fingernails when Myra came in. She threw herself down at a table and put her head in her hands. “What on earth’s wrong, Myra?” I asked anxiously.
“Been throwing my guts up all morning,” she groaned. “Get us a cappuccino, will you; I need something to take the taste away. Mum’s run out of toothpaste again and the old bat used the last of the Tic-Tacs.”
“Perhaps you should just stick to water if you’ve got an upset stomach,” I suggested. “Shall I get Chef to make you a nice boiled egg?”
“Ugh, no, I can’t face something that’s come out of a chicken’s bum! I’ll just have the baked Camembert. With the crusty baguette.”
“Oh, but that’s a sharing platter, it’s for two people-”
“Well, just take a bloody bite out of it, then we’ll have shared it, won’t we? Come on Foggy and hurry up with my cappu, I’m absolutely hanging here.”
I went to bang the grinder into life. It was very sweet of Myra to come and support me every Sunday lunchtime but she seemed to be under the impression that I got meals and drinks for free. I didn’t, I had to pay for them all, although there were some great perks - Joe occasionally let me take the leftover fresh bread home and Mum would cut off all the green bits and make us yummy fish finger sandwiches. I collected an empty mug from Freckly Girl. “How did your audition go?” she asked.
“It was absolutely brilliant! I got the lead part!”
She looked puzzled. “You’re playing Dorothy?”
“No!” I laughed. “I’m the Wizard, of course!”
“Oh, er, right. Well, that’s great. Really great.”
Everyone reacted like that when I told them - they were completely dumbfounded. It was pretty amazing news; even I was finding it difficult to take in.
“I see The Ginger Mouse is back again,” Myra said, quite loudly, although luckily her voice was muffled by baguette. “Started to squeak now, has she? Can you get me another coffee Foggy, and some more butter? Dry as a nun’s wotsit, this bread.”
When Myra had finished, I cleared her empty plate and put an IOU in the till for £17.99. It would take me three hours to earn that much, but as long as I did without my own lunch, I would still make £31.35 today, which was really great. It was getting very busy now, and I was rushing between tables, taking orders, making drinks and apologising to those who complained about the wait, or the coffee. Or both. When I took another order through to the kitchen, I found Joe muttering incoherently and banging himself in the face with a fish slice. I asked if he could make a jumbo battered sausage to go, and swiftly ducked as the fish slice flew towards my head.
Monday morning again, and I had my quality feedback one-to-one with Joy, which are always good fun, although very different to how my last team manager did them. George would often ask me just to sign a blank quality form, saying he would fill everything else in later and then he had the rest of my one-to-one time to catch up on his text messages or meet his mates in the canteen. Sometimes he’d delegate the meeting to his deputy, the lovely Lucy who sadly no longer worked at the site. She moved to Manchester, devastated, I think, because she was secretly in love with me. But I wouldn’t finish with Myra – a man must be loyal, my Dad taught me that. Even when he accidentally viewed all those videos on PornHub, he said he was thinking of Mum throughout. I felt so awful about breaking Lucy’s heart and have sent her hundreds of tweets, but she obviously has a problem with her Twitter account as I can’t seem to Follow her, or perhaps it’s because she doesn’t use social media anymore. I do hope the poor thing hasn’t become a recluse because of me!
Joy said she was going to play one of my calls back to me, so we sat in the meeting room and listened to it on the PC. I remembered the call from a Mr Bates with a shudder; he hadn’t been very nice, complaining because we’d quoted him incorrectly for his American Pitbull. I felt very embarrassed as his foul language reverberated around the meeting room - poor Joy, she shouldn’t have to listen to this. She played it all the way through, finally reaching the end after Mr Bates had yelled, “That’s it! I’m coming down there to knock the shit out of you, yer little tosspot!” and slammed the phone down. Relieved it was over, I gave Joy a brave smile. “He wasn’t very happy, was he?”
“No, Morten, he wasn’t. But why have you recorded it as a complaint?”
I stared at her, confused. “Because he was complaining.”
“No, we’ve been over this before, haven’t we? He was simply informing us that our quotation was incorrect. That’s not a complaint; that’s a comment.”
“Oh. But I thought when he threatened to kill me, you know, the bit where he said he’d rip my head off and pi- er, urinate into my neck, that I should probably record it as a complaint.”
Joy picked up her pen and started to complete a quality form. “You know it was agreed that complaints about the quotation system aren’t complaints, they’re just comments, so they don’t need to be recorded on the company’s complaint database. I’m going to document this as another quality fail, Morten. You’ve got to try harder to remember what we discuss in team meetings and not be distracted by your colleagues, especially Tim. He’s too much of an influence on you.”
“Yes, Tim’s great, isn’t he? And so helpful - he’s always telling me what I should say to difficult customers, and mouths “cut” at me when he thinks I’ve spent too long on a call. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be reading the legal disclaimer paragraphs out to our customers! Imagine that! I’d have wasted so much of their time!”
Joy had turned a funny dark colour but couldn’t say what she opened her mouth to say as there was a knock at the door and her deputy, Alan, popped his head into the room. “Er, sorry Joy, but could you come back to the team, do you think? Sky’s kicked off at Derek again.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, what about this time?”
“His electronic cigarette; he often sucks at it under his desk when you’re not around and Sky reckons it’s full of harmful chemicals, so when she caught him again she went ballistic. Tore it out of his mouth and rammed it up his nose. I tried to get her to chant one of her mantras with me, you know, she often calms down by repeating the word ‘rabbit’ over and over but not even that worked this time; Derek’s still pinned up against the whiteboard. Can you come?”
I laughed as Joy stood up to follow Alan. Such high jinks! I really had landed on my feet working with this wacky bunch. I missed Lucy, of course I did, but my new friends very nearly made up for it.
No Complaints
The kitchen door was locked when I got home, which meant Mum was giving someone a lesson and I couldn’t go in as she didn’t consider it professional. I think something must have gone wrong because I heard a man shout “Oh God!” very loudly. That just goes to show that cake-making is not as simple as some people think, and it can even be extremely dangerous. Once, when I got home early from work, I found Mr Ryder having to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on Mum; he said she’d got a nut lodged in her throat. I think people are taken in by how easy it all looks on cookery programs but I bet even Nigella has had her fair share of mishaps. Myra says Nigella doesn’t actually do any of her own baking; she said the BBC production team do it all and they just film her going through the motions, pretending to make things, getting the utensils dirty and then she sucks them all off afterwards. I’m completely with Nigella - I just love licking the whisk when Mum makes Angel Delight!
I wheeled my bike back down the drive, weaving carefully around the empty KiteKat tins and soggy lemon slices, and cycled to Myra’s to see if she fancied practising some of the Wizard of Oz songs together. Rehearsals started tomorrow and Tom always expected us to be word perfect. Myra opened the door; her eyes were bright red and she was wiping her runny nose on the back of her hand. “Oh no, Myra! You haven’t caught a cold just before rehearsals, have you? Is your throat ok? Will you still be able to sing?”
“My voice is fine.” She stood back to let me into the hall.
“It’s just hay fever.”
“Gosh, in October! Do you think it’s weed pollen that’s caused it? Or perhaps it’s from all that pampas grass that your mum grows in the front garden-”
“For God’s sake, Foggy, I don’t bloody know what’s caused it! What’s it matter? Why are you always so, so, oh, sod it.” She turned and disappeared into the downstairs cloakroom. Poor thing, her nose must be running again. I went into the lounge to say hello to her mum and found her sitting in an armchair, head bowed over a saucer as The Real Housewives of Orange County shrieked at each other in the corner.
“Hello Rose!” I called. “Are you ok?”
“Ssshh!” she didn’t look up, but held up her forefinger to silence me. “The tea leaves are speaking to me.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Can you hear them ok over the telly?”
“Yes.”
“What are they saying?”
She held up the saucer to show me the dark mass of leaves amongst the dregs of tea. “You have a look! They’ve never, ever spoken so clearly to me before; what do you see?”
“Um, a, a black cloud, maybe?”
“No! Look again - listen to what they’re telling you.”
“Er, is it a swarm of flies?”
“No, for crying out loud - it’s a penis! Plain as the nose on your face! You know what that means?”
I didn’t want