There’s a terrible smell round here.”
Kate, our department manager, was sitting at her desk in the corner of the room and was clearly deep in thought, holding her head in her hands. It must be such a demanding job, running two departments, but Kate was always so good-humoured and chirpy - I didn’t know how she managed it. Joy cleared her throat and Kate looked up at us through her fingers. “Ah, Morten,” she sighed, lowering her hands and moving a packet of Nurofen to one side. “I’ve got a little test for you.”
“Oh great, I love quizzes! Is it on Christmas songs from the eighties? My mum’s playing them all the time at the moment - I think I could sing every single one of them.”
“Not with a hole punch lodged in your throat, you couldn’t!” Kate’s left eye twitched, and I winked back at her - she was always so playful. She rubbed a hand across her forehead. “Right Morten, first question. Which department do you work in?”
Too easy! “Customer Complaints,” I said, emphatically.
“No, it’s Customer Concerns.”
“Oh, right; has the name recently changed?” Beside me, I sensed Joy flinch.
Kate tapped her fingernails on the desk. “Yes, Morten, it recently changed about six months ago. Let’s try an easier one, shall we? What is the point of you?”
“Sorry?”
“What do you see as the main purpose of your role?”
“Well,” I thought for a moment. “It’s to help customers with their complaints.” A bony elbow jabbed my ribcage. “Ow! Er, I mean, with their concerns.”
“And when you say help them with their concerns, can you define what you mean by ‘help’?”
“Um, resolve their concern.”
“YES!” Kate shrieked, making us jump. Thank goodness - I’d got that one right. “Resolve their concern! As in, sort out their problem, put it right, send them away happy. What we try really hard not to do, Morten, is give them further cause for complaint. So, with that in mind, can you tell me why I’ve just had to spend the last forty minutes pacifying Mr Harris?”
“Oh, that’s a coincidence! I spoke to a Mr Harris this morning, too.”
“Yes, you did, Morten. And can you remember what you said to him?”
“Um, I think he was complaining, I mean, concerning, about his claim taking too long... Yes, that’s right. I transferred him to Claims.”
Kate was tapping again. “Did you say anything else? Something a little out of the ordinary for an insurance helpdesk, maybe?”
I racked my brains. “I don’t think so.”
“Because he told me you’d propositioned him.” Beside me, Joy emitted a squeak. “Apparently, you said to him-,” Kate paused and picked up her note-pad, “I’m like a sex machine that’s ready to re-load, and I’m having a ball. So if you want to have a good time, please give me a call.”
“Oh, how funny – I’ve had a song in my head all morning and I must have been voicing the lyrics! But he got them wrong, you know, it should be-”
“Never mind the sodding lyrics, Foggy!” I noticed Kate’s knuckles turn white as she gripped her hole-punch and Joy dodged behind me. Kate took a deep breath, released the hole-punch and pinged a pink elastic band that was round her wrist. Ouch! She looked at me. “Morten - I do understand that with one song in your head there’s not much room for anything else, but do you think you could try and limit your conversations with our customers to questions relating to their policies?”
“I thought I’d put Mr Harris on hold.”
“You keep muddling up hold and transfer,” chipped in Joy. “I’ve told you about a hundred times.”
“I think the team swap the buttons around on my telephone turret,” I explained. “They’re always doing little things like that to cheer me up! Such a great bunch, aren’t they? Only yesterday they re-arranged the letters D, K, I and C on my keyboard when I’d gone to lunch. They do make me laugh!”
I could have chatted to Kate all day; she was such fun, but she clearly needed a wee as she’d started rocking backwards and forwards, and Joy pulled at my sleeve, saying we ought to leave her in peace. I didn’t get to tell Kate about the Wizard of Oz! I sent her an email when I was back at my desk, and offered to reserve a front row seat for her – I couldn’t wait to see her face when she discovered that in her inbox!
Cafe Culture
I hadn’t qualified for a pay rise this year as my previous team manager, George, told me that my performance had been rated as “PP”. He didn’t explain what that meant, but Mum told me it probably stood for “Practically Perfect”. I was delighted with this, but I really hope I can change it to just plain “Perfect” so I can get a rise next year. Although I take home a whopping £801.92 each month, by the time I’ve paid towards the house-keeping and covered Mum’s business loan repayment (she had significant start-up costs; the bulk order of rubbers alone was £175 – I had no idea those gloves were so expensive), I only had £28 a week left. With Christmas fast approaching, I’d been lucky enough to find myself a Sunday job. Perypils doesn’t open on a Sunday. I once asked Kate why not and she replied: “Because we’d have to pay you buggers double time.” I asked what happened if our customers were flooded or burgled on a Sunday and needed our help. She said: “We’re not here for the convenience of our customers, Foggy, we’re here for the greed of our shareholders. It’s a bit like getting run over on a Sunday; you wouldn’t expect the hospital to staff A&E with doctors at the weekend, would you? It’s not economical.”
My Sunday job was at Smokey Joe’s, a very upmarket coffee shop just behind Tesco Metro. It was more of a bistro really, with an exotic menu and fancy names for potatoes in Elmlea. My official title is ‘front of house’, which means as well as doing the all-important meet-and-greet, I get to make the hot drinks, serve the food, wipe the tables, work the till, do the washing up, scrub down the kitchen and keep the toilets clean. I couldn’t believe my luck in getting the job; I had been on my way back from Tesco’s with Mum’s cigarettes (she struggles to breathe in the mornings without them), when the door to Joe’s flew open and a young woman in an apron rushed out, screaming hysterically. A chef appeared in the doorway clutching a hatchet. It was Joe. He saw me and shouted, “Oi, Dick Splash! Yeah, you! Wanna job?” I approached and asked him what qualifications I required.
“Can you boil a kettle?”
“Yes.”
“Can you say ‘yes Chef’?”
“Yes. I mean, yes Chef.”
He chucked a tea towel at me. “You can start now.”
Joe is a wonderful chef, and has really tailored his menu to appeal to the sophisticated palate of his discerning Shodsworth clientele. His chopping techniques are really quite a marvel, and it’s obvious how talented he is because he still has seven of his fingertips. Just after I’d taken the A board outside and opened up, two men in donkey jackets came in and picked up a menu. One asked for a coffee.
“Would you like latte, cappuccino, espresso, Americano, mocha-”
“I just want a shagging coffee.”
“What’s a pan-ninny?” demanded the other.
“It’s an Italian toasted sandwich, and we have lots of delicious fillings-”
“Two bacon butties. On white bread, mind, none of that nutty poofy shite.”
They sat down at a table and opened their Sunday Mirrors. I took their order through to Joe in the kitchen, who was studying the Racing Post and scratching his bald patch. He snatched the order from me. “Bacon bloody sandwiches? What do they think this is, some back street greasy spoon? I didn’t spend nine years in the kitchens at Claridges just so I could knock out poxy bacon butties to hairy-arsed navvies!”
I smiled and backed out of his way, hoping the builders hadn’t heard him. Joe was so passionate about his cooking, he could get a little feisty on occasions; sometimes it was hard to believe he’d trained under the calming influence of Gordon Ramsay. Back behind my counter, I banged out the old coffee grinds and put some fresh ones into the handle of the coffee machine. I
t was an amazing bit of equipment; Joe had won it on a poker game with the boys from Costa. I felt like a proper Barista, at least, I did when the machine was working. It was a shame it didn’t always seem to grind the beans properly, and more often than not, I had to make instant from a huge tin of Gold Blend Joe got from the cash and carry.
The doorbell jangled as a regular came in. She was a very pleasant girl with long red hair and lots of freckles, and she rode a grey Raleigh Pioneer, twenty-one speed. I knew this because I fixed a puncture for her once when she’d ridden over the remains of a Budweiser bottle that Joe had hurled at a particularly difficult customer as they left. Freckly Girl came in every Sunday morning for her cappuccino and had also started returning at lunchtime, then sometimes again in the afternoon. She must have a very serious caffeine addiction, but as Mum always says, it’s not nice to pass comment on the habits of others. Even when Granny Pattern started cutting her corns in the lounge, Mum said nothing, but politely picked up a cushion and only screamed into it when she was a good way down the hall.
“Your usual?” I said to Freckly Girl, who laughed and seemed about to say something when Joe slammed two plates down on the counter behind her, making her jump out of her skin. She scurried off to her table in the corner, looking paler than ever.
I was preparing for the lunchtime rush by scraping the crud off my steaming wand with my