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Stories from the Celtic Tiger Years Mod Warning in OP PLEASE READ

chops018

Does anyone have any good (or bad) stories from the Celtic Tiger years?

You always hear phrases about how people partied etc., was there just a constant flow of credit available to people and people actually taking the money e.g. was there actually teachers on circa €30k a year buying a house and car and an apartment somewhere.

I was in school and college during these years, graduated into the recession, so I didn't really see what was fully going on at the time bar the fact everyone was working and had money. My dad was working on the buildings on great money and my mam was working away also, we were never stuck really money-wise, also rent seemed to be a lot cheaper back then and fuel and also my college fees were only around €800 a year along with wages being fairly similar to what they are now (from what I can remember anyway, will stand corrected if I am wrong)

Mod warning: Any further discussion of Financial institutions in depth will result in a thread ban. Do not derail this thread with that form of discussion.

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Randy Archer
ShatterAlan

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[Deleted User]

Sebastian Dangerfield wrote: »

Jesus I was on about £200 in 2000 for the same thing with Sisk. Wish my timing had been better!

My own young lad was on £130 in 1998 labouring. It was the best thing for him, If he’d been getting a multiple of that seven or eight years later I couldn’t have motivated him to study.

padd b1975

Sebastian Dangerfield wrote: »

Jesus I was on about £200 in 2000 for the same thing with Sisk. Wish my timing had been better!

I was welding 3 inch gas pipes in 2004.

Think I was getting just under 900!

What a schmuk I was with my skills and responsibilities.

[Deleted User]

Sunny Disposition wrote: »

Money for construction labourers went up a lot during the good times, it did get to a stage where it was crazy for what they were doing. But it can be hard work, not something to be sniffed at, generally able to make a reasonable living in that line of work.

Yeah, labour priced itself out of building my house, I couldn't pay the asking so I ended up doing it myself.

Muahahaha

Sunny Disposition wrote: »

Money for construction labourers went up a lot during the good times, it did get to a stage where it was crazy for what they were doing. But it can be hard work, not something to be sniffed at, generally able to make a reasonable living in that line of work.

Its definitely hard work and when labourers get into their fifties thats when the body starts creaking with pain and muscle tears

Wanderer78

Randy Archer wrote:

They donâ€™t want to do hard physical work, they ought to have worked harder in school . We can always hire immigrants who will do it for cheaper , or robots (for some trades )

Learning disabilities and other complex disorders would be common enough in the trades

BattleCorp

mgn wrote: »

Whats wrong with earning good money as a labourer, a lot of it is hard physical work and can be dangerous at times.

It shouldn't be dangerous if health and safety on site is any good.

PhilOssophy

Can we get back to the funny stories please

muddle84

Randy Archer wrote: »

Manufacturing is a start. Even super markets (obviously not a labourer );have dropped the amount of staff needed on the tills with the installation of self service check outs . Imagine paying a till lady over 10 euro an hour ? No chance

Farms hands were pricy during the boom too

Security on building sites and cleaners were taking the piss during the boom

Manufacturing makes perfect sense for automation. I don't know of any labourer jobs that have been automated. None of the jobs you mentioned are what would be described as a labourer from my experience and i worked as a labourer for a few years.
I would hope all "till ladies" are getting paid over €10 as the minimum wage is €10.10.

Either way, back to the stories. I worked with a few lads that bought cars and holidays with their mortgages when they bought or built houses. They were delighted with the brand new audi's and the carribean cruises. When i explained to them that they'll be paying for the them for the duration of their mortgages they laughed at me. Sure whats another 40k onto 300k you won't even notice it in the monthly payments.

Another strange one that happened me, i was turned down for a student credit card in 2007 but a few weeks later i was in the bank and they told me i had been approved for a 10,000 car loan if i would like to upgrade my car. I didn't apply for this loan or ever mention a car loan and i was still a student with very little income at the time.

ELM327

Randy Archer wrote: »

Manufacturing is a start. Even super markets (obviously not a labourer );have dropped the amount of staff needed on the tills with the installation of self service check outs . Imagine paying a till lady over 10 euro an hour ? No chance

Farms hands were pricy during the boom too

Security on building sites and cleaners were taking the piss during the boom

Most are on a fair bit more than that.
Years ago I briefly dated a girl that was working in penneys and she was on 15 quid an hour.

Tesco workers would be on more than 10/h too.

The Davestator

READ THE THREAD TITLE PEOPLE.

Ruining a good thread with inane arguing

Marty Xavier

Sunny Disposition wrote: »

Money for construction labourers went up a lot during the good times, it did get to a stage where it was crazy for what they were doing. But it can be hard work, not something to be sniffed at, generally able to make a reasonable living in that line of work.

I am doing a patio at home and I offered to help out a lad I was giving €150 for the day last Saturday laying out the gravel and sand etc. We had the job done in about 2.5 hours. So shovelling and filling barrows, driving the barrows across the lawn and dumping them by aprox 50 times! (He did the levels and all that after).
I was ****ed for the evening after it. Imagine having to do that all day, total respect for labourers. The fancy dan paver only arrived when everything was ready for him on Monday and gone Wed evening with €1500 in his pocket excluding materials.

homes_for_all

Given the week that's in it, I knew a guy (builder) who went up to the Galway Races. Boozing from Monday to Thursday (the end of the real races he would say!). Anyway this was pretty normal for builders but one year he had a new girlfriend. They weren't going out long, a few months, but she's annoyed by this lads week away. To placate her, he sent her to New York for the week then joined her over there on the Friday for the Bank Holiday weekend.

Motivator

I went to New York for a summer in 2006. Didn’t go near the GAA lads and other J1 crowd who were in the Hamptons or the Bronx. I got a crap apartment in Chinatown and landed a job in a big American construction firm. I was on $40 an hour because the job was running way behind schedule and they had to get it finished before the Autumn (something to do with the rivers). It was insane money and I did absolutely nothing for 4 months. If I was told to do something I’d smile politely and then go and get one of the Mexicans or Brazilians to do it. The foremen always turned a blind eye to lads that didn’t give them grief. The Mexicans would crib about it and have to be told three or four times to do something whereas they only had to tell me once.

I was clearing $2,000 a week cash in hand and blew every single penny of it riding a mad number of women and doing every drug I could get my hands on. Best 4 months I’ve ever put down and was some experience.

Would I labour full time? No chance but I respect every single person that does it.

antimatterx

Marty Xavier wrote: »

I am doing a patio at home and I offered to help out a lad I was giving €150 for the day last Saturday laying out the gravel and sand etc. We had the job done in about 2.5 hours. So shovelling and filling barrows, driving the barrows across the lawn and dumping them by aprox 50 times! (He did the levels and all that after).
I was ****ed for the evening after it. Imagine having to do that all day, total respect for labourers. The fancy dan paver only arrived when everything was ready for him on Monday and gone Wed evening with €1500 in his pocket excluding materials.

I did it during summers in college and it killed me. It wasn't great money, but the hours were handy and it got me away from the computer all day.

2lazytogetup

Motivator wrote: »

I went to New York for a summer in 2006. Didn’t go near the GAA lads and other J1 crowd who were in the Hamptons or the Bronx. I got a crap apartment in Chinatown and landed a job in a big American construction firm. I was on $40 an hour because the job was running way behind schedule and they had to get it finished before the Autumn (something to do with the rivers). It was insane money and I did absolutely nothing for 4 months. If I was told to do something I’d smile politely and then go and get one of the Mexicans or Brazilians to do it. The foremen always turned a blind eye to lads that didn’t give them grief. The Mexicans would crib about it and have to be told three or four times to do something whereas they only had to tell me once.

I was clearing $2,000 a week cash in hand and blew every single penny of it riding a mad number of women and doing every drug I could get my hands on. Best 4 months I’ve ever put down and was some experience.

Would I labour full time? No chance but I respect every single person that does it.

nice story and appropriate username.

i worked with a guy in an office who never did any work. When his manager asked him to do something he knew who could do it and got them to do it for him, while he networked and found out what other people did. And then presented this work to his boss, perfect work. If i was his boss i would think this guy the best employee, his boss doesn't care how he gets it done, but he got it done. wheres the problem.haha

Blitzkrieger

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

...you say even labourers on building sites were earning more than your desk job....but why not? Building physical infrastructure is real, difficult and valuable work.

One lesson I think a lot of us failed to learn from the last recession was the importance of valuable work. ....

I think we still haven't learned that lesson. Look at 'key workers' during the current crisis. All of a sudden someone stocking shelves and manning a checkout in a supermarket was a valuable employee. Some employers gave bonuses that reflect that, but I doubt if it'll be long before it'll be a race to the bottom in wages again.

My gripe wasn't how much the labourer was being paid - it was how little I was getting paid! And the company I worked for kept telling us how over paid we were while turning over billions in profit every quarter.

It's usually about supply and demand rather than offering a decent wage.

[Deleted User]

Randy Archer wrote: »

Those arguments actually concern the Celtic Tiger, those topics led to its down fall and why the country got so Un competitive . Perhaps if those who did complain and shout stop were listened to back then (there were plenty of voices but they got shouted down by people like you whinging about causing trouble and ruining a nice time ) things might have faired better

This thread wasn’t made for an analysis of what went wrong. You’re free to start one for that in one of the serious forums though.

pgj2015

antimatterx wrote: »

I did it during summers in college and it killed me. It wasn't great money, but the hours were handy and it got me away from the computer all day.

I did it for 4 years after finishing school, it gives you a good work ethic, tough work but its great to work outside. it meant I was never suitable for an office job after it even though I tried one, for me it was impossible to go from wearing snickers, doing manual work and having a laugh with sound lads, to wearing a suit in the formal stiff environment of an office surrounded by backstabbers, I quit after a month and set up my own business.

one thing i remember about laboring was you would go to bed at night and be asleep in id say 10 seconds.

jack of all

pgj2015 wrote: »

one thing i remember about laboring was you would go to bed at night and be asleep in id say 10 seconds.

Reminded me of a little story. Last year I was chatting to a very good all round builder, could turn his hand to anything but particulary good at blockwork. He was almost semi-retired at this stage and we got to talking about blockwork game. I asked him did he ever lay 6" solids (a lot of blockies won't go near them, used a lot in farm building etc and heavy to work with). "Yes" he said "I love them- sleeping pills I call them, after a day working with them you'll sleep like a baby that night!"

BattleCorp

jack of all wrote: »

I asked him did he ever lay 6" solids (a lot of blockies won't go near them, used a lot in farm building etc and heavy to work with).

Used by people who don't give a sh1te about their back.

They are ba5tards. Haven't seen one in years thankfully.

The Davestator

Randy Archer wrote: »

Those arguments actually concern the Celtic Tiger, those topics led to its down fall and why the country got so Un competitive . Perhaps if those who did complain and shout stop were listened to back then (there were plenty of voices but they got shouted down by people like you whinging about causing trouble and ruining a nice time ) things might have faired better

Being blamed on the global financial crisis now

:):)

if you don't have a decent story, move along, no one is interested in discussing the blame game for the end of the Celtic tiger more than a decade later.

Sebastian Dangerfield

pgj2015 wrote: »

one thing i remember about laboring was you would go to bed at night and be asleep in id say 10 seconds.

I'd delivered coal and briquettes, hauled kegs around pub store rooms etc, but nothing ever hit me quite like my first day on a site labouring, and all I was doing was sweeping and moving rubble around the place. I went home, had my dinner and a shower, and went straight to bed with pains in places I didnt even know I had. Nearly cried when I was woken for work the next day

It was grand after a week or two, when I'd gotten used to it and learned all the good places to hide.

No matter how much more I've earned since, nothing quite matched the feeling of a sunny Friday evening, wages fresh in the pocket and a town full of pint bottles to be drank.

Actually that brings me to another Celtic Tiger bad practise - if I was tight for cash Monday -to Thursday (which I inevitably was after the mother took the contribution, phone credit, brylcreem and Lynx was bought and I drank my face off Friday to Sunday) the local would throw out a few pound out of the till, and take it back out of the next cheque that was inevitably cashed there. Where I drank often depended on where the money was owed - you might keep away from a particular place on a weekend if you had a particularly big expense coming up. Some lads used to joke if they ever robbed the pub, they'd leave the stock / till and take the book all this stuff was noted in, it'd be more valuable to them.

partyguinness

Sebastian Dangerfield wrote: »

Actually that brings me to another Celtic Tiger bad practise - if I was tight for cash Monday -to Thursday (which I inevitably was after the mother took the contribution, phone credit, brylcreem and Lynx was bought and I drank my face off Friday to Sunday) the local would throw out a few pound out of the till, and take it back out of the next cheque that was inevitably cashed there. Where I drank often depended on where the money was owed - you might keep away from a particular place on a weekend if you had a particularly big expense coming up. Some lads used to joke if they ever robbed the pub, they'd leave the stock / till and take the book all this stuff was noted in, it'd be more valuable to them.

There was a local in my town just like that. They loved cashing cheques on a Friday and lashing out the pints at 5pm. Deeply cynical. A lot of these young lads were already on the road to alcoholism and could barely write their own name.

Ironically, the pub owners are complete non drinkers.

Claw Hammer

If that pub didn't do it, another one would. If the pubs didn't do it, the bookie would. Youngsters with more money than sense are prey to all sorts of activity. I blame the parents.

Sebastian Dangerfield

Claw Hammer wrote: »

If that pub didn't do it, another one would. If the pubs didn't do it, the bookie would. Youngsters with more money than sense are prey to all sorts of activity. I blame the parents.

My mother did her best to stop publicans taking money off me, by taking it herself first

I'm assured it was redistributed throughout the college year that came after, but I have my doubts.

BattleCorp

Claw Hammer wrote: »

If that pub didn't do it, another one would. If the pubs didn't do it, the bookie would. Youngsters with more money than sense are prey to all sorts of activity. I blame the parents.

Ah yeah. Just so long as there is no personal responsibility. We can't have personal responsibility nowadays.

Necro

The Davestator wrote: »

Being blamed on the global financial crisis now :):)

if you don't have a decent story, move along, no one is interested in discussing the blame game for the end of the Celtic tiger more than a decade later.

Mod:

Folks report posts don't react, user was threadbanned ages ago for similar stuff.

Thread cleaned up now back on topic please.

timple23

One of the more interested jobs I had was working labouring in a place owned by a millionaire one day fencing. There were shrubs in the way of where the machine needed to drive stakes. This was 30/40 ft up an embankment. I think it was 500m of shrubs, every one was pulled by hand and carried down by hand, walked up another 30ft bank where they were temporarily sot to keep them alive. Phone said I walked over 20km that day, it was all either climbing or going down a bank, never done a harder days work since and I've done some 20hr days. 2 full days or work, just moving the plants, cost probably near 1k as machinery had to be brought in to water them over a few days. They were then all replanted in original place.

This was done during a heatwave. Every single plant died.

John_Rambo

Lots of reasons why there were a lot of buff and ripped youngfella's knocking around during the tiger!!

razorblunt

timple23 wrote: »

One of the more interested jobs I had was working labouring in a place owned by a millionaire one day fencing. There were shrubs in the way of where the machine needed to drive stakes. This was 30/40 ft up an embankment. I think it was 500m of shrubs, every one was pulled by hand and carried down by hand, walked up another 30ft bank where they were temporarily sot to keep them alive. Phone said I walked over 20km that day, it was all either climbing or going down a bank, never done a harder days work since and I've done some 20hr days. 2 full days or work, just moving the plants, cost probably near 1k as machinery had to be brought in to water them over a few days. They were then all replanted in original place.

This was done during a heatwave. Every single plant died.

A friend of mine used to do a bit of labouring back then too he told us a story of building a wallled driveway for a guy in the construction game himself who was off in Marbella for 6 weeks over the summer. They arrived with the stonemason who advised that the measurements looked a bit "tight". It was confirmed the house owner himself measured it up so off they went to work. Finished the job over the next few days and rang the builder who asked them to "take the car from the garage to make sure it can fit".
It was an A8 or 6 Series, I think. It had absolutely no hope of fitting.

"Grand, send the lads home for the day, knock it and tell them come back tomorrow to rebuild it".