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

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.