The Adventures of a Small Businessman in the Forbidden Zone

Colin repeated the conversation to me as soon as he could. He was fair like that Colin; he would snitch on anybody. Colin just liked snitching.

After that Village treated me with kid gloves. He got his own back by consistently giving me lousy appraisals.

There were very few memorable days working at this place. Mostly it was just the same old grind and long hours, living for the weekends. It was here that I developed the psychosis that came to be known as PMT or Pre Monday Tension. It was a wave of nausea and despair experienced at about teatime on Sundays as you realized that the weekend was nearly over. Luckily there was an herbal remedy readily available – four pints of draught Guinness usually did the trick.

I did however get myself involved in a couple of classic incidents. Both times I could not help myself, my warped sense of humour would not let me miss the opportunity. Both times earned me a reprimand from Head Office.

You know when old people get like, borderline senile dementia? They forget where they put stuff but are convinced that somebody is stealing from them. Usually they blame the poor bugger who looks after them 24/7, without complaint or reward. I know I do.

Well we had one of these who banked with us. She was eighty years old, fit as a marathon runner and mad as a bag of ferrets.

Every week she would come into the bank to take out cash for the week. Always on Friday and always at lunchtime, our busiest time of the week.

The cashiers would do anything to avoid having to serve the crazy old trout. Serving slowly or quickly, trying to judge the speed of the queue, feigning an attack of botulism, anything not to have to deal with her.

I recall that this particular day she arrived at Mick`s till. Mick was a new recruit with only a couple of days experience on counter. You could see the experienced staff titter with relief when the nutter went to Mick`s till.

Mick was a textbook example of politeness and efficiency. He gave the lady her cash and wished her a pleasant weekend. She put the money in her purse and turned to leave, but before he could serve the next customer she was back accusing him of shortchanging her. Mick denied it of course but it was no use.

She insisted on seeing a supervisor – me, and I was required to close the till and check the contents while they both watched me. I really did not have the time or the patience to close one of our five tills when we had customers queuing literally out of the doors, but I had no choice. As I said before, when you work for a bank, rules are rules. Resistance is futile.

I was busy counting all the cash and checking it against the receipts issued when‘The-customer-is-always right-even-if-she-happens-to-be-bobbins’ noticed a sticker on the glass screen. It was an ear with a cross over it.

As part of National Year of the Deaf, the banks had agreed to make themselves more users friendly for deaf people. Some banks trained staff in basic sign language, another installed equipment so that deaf people could plug their hearing aids into a socket on the counter. Our bank extravagantly sent each branch a little plastic sticker to put on one counter with the simple instruction “put somebody sympathetic on this till”. No expense spared as usual.

Anyway the lovely but bewildered old lady tapped the sticker with her walking stick (she didn’t need a stick, it was just for effect) and demanded of me;

“Young man. What does this mean, young man?”

I lost my place in a bundle of ten pound notes and had to start counting again. There was more cash in Mick`s till than under a Colombian cocaine dealer’s mattress.

“It is there to show that we are a caring equal opportunities company (unless of course you are black, Asian, Catholic, Jewish, etc), and we give a sympathetic service to those with a hearing disadvantage,” I told her.

She tapped the sticker again with her stick, this time even harder causing both Mick and I to jump. I lost my place again in the bundle of money.

“You mean deaf people?”

“Yes, I mean deaf people.”

“So,” she continued, oblivious to the icy stares of the people stuck behind her in the queue. “Let’s assume that I am deaf and I present my usual cheque for payment. How would you respond?”

I felt the red mist rising but I was unable to resist. I leaned up to the glass and beckoned her closer, our faces inches apart but separated by the glass.

“I would examine the cheque to see how much you wanted,” I said in a reasonable voice. Then I would ask; “HOW DO YOU WANT YOUR MONEY!” This last bit shouted so loudly that blood began to leak from her ears and nose.

The lady stepped back several paces in shock, turned and stormed out of the building, to a round of applause from the long suffering customers in the queue behind her.

“Carry on Mick,” I instructed and returned to my desk.

Less than half an hour later I found myself in Village’s office for a dressing down.

The senile old sod might not have a clue who much was in her purse, or indeed which wrist her watch was on, but she had no trouble at all in remembering my name or getting through to Head Office to complain.

McFier had been given a roasting and he was merely passing it along. Fair is fair after all.

Another time and another old lady. This one was even older than the last one I had a problem with. Not as sprightly on her feet but she was 92 years old after all. Still in full possession of all her pots and pans you might say, and very prim and proper.

She was the last of a very rich ‘old money’ family from the local area and was arguably our richest customer. No excuses, this one was my own entire fault.

It was another Friday afternoon. I was flying off in the morning for two weeks of sun, sea and serious sangria abuse. Yes, Ibiza, with a girlfriend that didn’t like to be touched in case it interfered with her quest for the perfect suntan.

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.