A pig's ear!

After I dropped out of Naval Architecture, I decided to find work in a bid to save enough money to get back to computing.
Most of my student friends held part-time jobs in local restaurants. They all bragged about the money, the free meals but most of all the abundance of female customers desperately ready and willing to throw themselves at hot-blooded Mediterranean gigolos.
Being a guy who liked to dabble with food, I decided to give it a go.
After a washing-up stint at an Italian Pizzeria in Newcastle I landed a job closer to home working for an Englishman, who by virtue of his Italian wife thought it essential to change his name from Ralph to Raffaele! He constantly played Mario Lanza in his pseudo Italian Village Trattoria to reinforce his Latin filigree!
His self-proclaimed photographic memory helped him remember a handful of Italian words. He was aware that, as I had worked with a few Amalfi expats, I too had picked up enough of the Roman lingo to sound like a Sardinian according to a fellow Italian waiter.
Often, in front of his influential friends, local councillors and factory chiefs, he addressed me in pidgin Italian urging me to decipher and understand his pathetic babble! Keeping a straight face, I usually carried out his commands very loosely, pouring him a glass of red wine instead of white knowing full well that he could not refuse it for fear of being rumbled by his admiring free-loaders.

To his credit, he was a generous guy if a little forgetful. On Christmas Eve afternoon he presented every single member of the staff with a 12lb. turkey...frozen so solid that it only thawed in time for a June barbecue...

I will always remember the centre piece of the famous buffets Ralphie laid on New Year's Eve and other illustrious occasions such as the Mayor’s Ball.
Tables were laden with all kinds of foods, from turkey to salmon, lobster to roast beef...
The Centre Piece was a succulent suckling pig!
The pet suckling pig!
Ralphie loved him so much that no one was ever allowed to take a bite off him.
The reason was only obvious to those of us insiders who knew that immediately after the buffet tables were cleared, Piggy quietly slipped back into hibernation in a chest freezer at the back of the cellar.
Piggy lay there in silence and darkness till the next banquet when he was once again thawed back to glamorous stardom.
In his frozen, brittle state, Piggy was sadly prone to losing various parts of his body when inadvertently knocked. He often emerged from arctic rest with a missing ear.
Whenever faced with such an unfortunate accident, unfazed Ralphie donned his make-up artist’s hat, got the superglue out and calmly carried out a face-saving graft many a Harley Street plastic surgeon would give his right arm for!

Thankfully I didn't last very long in that job!

It was a case of ear today, gone tomorrow!

Jobs you wish you never had???