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worst cock up? probably agreeing to work for ######### Arch~###### P########ts !
Although i must say getting into archaeology (a field i love) as a job instead of a hobby ranks fairly highly at the moment!!
deep
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last Tuesday, day 1 of an evaluation
The land agent didnt turn up to unlock the gate.
The machine was not working and a fitter had to be called out
the planning commitee turned up and stopped work
hit a live water main live (the first time in 26 years)
the curator was off sick so couldnt inpsect the trenches
the engineer didnt turn up to 3.30 so there was not enough time to back fill the trenches as the machine drivers finished at 4.00 ....
Peter
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Dr Peter,
Water - phew, lucky you missed the electricity. gas and cable! Sounds like a bad day but I've had worse!! [8D]
Brings up another topic though - the difficulty trying to get accurate service plans (you DO try I hope).
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imagine ... 2 county archaeologists... 15 detectorists... one battlefield survey... and on a Sunday (a Sunday mind you) a bloody fellow co working council worker comes along and locks the only gate inot where we are... before driving off with teh only key....
" Did you not see us?" I managed to splutter with barely controlled anger when we managed to track him down 2 hours later.... "Yes" came his monosyllabic reply.... leaving me impotent with frustration... as he still had the key!
Another day another WSI?
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Right. Ha Ha. Havent admitted this one in public, rather embarrassing but Gumbo doing one of his first evals for particular unit was very happy that he had booked a mini-digger for only ?80 per day. Two trenches two days plenty of profit he thought, jobs a good-un. So, Gumbo turns up to field in middle of f****** nowhere as does said machine, unfortunately Gumbo had failed to ask whether cost of hire included the driver. It didnt.
Anyway in a unbelievably flukely blag, Gumbo managed to con machine deliverer into becoming a 'digger driver' for two days (in the broadest sense of the word), which although got the job done was lets say a little 'rustic' and meant the bloke had to close his hire shop for two days.
Word didnt get back to unit and Gumbo managed to persuade county that it really was too far and unimportant for him to come out to see...
Sorry.
Gumbo
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Heard a lovely tale about a London based consultant, who when a field arch. dug the material between what turned out to be graves in the belief that they were beam-slots.
I managed a similar trick digging the ploughsoil out beside a vertical sided land drain (natural backfilled of course). The visiting Curator didn't spot my mistake, so when the report went in I had to chronicle my cock-up in said publication to explain why original interpretation was completely wrong!
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not my worse, but had reason to remember this recently. Lost whole Community Programme fieldwalking team in the fog. Or were they hiding?
Another one. Early days of geophysical survey with a prototype magnetometer. The results came out as a 20m square on individual printouts (like a receipt). You had to cut out the squares then paste them onto paper. Forgot to mark which way was north. No saved file. One of a few reasons why they 'let me go'????
and another...absolute diatribe against an eminent church archaeologist acting as consultant who had questioned my interpretation. Thought he was long gone, but just around the corner and heard the lot (I can swear a lot and don't always have due respect for such grown ups). Didn't stay much longer with the unit B)
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WELL!!!!!!!!
Cock uo number one happened when digging just outside a roman fort, supervisor didn't machine down to the right level had had us diggin out some 'wonderful pits' which turned out to be last years evaluation trenches!
Cock up number 2...the wonderful developers who were working on site around us proceeded to machine through a sewer pipe and flood the trench with yummy yummy poo and other such joys
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My biggest error of judgement was to accept a contract from a firm of archaeological "consultants". Essentially an incompetent shower of detritus with absolutely no respect for the archaeology who did their utmost to please the developer-despite the fact that said developer hacked and slashed their way through scheduled ancient monuments/demolished listed buildings and were, well, hooligans really.Never again. On a personal note of admission-my first paid job in archaeology involved watching a machine whilst stripping in a sideways blizzard. I managed to dig away at least a third of the site before the boss came back from a three hour jolly in the warm....B)Aforementioned "consultants" advertising on BAJR at present...buyer beware....be afraid...be very afraid...
