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

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.

“You’re nicked,” shouted a triumphant voice.

Funny that. I was under the impression that the British police were supposed to go through all that “Anything you say can and may be used in evidence against you…” crap. No. I just got the phrase ‘you’re nicked’ and my face scraped along the wall until the officer was satisfied that the top two layers of skin had come off.

“I’m the managers assistant. Let go of me you bleeding fuckwit!” In the circumstances I thought I showed a great deal of restraint in my choice of language.

The officer looked at the people in the queue, still scraping my face across the wall.

“He’s not is he?” The people in the queue mostly nodded that he had indeed just assaulted the manager’s assistant. “ Oh fuck,” he said. At least he stopped mutilating my face with the brick wall.

Luckily his boss quickly arrived on the scene. He apologized and instructed the officer with the fridge temperature IQ to release me immediately. The customer was able to give a good description of crook number one and the crime team was arrested later that day doing another bank on the other side of town.

I really enjoyed working in this place – the atmosphere was just so friendly and the customers were lovely. At Christmas we received lots of gifts: bottles of wine and spirits; boxes of chocolates and the like. We got loads and toads of greeting cards. All the banks closed at lunchtime on Christmas Eve and we had a bit of a party together and raffled off the presents so that everybody took something home. All the other places I had worked in the managers had kept the gifts for themselves.

For the first time I was receiving top grade appraisals!

All good things come to an end as they say. The boss had been singing my praises to the new Personnel Controller for the region, and he had listened. I received a promotion and a move to the biggest branch in the region. It was just thirty minutes drive away, so at least this time I didn’t have to move house.

Then two things happened in quick succession to convince me that I really didn’t want to work for this company any longer.

Firstly in a pay deal voted through by senior managers, they got company cars and we junior managers lost our overtime payments. So now I was working longer hours, with more responsibility and a lot more work, but actually taking home less money than before I got promoted. This displeased me greatly.

Secondly I booked a family holiday to Turkey. Unfortunately when we arrived the company announced that it had gone bust. The holiday was a nightmare. The hotel we ended up in was a cockroach farm. I believe the chef later headed Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction program – if the portions he produced for Saddam were as small as the ones he served to us, no wonder the Americans couldn’t find anything in Iraq. It is the only time I have ever lost weight on holiday. Sad really because Turkey is a beautiful place with lovely people and we had an awful time. The only consolation I had was that I had used my bank credit card to pay for the holiday so I was entitled to a refund from the credit card Company.

Once again my penny-pinching employers did the dirty on me. I applied for a refund the same way any other customer would but heard nothing for weeks. Then my latest boss (another great bloke and emphatically not a Lodge member) called me into his office.

The matter of my refund had been referred very high up indeed for a decision. He had received a phone call to instruct him to tell me as clearly as possible that “one simply does not claim against one’s employer if one expects to have any sort of future in the organization.”

My boss was as livid as I was. If I had just been ‘Joe Public’ the bank would have paid out without batting an eyelid. My stubborn streak took a complete U-turn. Now instead of wanting to prove my first boss wrong, I was determined to do everything in my power to get a different career as soon as possible.

But what line of work to go for? Something else in the finance sector perhaps?

The opportunity came to me from an unexpected source. My father had recently been made redundant when the Company he worked for had closed down one of its subsidiaries in a streamlining operation. Dad knew all the customers and the suppliers, so rather than work for another company, he decided to open his own firm doing what he knew best. He asked me would I be interested in joining him. What the hell, I thought. Can’t be worse than working for a bank now can it?

So I handed in my notice and embarked on a new career. No longer would I be a junior manager in a bank, now I would be… an ice cream man. Well my girlfriend already called me Mister Whippy (Why? Mind your own business) so it seemed kind of appropriate. The world was now my oyster. God help me.

Small business tip:

If you really want to make money, don’t work for a bank – rob it.

And remember to leave the bags of pennies behind or you just might get caught staggering away.

So as I said, dad’s company closed down and it left my dad unemployed and the customers with no supplier. Some of the products dad used to sell were quite unique. Dad had been in the business for over thirty years. He had the recipes for all the products and the contacts for getting the products made.

But he could not do everything himself, man the phone, visit customers, run the bank account, pay bills, deal with the accountant and the dreaded VAT.

So when I joined him we split the workload, dad mainly doing the marketing and selling, me mainly handling the orders and the finances.

It was in the area of financial control that my years in the bank really helped. Many an otherwise sound company has gone bust because they allowed their customers to take too much credit. If you are a good boy and pay your bills on thirty days but you don’t get paid for ninety days or longer, the shortfall each month must come from either your own pocket or from borrowing. Borrowing costs money.

Also it is most important to keep an eye on stock levels and sales, particularly difficult to get the balance right in a seasonal business like ice cream. If you can’t meet demand you miss out on potential profit opportunities. If you overstock, it ties up funds you could use elsewhere or even worse with foodstuffs, they go past the sell by date and have to be destroyed. Or in my case fed to my Irish wolfhounds as a treat.

So we did our best to keep accurate records and try to predict which way the business would go. After our first two years trading we analyzed our progress and came to a disturbing conclusion. Although we were steadily expanding our customer base, the customers were buying less each year; dad had records going back over ten years. There was no mistake. The UK market for our goods was contracting. Perhaps that was why dad’s previous employer had decided to pull the plug on that area of their business.

So we had a chat and decided to try to get into exporting. But where to start?

Our biggest sales were in ice cream powders, which we had made to my father’s recipes. They were easy to use (just add water), easy to transport and had a long shelf life. Ideal products for export.

So we concluded that the country we should target should have a large young population and long hot summers. Long hot winters as well would be a definite plus. Oh yes, we need a country whose population had a disposable income that they might spend on ice cream and not just on trying to avoid malnutrition. So Sudan was out for about the next three hundred years. Saudi Arabia fit the bill though.

So we made an appointment at the local Chamber of Commerce hoping to get some help and advice. We got that and more.

By sheer coincidence they were involved in arranging and supporting a first ever exhibition of British products at a new exhibition center in Dubai, the oil rich desert kingdom on the Arabian Gulf. The exhibition was to be sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry and they were to cover fifty per cent of the costs of attending by way of a grant. Manchester Chamber of Commerce promised that with the other funding they were trying to raise, the cost to the companies attending would be just spending money. In the end they were unable to make good on this promise, but the opportunity sounded so good that we signed up to go there and then. Three other local companies also agreed to go to Dubai; a famous mint sweet manufacturing concern, a toolmaking company and a company selling saunas. I remember thinking at the time that the sauna company was being a touch optimistic hoping to sell saunas in one of the hottest countries on earth. It didn’t give me any satisfaction when I was proved right.

A lot of preplanning went into the exhibition – having brochures and business cards prepared in Arabic, packing and sending the samples and equipment for the exhibition stand, getting the Commercial Secretary at the Embassy in Dubai to invite potential customers from countries across the region. Making the arrangements really took my life over for several weeks, which effectively meant half our workforce went missing.

To be fair most of the logistics and paperwork were taken care of by a specialist firm appointed by the DTI, with considerable input and assistance from our own Chamber of Commerce. The exhibition was to last five days, with a day either side to set up and then pack away our exhibition stand. All told we would be out of the office for ten days and my brother kindly volunteered to man the phones while we were away.

A couple of days before we were due to leave for Dubai we were invited to a pre-mission briefing at the Chamber, given by a lady with many years experience working in the region.

She was most informative, especially in the area of customs and culture. For instance only use your right hand when greeting someone, eating or drinking. The left hand is considered ‘unclean’ – a bit of a bugger if you happen to be left handed.

She taught us some simple phrases in Arabic: hello, please, thank you, how are you, that sort of thing. She warned us that although Dubai is one of the more progressive regimes in the region, the consumption and sale of alcohol was restricted to hotels and certain licensed bars. If you were caught drunk in public you were likely to be arrested by the religious police and then you would be in deep dinosaur doo doo. The best you could hope for would be a good whipping with a stiff rod in a public square somewhere and a jail term not to exceed the rest of your natural life. It was suggested that we go easy on the falling down water.