Anna Tomkins - The Adventures of a Small Businessman in the Forbidden Zone

I found out some time later how I had managed to slip through the net.

The bank would take on about a dozen graduate trainees every year. It turned out that the Recruitment Manager who hired me had been pushed sideways in some bitter office politics (the Nazi bastards probably discovered his grandma was Jewish or something equally inexcusable).

This had aggravated him to the point that he had gotten himself another job with a big finance company. As a parting gesture, this year’s graduate intake included two other Roman Catholics, an insufferable bible bashing born again Christian, a hippie drug addict, an Asian (What the hell was the Recruitment Manager thinking of!) and worst of all, two women.

When I left ten years later, the Bank had well over two hundred branches nationwide, but not a single branch had a female manager in charge. And I never ever met an Asian working for them. Not too forward thinking in the area of equal opportunities this bunch.

After six weeks we all met up back at Head Office for the next stage of our accelerated training program. When I say ‘all’, I really mean to say ‘the survivors’.

The Asian and one of the women had lasted just a week. As had one of the ‘normal’ recruits. The hippie drug addict lasted five weeks but only managed to make it in to work on the first Monday – he never managed another Monday. He then didn’t manage to make it in to work for ten days on the trot. The hippie wasn’t on the phone so eventually the Manager called at his flat on the way to the branch. The hippie answered the door in just his boxer shorts looking seriously hung over and bleary eyed. When asked when they could expect to see him at work again he replied, “When the vibes feel right, man”. Brilliant!

The dismissal notice was hand delivered later that afternoon. Shame, I liked him.

My two years spent at the first branch were not all bad. For instance there were the Bank Holidays to look forward to. Once the fog was so bad we were sent home early. That was fun.

I had my most entertaining day of my banking career ever working at this branch. It was the day of the bomb alert. The branch I was working in was situated quite close to the main train station. At the time the IRA had extended its lethal bombing campaign to mainland Britain. No town center was safe from these nasty bastards.

One morning we got a notice from the police to evacuate the area. An old Ford Transit van with Northern Ireland number plates had been left for nearly 24 hours in the short stay car park at the station. There was a suspicious looking box in the back of the van and the bomb squad had cordoned off the area.

The bank in its wisdom had sent a memo to all office managers instructing them to formulate plans for such an eventuality. The office manager now read these instructions out to the assembled staff.

He had already prepared notices to put in the windows to advise customers why the bank was closed. All of the staff was to assemble in a safe place except for four male members of staff. These four were instructed to stand in front of the plate glass windows around the bank building to ensure that customers didn’t hang around outside where they would be in potential danger of serious injury from flying glass.I kid you not.

“And what about us, the four male members of staff?” I asked.

“Er… how do you mean?” He wasn’t quick this guy.

“ERR…I mean what about us and any potentially dangerous flying glass?”

Silence greeted me. All the staff was staring at the office manager, waiting for him to explain this rather bizarre aspect of his well thought out plan.

Still silence. I broke it for him.

“Tell you what,” I said, “while you stand outside that bloody great plate glass window thinking about it, wearing that ill fitting pin striped suit for protection, me and the other guys will go join the ladies somewhere safe. OK?”

With that we left and spent a pleasant couple of hours in the Town Square, chatting and drinking coffee.

It was home time when we heard the controlled explosion and were thankful that the noise wasn’t louder and more significant.

Quite rightly the bomb squad had not taken any chances. They sent in a remote controlled robot device on caterpillar tracks, fitted with a rifle and an explosive charge. After checking the area for secondary booby traps, the robot approached the back of the van. Using the rifle it blew off the door lock and used its robot arms to open the van doors. Then it placed the explosive charge against the suspect box and retreated to a safe distance.

Booommmm, was the explosion we heard, followed by the sight of a student’s dirty laundry slowly falling down to earth around the car park. That will teach him to remember where he parked next time he gets drunk in town.

Wonder if that is covered by your insurance?

Another morning we received a visit from two plain clothes police officers. They had received a tip off from a reliable source. Their informant had overheard a conversation in a bar where a guy had told his drinking buddy how desperate he was for money and that he was going to rob a bank on Friday (the day most people locally got paid) then skip town. The informant said the desperado showed his friend what appeared to be a sawn off shotgun under the bar table.

The police spoke to us all before we opened the doors to the public. “Be extra vigilant Ladies and Gentlemen. Keep as little cash as possible on the counter. We have no idea which bank the criminal mastermind intends to strike at. If the man points a gun at you do as he says and give him everything he wants. Remember the bank is insured and we don’t want any dead heroes.”

If he points a gun at you do as he says? Are you fucking joking? If he points a shotgun at me Ill make sure he doesn’t leave without the manager’s wallet and car keys as well. Be a hero? For these wankers? I don’t think so sunshine.

This was the day that I discovered a little known fact about the bulletproof glass counter screens that separate the staff from the customers. It isn’t bulletproof. It isn’t even very thick. Bulletproof glass is apparently too expensive to waste money on protecting staff from shotgun wielding desperados.

So my long held suspicions are confirmed. The counter screens exist only to make normal conversation between customer and cashier all but impossible.

Which brings me to the next question. Why they are there for fucks sake? I’m afraid I have no adequate explanation.

Anyway back to the tale. The day of the raid passed without incident as far as we were concerned. We all went home for the weekend none the wiser that the desperado had indeed attempted his robbery.

Next week we heard on the grapevine that he had attempted to hold up a small sub-branch down by the docks. Why? I honestly can’t say. The place only had three staff and was just open a couple of hours a day. If he had stolen every penny in the place he would still have had to borrow money from his mum to pay for a plane ticket to Ibiza. It must have been handy for the drug clinic where he collected his free needles or something.

Allegedly he walked into the sub-branch wearing a pair of women’s tights lopsidedly over his head, menacingly waving the sawn off shotgun at the one and only elderly lady cashier. He stuck a plastic shopping bag into the cash slot and screamed at the elderly cashier “Fill her up Bitch!!!!”

The cashier was frozen stiff with fear at the sight of the weapon. The other problem was that the tights muffled the gangster’s voice. What with that and the effect of the glass screen between them, she had no idea what he wanted. So she just sat there looking terrified.

So he reiterated his request a bit louder “I said fill her up bitch!!!” Then to make his point more forcefully Interpol’s most wanted fugitive aimed the gun skywards and let off both barrels.

Minutes later, mildly concussed by a collapsed false ceiling and covered in concrete dust, he was seen making his getaway on a racing bicycle headed back towards town, the sawn off shotgun dangling from the handlebars in the otherwise empty shopping bag. Would that all bank robbers were so efficient.

That is not the stupid part of the tale. No, the stupid part of the tale is that despite the fact that the robber had an amoeba sized IQ and his getaway vehicle was a second hand bicycle, the police didn’t catch him. Scary Huh?

After two years I had finished the accelerated training course. More than half the people that had joined at the same time I did had already left the bank to do something else less stressful. Like mediating between the Israelis and the PLO. Now it was the bank’s usual practice to move on the remaining graduate trainees to a new branch to give them more experience.

I had made many good friends amongst the staff in Hull and was sorry to leave them, but I was looking forward to a fresh start with a new boss. Preferably one that didn’t consider Ian Paisley to be some kind of Papist sympathizer, and wouldn’t give me ‘C’ grade appraisals just because he didn’t like people with a University education. Out of the frying pan…as the saying goes.

The bank transferred me south to Warwickshire, to a recently opened branch. It had been open for three years and in that time had descended onto total chaos. Even though I had only been in the bank for two years myself, I was one of the most experienced staff members we had. In a bank you don’t go home until the books have balanced. The books never balanced first time due to a combination of staff inexperience and overwork – we just didn’t have the staff to cope with the massive influx of new business.

So often we didn’t leave for home until after nine at night. One New Years Eve we didn’t get out until 10.30 PM. My overtime payments were usually more than my regular salary, and the overtime was compulsory.

On the plus side my co-workers were good fun and we would go out together as a group at weekends, often they would stay over at my house because I lived only walking distance from the town center.

On the negative side there was the manager, Mr. McFier.

The new manager was a disaster. At least the old one knew his job; this man was the most inept individual I have ever come across bar none. The new boss disliked me intensely and I can tell you the feeling was entirely mutual. I can honestly say found him inspirational in many ways. For instance it was comforting to discover that being completely bloody hopeless at your job need not be a barrier to progress in your chosen career. Especially if you managed to gain membership of the Lodge of course.

We used to play a game there called ‘Identify today’s breakfast’. Invariably McFier would arrive for work with his tie covered in egg or beans, or toast crumbs, or fried banana, or God knows what. The staff would take bets on what the stain was, and the typist would then ask the man in a roundabout way, what his wife had cooked for him this morning. McFier was a difficult gentleman to respect. I didn’t respect him at all.

I remember we had an ‘office snitch’, a creep called Colin. Anytime anybody screwed up, Colin would have a discreet word with the ‘Village Idiot’, or Village as he was affectionately known, and the offender would be summoned to the manager’s office for a dressing down and a reminder of the importance of attention to detail. This from a man that could not successfully get all his breakfast into his mouth two days running. Village made more screw ups per day than George W. Bush in a term of office.

The only way I could get through Village’s inane ranting was by imagining the lanky halfwit sat opposite dressed only in women’s underwear.