The Adventures of a Small Businessman in the Forbidden Zone

For lunch my colleagues and I had gone to the Haunch of Venison to celebrate and I had partaken of a lovely tuna sandwich and a pint of Guinness. Okay, maybe four. Sandwiches.

Back in the office with just a couple of hours to go and I was demob happy. Then Village came out and lumbered me with his three thirty appointment.

“Mrs …has come into some money. Her sister and only surviving relative has passed away leaving her a tidy sum. She wants some investment advice. You passed your investment exams last month, so it will be good practice for you. You are probably more up to date than me at the moment anyway.” This last bit was probably true but hardly made me unique amongst the other bipeds inhabiting planet earth.

What he meant actually was that he was out of his depth as usual. He spent more time out of his depth than a cross channel swimmer. His suit had inflatable armbands.

Anyway I met the lady in the interview room over a cup of coffee. In retrospect I should have offered her a cup as well, but I had consumed an awful lot of ‘sandwiches’ at lunchtime.

I actually did a very professional job. First we made a full list of her existing investments – it was massive. If she had moved everything offshore she would have started a run on sterling.

Secondly we listed all her expenses and commitments – negligible. She did not need any more money.

Finally I asked her did she have anything in particular she wanted to do with the funds, invest in renewable technology, set up a trust for friends that sort of thing.

At the end of all this it was quite clear that she did not need the windfall, she had no family or friends that she planned to leave anything to, no charity she wished to support. When she died the Government would probably get the lot.

“So,what do you think I should do with the money?” the lady asked.

“Honestly,” I said, “Spend it.”

“Spend it?” She sounded puzzled.

“Yes, spend it. Live a little. Splash out on some of the finer things in life and just enjoy it. Take a round the world cruise, first class. Get yourself a toyboy! Tell you what, we are going to Ibiza in the morning, come with us!” I joked. My girlfriend would have gone ape shit if the old dear had turned up at the airport.

“Seriously,” I told her, “You already have all the investments we could recommend. All you could do is buy more of them. Why not use the money to make yourself happy?”

“I will think about what you have said and act accordingly,” she said. Then she rose slowly from the table, thanked me politely for my time and left.

I had a nice two-week holiday and returned to find out just how much she had appreciated my candid advice. This time I wasn’t even summoned into the office for a dressing down. Village just left the written warning from Head Office in the middle of my desk.

I still maintain it was good advice…

Every six months we would get an appraisal on our performance. It was supposed to be a private and frank discussion between the manager and the member of staff. The manager would tell me how he judged my performance, in this case not happy and not impressed. I then had a chance to tell him how I felt, in this case less happy and much less impressed. He was then supposed to tell me his plans for my further training and I would have the opportunity to request certain training courses that I felt might be beneficial.

At the end of the appraisal everything that had been said and agreed upon would be written down, signed by both parties and sent to Head Office for review.

It was early December and McFier and I had just had a particularly unhelpful discussion. The only thing we agreed upon was that he wanted rid of me and I wanted to go. We both signed the appraisal, sealed it in an internal mail envelope and left it for posting.

Imagine my surprise when Jane the office typist whispered in my ear that McFier had taken the envelope back into his office and replaced it later when he thought no one was watching. What was he up to, I wondered?

So on my way to the staff room at lunchtime I lifted the envelope and took it somewhere private to see what he had done. The sneaky bastard had stapled a hand written note to the front of the appraisal.

It contained several accusations:

Firstly it claimed I was a total drunk, always in the pub. He knew because he passed my house most evenings on his way home from his snooker club and I was never home. Quite correct. I was always at martial arts classes.

Secondly he suspected that I was having sex with most of the staff, he didn’t distinguish between the males and females, and this could be a serious security threat (You need two sets of keys to access any place in the bank holding cash). He had reports that members of staff were seen regularly leaving my home on Sunday mornings having obviously spent the night. This was partially correct. Lots of staff used my place for free overnight accommodation. They lived in rural villages so if we had a night out on the town they would stay over to save on taxi fares. I slept on my own in my own bed.

Thirdly he suspected that I was subject to potentially violent mood swings and he feared that one-day he might be the victim of an unprovoked physical assault. This at least was a plausible accusation. Except the bit about unprovoked. He was so annoying to work for that even Mother Teresa herself would have ended up head-butting him eventually.

He finally requested that I be transferred as soon as possible to the worst shit hole in the branch network, there to rot until I left or retired. Funnily enough my next move was to Wakefield.

I almost let the thing go – anything for a transfer. In the end I threw it down the toilet and made sure only the agreed appraisal reached Head Office. Then I plotted revenge.

A couple of weeks later it was time for the Office Christmas party and disco. We hired an intimate Italian restaurant for the event. It was a lovely evening. Great food and great company. Village spent the evening at one end of the room; I spent it at the other. When he looked set to go home early I went over to him with two pints of Guinness. Clearly worried that I might have had too much to drink and was now on a hair trigger to the aforementioned unprovoked physical assault, He looked frantically for a way out. No dice. I was between him and the door. He looked very relieved when I offered him one of the pints.

“I know we don’t often see eye to eye on things, but it is after all the season of goodwill, so I would like to buy you a drink and wish you all the best,” I said handing over the Guinness.

“Very civil of you and most unexpected,” he replied taking the pint from me. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I agreed.

“I would buy you one back but my taxi is waiting outside.” This was not unexpected; he was tighter than a Scotsman at his own wake.

“No problem. Some other time perhaps.”

McFier downed his pint, wished us all a pleasant evening and left us to enjoy the rest of the evenings entertainment.

Enjoy it I did. You see a friend of mine at karate was a hospital staff nurse in the X ray department. Apparently if you need a stomach X-ray your stomach needs to be completely empty to get a clear picture. So they give the patients a sachet of this powder in a glass of water and thirty minutes later, bang. Ready for X-ray. My friend swore that this stuff could clear a blocked drain. McFier`s Guinness had three sachets in it. We didn’t see him at work for the rest of the week and he was still feeling the ill effects when he returned to work the following Monday.

We could tell because his tie was clean.

I got another opportunity for revenge courtesy of a professional wrestler who banked with us. Mr.James was not just big he was awesome. When he entered a room you had to relocate the furniture to accommodate him. He was a one-man total eclipse of the sun. Mr. James regularly appeared on TV and was a well-known figure in the sport. I always found him to be a perfect gentleman with a very dry sense of humour. The original ‘gentle giant’ you might say.

I was told that he had made some ill-advised investment decisions, in particular he had been persuaded to invest in a local hotel that turned into a money pit. It sucked away his cash faster than an unscrupulous lawyer in a nasty divorce.

To clear his debts Mr.James agreed to do an expose on wrestling for one of the sleazier Sunday tabloids and was promised a large sum of money for his efforts when the newspaper published the article. Apparently wrestling bouts were choreographed and the results fixed. Get away! Really? I am truly shocked.

Against the promised influx of funds the Village Idiot told Mr. James it was okay for him to issue some large cheques. You remember what I said about doing everything by the book? Well it applies to managers as well. Not for the first time McFier had exceeded his authority and was instructed by his superiors to bounce the cheques.

The angry wrestler appeared in our inquiries section spitting blood. He looked like Conan the Barbarian overdosed on Angel Dust.

“Where is the sniveling little shit,” he growled at me. “I want to speak to him. Now.”

Some of the cheques had been given to people even bigger and a lot nastier than our friendly wrestler. McFier had caused him a whole world of trouble.

“Take a seat please Mr. James, I`ll tell him you are here.”

When I told McFier that ‘Mister Angry’ had requested an audience he went white as a sheet.

“Tell him I’m not here,” he ordered.

“You want me to tell lies for you. I am not sure my conscience will permit me to do that.” I was enjoying his discomfort immensely.

“Look the man is a maniac when he’s angry. I am not going to see him and that is final.You will tell him that I am out with customers and not expected back today or you will spend the rest of your time here filing paperwork all day. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.I hear and obey master. I will tell him exactly what you told me to.”

When I returned to the interview room Mr.James had not taken a seat as I had suggested. He was pacing round the room like a wounded tiger with a bad attitude.

“Well where is he?” he demanded and his demeanor was quite threatening. The man towered over me and I could see he was barely in control of his temper.

“Sorry Mr.James but the sniveling shit you referred to earlier has instructed me to tell you that he is out with customers and is not expected to be back today.”

“The yellow livered bastard, I’m gonna kill him” he growled and head butted the wall leaving a most impressive dent in the plasterwork but causing no visible damage to his forehead whatsoever. I decided I didn’t want to be the next victim of his anger. I needed to deflect his rage before he head butted me.

“ If I might give you some information you may find useful Mr. James, you may be interested to know that Mr. McFier drives a Jaguar, license plate number… The Jaguar is his pride and joy – used to belong to a minor member of the Royal family according to the logbook. He parks the car in a private parking space on the third floor of the multi storey car park on Smith Street. As far as I know they don’t have cameras on the third floor, only at the entrance and exit.”

For the first time that morning he smiled. “Thanks, I owe you one.”

“Pleasure Mr. James.” I was just relieved to get rid of him.

So it was that Mr. McFier, having left the branch via the service exit disguised as a Tibetan monk, discovered his Jaguar pride and joy had been defaced by vandals. The words ‘shithead bastard’ had been written large on the bonnet in paint stripper. Even after the car was resprayed you could still make out the words in certain light.

At least I didn’t get snotted by an irate Neanderthal.

Soon afterwards Village and I both got our wish – I was transferred to another area altogether. I was off to a branch in Wakefield with a promotion to office supervisor. This was one of the bigger branches in the network, about 45 staff, and it was run an absolutely Dickensian manner by an over -manager and three branch managers. Or to be more accurate, four two-faced bastards. The office politics was unbearable. Each of the managers seemed hell bent on scoring points off the others, so it didn’t make for a pleasant atmosphere.

I swear if they could have got away with birching the junior staff for minor infringements, everybody working on counter would have been scarred for life. One young cashier called Nicky was so afraid of the supervisors that if her till was short at the end of the day she would make up the difference from her own pocket. There was never any proof that he was taking money out if her till was over but she was still sacked for dishonesty – try getting another job with that kind of employers reference. Of course the nasty bastards in charge that had Nicky so terrified in the first place just carried on being nasty bastards. I tell you, the place exuded bad vibes.

However as this was the main branch for the region, we were always being requested to supply staff for the other smaller branches to cover illness or holidays. I always volunteered for this because you got travel expenses and invariably the other branches had a much nicer working environment.

When I was on manager relief at one local branch the staff told me a great story about possibly the world’s worst bank robber. He was an opportunist thief. In court he was described as an unemployed building worker, and in his defense, his lawyer claimed he had been drinking heavily in Yates Wine Lodge having that morning cashed his unemployment benefit cheque. It was his lawyer’s assertion that nobody of sound mind would have attempted what his client did.

He was on his way home when he walked around a corner and straight in to a security guard delivering cash to the bank. Taking this as a gift from heaven he punched the security guard hard in the stomach, making the guard drop the bags of money he carried in each hand.

The intrepid thief grabbed the bags and set off down the street like an Olympic sprinter. The only problem was that the bags contained ten pence pieces, two pence pieces and a bag of pennies. Total Value: about £160. Total weight: slightly more than a Toyota Landcruiser complete with mum and dad, 2.2 children and fluffy Golden Retriever called Ben. I am trying to emphasize that his haul was very, very heavy.

The thief got about fifty yards down the street before he had a coronary thrombosis from the weight of the coins and collapsed in a heap. The security guards casually walked up to him and held him until the police arrived.

The highlight of the working week at the main branch was the Monday lunchtime review of the weekend security camera tapes.

At the time the bank was conducting an experiment at several big high street branches, one of which was ours. They had rented a shop as close as possible to the branch and fitted it out with automatic machines for customers to use to get cash, pay into their accounts, change details to standing orders, that sort of thing. Access to the building was by way of swiping your bankcard through a locking mechanism on the door – the idea being to keep the riff raff out and stop tramps using it as a hotel. The trouble was that the machines were technically operational twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. So if you had a card you could get into the nice warm room at four AM after you and the new found love of your life had been kicked out of the nightclubs.

You can imagine some of the things the cleaners found in there after the weekend. For instance, enough half eaten takeaway fast food to alleviate famine in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Okay you could conceivably be so drunk that after getting your money from the machine, you have no recollection of where the pizza marinara next to you came from, who owned it or why your elbow was wresting squarely in the middle of it. But how could you leave a city center building and forget to put your shoes and knickers back on?

One Christmas Eve we found a big sack in there full of carefully wrapped presents labeled to ‘Johnny from Mum &Dad’ and to ‘Sally from Mum & Dad’. Not enough information for us to return them in time for the big day I’m afraid. Even Santa Claus needs a postal code. I hope ‘Dad’ had an understanding family or that would be a recipe for a pretty unpleasant Christmas morning.

The cleaners were going mad about the stuff they had to clean up in there after the weekend. Our lost property locker quickly expanded into a lost property room. After one particularly wet week in November we ended up with enough umbrellas, hats and coats to open a market stall. Every couple of weeks the office messenger would take the lot down to the Oxfam shop – if he didn’t the stuff would have taken over the entire branch. Soon Oxfam were doing so much trade they expanded into the empty premises next door and were in danger of moving into the supertax bracket.

Then some extremely unsavoury items started to turn up – used needles. The leftovers from injecting hard drugs. Next thing we knew, we were collecting more hazardous waste than the local hospital

This was the last straw for the cleaners.They insisted something be done about the situation or they would go on strike. That was when the spy camera was fitted and the fun really began…because apparently the good citizens of Wakefield & District really didn’t care if they were being filmed or not.

The spy camera was connected to a special slow motion video recorder. The recording quality was not brilliant but you could certainly tell what was going on, and just as importantly, who was doing what with whom.

The staff turned into a bunch of voyeurs – this was Real Life TV way ahead of its time. On Monday lunchtime we would gather in the staff room. While drinking coffee or tea and eating lunch we would put the tape on fast forward search and stop it if anything interesting happened. We were rarely disappointed. One pair of young lovers used the place for sex every weekend – if they came into the branch during normal hours the counter staff would spontaneously start to sing “Some enchanted evening, I will shag my true love…” Their exhibitions only ceased when they were cautioned by the police.

Once when we were watching the tape, Julie (one of the typists) recognized her brother in law. He wasn’t alone but accompanied by a young woman obviously dressed for a night on the town. And she wasn’t Julie’s sister. They both looked more than a little tipsy.

“ What the hell is Darren doing in there? He’s supposed to be in Blackpool on a stag party with his mates from work.” she announced. The situation quickly went from bad to worse, when the young woman bent over one of the machines and lifted her skirt up around her waist to reveal a big pale white butt and no underwear. At least she wouldn’t be leaving any knickers behind for the cleaners to find.

Darren unceremoniously dropped his trousers to his knees and began to goose the lady energetically from behind. Full marks for effort but very poor technique I felt. Not so much as a kiss on the cheek.

The recording didn’t include sound but “Yes, yes, oh God no! Yes. Yes!” is pretty easy to lip read. Just in case anybody present was in doubt Gordon came to the rescue. “I think she is saying, “Yes, yes. Oh God no.Yes.Yes,” he said helpfully.

“Do you think she’s checking her account balance?” Andy inquired from everybody watching.

His mate Dave had a bright suggestion: “Perhaps she can’t remember her PIN number and he’s trying to jog her memory.”

This idea had all of us howling with laughter. All of us except Julie anyway.

“I’m going to kill the cheating bastard.” She announced. I believed her too. Julie was a big, big girl.

We didn’t have time to find out if the girl’s memory received a lot of jogging or only a quickie jog, as a furious Julie snatched the tape from the machine and left in tears.

I believe the divorce was uncontested. Judging from Darren`s concept of foreplay, his wife was better off without him.

One delightful morning I arrived at work to be confronted by one of the cleaners, a right old battleaxe called Ingrid. It was difficult to form any sort of working relationship with Ingrid because she was never actually at work. Ingrid was ‘bad with her nerves’. She got stuck into me as soon as I got through the door.

“I’m not cleaning up bloody rabbit shit. Says nothing in my contract about rabbit shit. If I liked cleaning rabbit shit I would get a job in a bleeding pet shop.”

Brilliant, I thought, the daft old cow has lost the plot altogether. Maybe she really is bad with her nerves.

“Have you been putting the vodka on your rice crispies again Ingrid?” I asked. “Run out of milk this morning, did we?”

Before I got a reply some of the girls came over holding six gorgeous fluffy white rabbits.

“Look Sean, look what somebody left in the speedbank machine room last night. If nobody claims them I want two for the kids.”

“Hang on, hang on a minute, I’ve just got in the door and already the day is going pear shaped. Nobody is taking any rabbits anywhere until we check the security tape and find out which cretin forgot he was carrying a box of rabbits. Honestly, do all you people here still have lead water pipes or what? How the hell can you forget you are carrying a box of rabbits?”

That lunchtime we avidly checked the security tape. We ran it through twice and at no time did we see anybody bring in six fluffy white bunny rabbits. It was like they had walked into the speedbank room through a rip in the space-time continuum, from a parallel universe where rabbits use cash machines as a matter of course. There was just no other explanation for how they got there.

I tell you what was funny though. It was absolutely hilarious watching a couple of drunks reaction to six little bunny rabbits gambling about their feet while they were trying to use the cash machines at four o’clock in the morning. You could tell they were convinced they had the DT`s. The cleaner was right to be upset about the rabbits. They might have been fluffy and cute but they could shit for England – it was all over the place.

Truly you could make a movie about the stuff captured by our security camera, but that is not the purpose of this book. Its purpose is to educate the novice small business traveler in the ways of a nasty dangerous planet. Go on then, I will tell you one more tale before I move on to describe the next dump I worked at.

This was pure Buster Keaton. We were watching the tape one lunchtime because the cleaners had complained that somebody had superglued a leather jacket to the front of one of the cash dispensers and they could not get it off for love nor money.

At one point in the recording we noticed four or five youths enter the lobby joking around. They didn’t use the machines, but one of them took a small tube from his pocket and spread something all around one of the cash machines. They all laughed like it was the funniest thing ever and left.

Ten minutes later another customer came in, drunk as a soggy mop. It took him about eight attempts to swipe card the door open. When he staggered into the room he was absolutely legless, doing the One-Man Whiskey Tango. You’ve seen it surely. The drunk is totally unable to move his left leg, which appears to be nailed to the floor, while his right leg vainly attempts to make progress forward in a sort of crescent motion. His torso swaying precariously in all directions. The One-Man Whiskey Tango.

Eventually he made it across the room and slumped against one of the machines. He managed to get his card into the slot and actually remember and key in his PIN number, luckily without any help from Darren. So far so good. Both arms were supporting his weight by leaning against the machine as he waited for his card and the money. The money arrived but he couldn’t take it. His arms had been superglued to the sides of the screen and he could not move them.

His frustration turned to rage when the machine sucked the cash back in because he hadn’t taken it in the required twenty seconds – a standard security feature. Hey come on, if the customers can forget a box of rabbits you have to admit it is not inconceivable that they might forget the money they just asked for either. I’m pretty sure that it’s down to the lead water pipes but I remain open to other explanations.

The poor drunk tried everything to get free – trying to throw himself towards the wall, contorting his body in directions only a drunk would think might be helpful. At one point he was so twisted up he was strangling himself. Eventually, like Harold Houdini escaping from handcuffs and restraints, he managed to actually climb out of the jacket and ended up sat on the floor breathing heavily. He stood up and aimed a vicious kick at the machine, missed and ended up sat on his bum again. He left on his hands and knees, covered in sweat. No card, no money, no coat. God it was funny to watch. Wish it had been in colour instead of black and white.

Back when McFier had been really driving me to distraction, our branch had received a visit from a personnel officer with Regional Control. He was in charge of staff levels and transfers and interviewed everybody because Head Office had become so concerned at the hours we were working. Which roughly translated means they had become most unhappy about the overtime they were having to pay for.

Anyway I told this guy that I would like a move to the Northwest so that I could be closer to my family and friends. “ The bank is your family,” the smarmy bastard told me. “Do we run any orphanages that I could transfer to,” I asked him. I don’t think it went down well.

Three years later I received a notification that I was being transferred to Manchester branch, perfectly placed for where I wanted to be. Happy? You bet I was. My house went up for sale the same day. Then the boot came in. I received a memo saying that as I had requested the move (back in the eons of time) the bank would not fund the removal expenses. I was not a happy camper. I accepted the move and immediately started applying for other jobs. Unfortunately Northern England was trying to get over the effects of the miners strike. Job opportunities were thin on the ground.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the new branch to discover I really, really liked it. All the staff here were friendly and nice. They and the manager went out of their way to welcome me and help me fit in. Even the customers were good fun. A couple of nightclub owners banked with us and anytime the staff decided to have a night on the town (pretty much every weekend) we would be treated royally – no queuing to get in, best seats in the house.

Even though he was a fully paid up member of The Lodge, the new boss was a great bloke. I had been there for a couple of months when he called me into his office for a chat.

“Fancy a drink,” he asked.

“Is the Pope a Catholic,” I replied. He poured both of us a generous shot of Famous Grouse.

“So how is it going then?”

“Fine. I `m very happy here. Everybody has been great with me.”

“Yes. Nice people round here,” he agreed. “ You know I wasn’t looking forward to having you here when I first read your file. Who on earth have you upset? You are nothing like the person described in your file.”

He read out a couple of excerpts for me. I would have sued if he had given me a copy.

I told him that I had been applying for other jobs because I was so unhappy at how I had been treated, but he urged me to reconsider. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” he advised me. “ You have just been unlucky with some of the people you’ve worked under. Give it a chance and see what happens.”

So I gave it another chance and settled happily into life in Manchester.

For the first time in six years I no longer suffered from the dreaded PMT on Sunday evenings and thoroughly enjoyed my time at work. The boss was disgusted at the refusal of Head Office to fund my removal expenses and made sure that I was given every opportunity to earn extra money from travel expenses for relief work at other branches and bad debt visits. As I said, I found him to be a very decent bloke.

Having said that, it was while I was working here that I got arrested. There was a clever fraud being conducted that it took the police and us ages to catch on to. Customers would come in to complain that they had tried to withdraw cash from the hole-in –the-wall machine but the money didn’t come out. Later when we checked the computer records they showed that the money had been taken. We were baffled as to what was going on. Head Office insisted that the system was foolproof, the customers insisted that they didn’t get the money and we were piggy in the middle taking all the flak.

The only clue we noticed was the pattern. Always it happened on Thursday or Friday lunchtime, when there was a big queue for the cash machine and customers were drawing out large amounts for the weekend.

We contacted the police and they told us about a scam they had heard of which could well be our problem. Very clever is this. It involves two crooks in the queue either side of the intended victim. The first crook pretends to use the machine but in fact he is actually sticking a piece of black card over the hole where the money comes out.

Then he stands to one side and allows the genuine customer to order cash. The cash can’t come out because it is blocked by the piece of card, which cannot be seen by anybody over three feet tall. Then crook number one tells the victim that his money didn’t come out either and suggests that they both go inside to complain. This allows crook number two to remove the card, take the money and saunter off to pick out another victim. Told you it was clever.

The police promised to put some plain clothes officers in the area to keep an eye on things and hopefully catch the crooks red handed.

One Thursday lunchtime I was just going out of the door of the branch to buy a sandwich when a customer I knew stopped me to complain that the cash machine had kept his money. I dashed out hoping to catch crook number two, reached for the cash dispensing hole in case the card was still in place, and was promptly smacked hard against the wall face first. My arms were wrenched sharply up my back and handcuffs snapped shut around my wrists.