Roger's documention duties, presumably because I was the most junior, and expendable. I entered the plant in fear and trembling on the Monday morning. I made sure I was very polite and complimentary, and they explained that they had been 'unkind' to Roger because he had been so rude. All went well until the middle of the week, when one of them asked very innocently how much longer I would be working there. I might have been young, but I wasn't stupid.
"I leave two weeks this coming Friday"
"Oh, that's a week after Janice" Looks were exchanged amongst some of the girls which I thought it was tactful not to see. "So we'll see more of a nice polite young man like you?"
"Oh yes, I expect so!" More looks and smiles!

I had lied. My final pay packet was in the warehouse office one week and two days later at four o'clock. By five past, I was legging it up the road to the bus stop with a feeling of huge relief that I hadn't been caught, happy memories of Janice's leaving celebration that afternoon, some good stories to tell in the bar at Uni, and planning to go back the next summer if they would have me.