The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Eight

If you read The Kwiksave Chronicles of Slobberchops , then I can tell you this is going to be in a similar vein to that series. Yeah, it's going to go on and on and maybe never end. Ready?

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The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops will go into some detail over the next few weeks.. er articles about part of my life when I was young, misguided and brash.

Like many, I was once a Software Pirate. That's not unusual in itself but I have a few stories to tell about what happened, and I'll try and not bore you all to tears.

Other article's in this series:


The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Four
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Five
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Six
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops – Part Seven

February 1988

Life at Micro Peripherals was good. ‘Jerzei Balowski’ (left) had left for distributor rivals MSL and my mate @steddyman was now working alongside me.

@steddyman was also an Amiga pirate but not in the same league as myself; what I mean to say is that he didn’t rip everything off, just the good stuff.

He was always the more sensible one of our budding crew and the name ‘steddy’ was very apt in that aspect.

One day this Scottish dude turned up in the Engineering department, which quite co-incidentally was right next to Technical Support.

He had somehow got wind that myself and @steddyman were the company Amiga pirates and made a beeline for me.

To call this bloke enthusiastic was an understatement. He had brought his girlfriend down from the remote highlands of Cumbernauld simply because there was bugger all work there and settled in Accrington of all places.

In future times he would be named ‘Hootmon’ as labelled by ‘The Pieman’ of cracking group ‘The Humble Guys’ due to his heritage and accent, but in the early days he became known as Bumface to his friends.

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‘Bumface’ was not particularly fond of this name, and we simply couldn’t understand why? .... and so we continued to name him with this moniker for at least the next few years much to his annoyance.

I remember quite clearly my first visit to Hootmon’s (aka Bumface's) place. He was holed up in a rented terraced house in a dodgy part of town and the place was a real mess. Talk about stuff everywhere! He did have a decent collection of Amiga ripped off disks though, and so I had found another source of warez.

Micro Peripherals was a very ‘sales’ driven company, and the directors were a little unconventional to say the least. I will name them as ‘ID’ and ‘IJ’ as that was often how they were referred as.

‘IJ’ was a middle-aged bloke with wild grey hair and crazy eyes that would rotate in a circular fashion. He could be considered a jovial bubbly happy person if a little eccentric and was quite approachable, but you had to avoid the eyes or you could become mesmerized.

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‘ID’ was also middle-aged, but much more proactive and if anything reminds me now of an aggressive Alan Sugar (The Apprentice). He didn’t mince his words and used to terrorise the sales staff if they didn’t perform by yelling publicly at them with harsh demeaning threats.

I did hear raving tales (non-verified) from the Sales people of ‘ID’ forcing them to work weekends in training stints that went on for hours in an attempt to make them more aggressive. This included role playing, lots of shouting and firing if they did not adapt fast enough.

The ‘Techies’ were mostly safe from the iron grip of ‘ID’ though his visits from Basingstoke did strike terror into our hearts, his reputation was so fearsome.

One day 'ID' entered the Technical Support department and started having a go at @steddyman for no apparent reason. I had been working there for months at this point and was deemed ‘established’ while @steddyman was new and still learning the ropes.

I have contacted @steddyman about this incident recently and have verified the information that ‘ID’ demanded of him to ‘Clean the Stairs’.

As @steddyman was hired as a ‘techy’ his response to this was ‘FUCK OFF’ although worded a little more tactfully.

‘ID’ seemed to get off at making some of his new staff uncomfortable and learning to cope with his demeanour was something we would figure out. What I do remember is thinking, ‘what a dick’ after he had left.

He never bothered @steddyman again after this minor battle of nerve. You see the trick to gaining ‘ID’’s respect was simply to rebuke his ridiculous demands. This was something I stored up in my brain bank and used extremely well to my advantage around a year later.

To be continued...

All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse'

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