I made a start on reversing the aging process and booked an appointment at a swanky hairdressers in town during their Thursday evening opening. My stylist was a flamboyant character called Frankie. He had spiky black hair and was wearing huge nerd specs with no lenses in them.
“Let’s have a look at you then, gorgeous,” he said. I sat in front of his mirror. I hate those mirrors in the hairdressers. I’m sure it must be the lighting - I always look more clapped out than usual. Frankie was running his fingers through my hair, and making “hmmm” noises. “So you wanted a colour put in today, did you?” he asked. “And what are we doing with the style?”
“Well, I thought just a trim, you know, just a tidy up...”
“Oh really?” he wrinkled his nose. “Well, if that’s what you want. But it’s not doing a lot is it, really?” What was it supposed to do, juggle, tell jokes? “I mean, it’s sort of a nothing style at the moment, isn’t it?” Ouch! But he did have a point. It was just kind of hanging there, round my face, skimming my shoulders. Frankie was getting excited and was waving his hands about: “We could cut right into here, take some of this weight out, add some layers and texturing, bring it right up to date. It will look fabulous, you’re going to look like a model or something.” Or something, most likely. He was extraordinarily confident for one so young, so I trusted him. We chose a colour from bits of hair stuck to a chart, eventually settling on ‘Cinnamon Copper’ which looked lovely, rich and shiny. He gave me some magazines to look at whilst he made up the colour. I told the girl who fetched me a coffee that I’d never had a colour put in before and she could hardly believe it. I overheard her say to Frankie:
“Why is she having a colour put in? Her hair’s a lovely colour as it is.” Frankie hissed back:
“Shut your mouth you silly cow, you’ll put her off!” I started to feel a little apprehensive.
I found a picture of Cheryl Cole, with her fabulous soft shiny curls; she looked terrific. I showed Frankie and asked if that sort of style would suit me.
“Good God no!” he screeched. “No one wants to look like that ropey old dog any more!” Not much point showing him the picture of Kerry Katona’s choppy bob then.
I let him get on with it. I found out all about his apartment, which was actually a bedsit but in his words “bedsit sounds a bit scummy, dunnit?”, his vegetarian sister he didn’t get on with - “a pube-headed carrot cruncher” - and his description of the pound shop that had opened next door: “pikey paradise”.
He cut quite a lot off, but it didn’t worry me too much, I was looking forward to a new style. A new me, perhaps. More youthful. But the colour - holy shit. He removed the towel and my hair just shrieked back at me from the mirror. It was much more coppery than the coloured bit of hair on the chart had looked - much, much more. At the same time, my hair was now darker, thus making my face look drawn and very pale, ghoulish in fact. Cinnamon Copper my arse - it should have been called Pumpkin Explodes on a Zombie. Even Frankie knew it was not a good choice of colour, as he didn’t make any comment and just quickly twittered on and on about the latest Big Brother contestants.
“Frankie,” I interrupted him, “I don’t like it.” He pursed his lips and considered my image in the mirror for a moment.
“Well,” he put his hands on my shoulders. “Tough shit babe, it will wash out.” He picked up his hair dryer, “Eventually.”
Why am I never able to complain at the hairdressers? Why, why? What is it about hairdressers that means I would rather run screaming into a car wash then complain to one of them? I got out of there as quickly as I could - over a hundred pounds poorer - a hundred pounds! What an absolute mug.
I arrived home, tried to ignore my reflection in the hallway mirror and went, with some trepidation into the kitchen. The Husband was preparing a salad and didn’t look at me as he was telling me about his day. He’d been sorting out a mortgage for a bin man who’d come straight from work, and the smell in the room had been gross. It had been all he could do not to puke. And at the end of it “the bastard” went for a straight repayment, not an endowment, so hardly any commission in that sale. I watched him hacking up a tomato and hoped he’d washed his hands. I fixed us a drink, whisky and coke for him, vodka and tonic for me. I knocked mine back very quickly. So it’s official - I have finally become invisible to men. Even my own husband no longer looks at me. I sloped off to wash my hair.
To round off a perfect day, there was a severe weather warning on the news, with strong gales and heavy rain forecast across the country. Insurers’ nightmare - things were about to go bonkers at work. Great.
I was blown into work the next morning. I got soaked getting from the car and into the building, but for once I didn’t care. It would all help wash out the Cinnamon Copper Pumpkin. The general consensus on my hair was that the “style is really nice”. What was left unsaid was “but the colour is bloody awful”. Several colleagues asked me if I was feeling alright, as I looked so pale, even though I had applied many coatings of bronzing powder to my face, using a broom.
The Boss sent out a “diary-crash” meeting for 10.00 to all the managers in order to discuss the weather warning. I joined Big Andy, Cruella and The Shark in the meeting room and waited for Brett The Boss to join us via teleconference. As I walked in, Big Andy had roared “Jesus Kate, where did you get your hair done, Sellafield?!” Ha bloody ha. We waited for Brett. Just as we were about to start without him, there was a crackle from the black squawk-box in the middle of the table and we could just make out The Boss’s voice. “Brett, you’re very faint,” boomed Big Andy into the box. The Boss started to speak but he kept cutting out and we could only make out every other word.
“...discuss... warning... frigging... weather... claims... dicked...”
We got the gist. The claims team were based in Bridgend and always got hammered with mega-volumes of calls following bad weather. The other sites were expected to support them, and we had to find some resource to do this. Our usual bun-fight ensued.
Big Andy: “I can’t give up anyone from Finance, we’ll be too busy processing claims.” He always says that.
Cruella: “I can’t give up anyone from Complaints or we’ll fall behind with our cases and be in breach of the FSA.” She always says that.
The Shark: “I can’t give up anyone from Operations, they’ve not been trained on the phones.” He always says that.
All eyes turn to me - as usual. Brett was trying to say something. “...couldn’t give a... just sort... what the f....”
I leant across the table and jabbed a button on the squawk-box, cutting him off. No one protested.
“Right then guys,” I started wearily. “We all need to share the pain here. We can’t take all the resource out of one area, so we need to agree who’s going to give-”
But what about your admin team, Kate,” Cruella butted in, “can’t we use them?” Oh for God’s sake, not this old chestnut again.
“Yes,” urged The Shark, sensing a kill. “Surely their work doesn’t take priority over our customers’ claims? Can’t you use them to take claims calls?”
They never seemed to understand that there’s a reason why my admin team do admin. Half of them are phonaphobes, having been struck down with various bizarre ear conditions, including one of them being unable to keep his headset on as his ears were “uneven” and as for the other half, well, you wouldn’t want them to come into direct contact with a customer. They’re not quite fully evolved yet, knuckles still drag along the ground, although to be fair, some have started to crack nuts open with rudimentary tools.
“But what about your team Ian?” I fought back. “They’re also doing administrative work, and I know you say they are not trained on phones, but I’m sure they know how to answer a phone. It’s really quite easy - it rings, you pick it up - so perhaps they could take messages for the claims team.” The Shark fixed me with his dead eyes. The feeding frenzy had begun. Back and forth across the table we attacked, probing areas of kn
own weaknesses, producing statistics that proved some areas were over-resourced, listening to the reasoning (“but those figures are wrong”) and either re-launching an attack or moving on to another victim. It was the same old themes and arguments, all protecting our own arses and going round and round in circles until we ran out of time. At the end of the meeting we were forced to agree that we all had to give up some people, and sulkily committed names to paper. At the end of the meeting, we said as we always did, “we will put a list of colleagues together that we can call upon in the event of bad weather. That will save us having to go through this pain every time.” We all agreed, as we always did, that this was a good idea. It never happened.
As I left the meeting room I passed a poster that stated “Across this company we think and act as one.” That’s very funny. The team building event was going to be interesting...
It was the policy at Perypils that in order to be impartial, managers did not hold disciplinary meetings for members of their own teams. Instead, we covered each other’s sites. Of course, there is no such thing as an impartial manager, but it’s a nice thought and it seems to fool the staff.
Julie from the Birmingham office had battled against the elements and driven down this morning to hold the meeting with Lee Halfpenny, following his non-genuine absence. Having phoned in sick, then getting pissed in the pub in full view of his team manager meant it was going to be a bit of a no-brainer, straight-forward dismissal. I was absolutely certain that Lee would resign before the meeting, thus avoiding having “dismissed” on his reference from Perypils, but he hadn’t. What an idiot.
The meeting lasted a surprisingly long time, well over an hour. Hissing Cyn and I kept looking over at each other, wondering what was going on. Eventually, to our amazement, Lee walked jauntily back into the department, high-fived several colleagues and returned to his desk. What was going on, why wasn’t he packing up his stuff? It didn’t look as if he’d been dismissed!
The Snake and I went to find Julie. She was in the meeting room gathering up her notes.
“Er, hi Julie,” I started, “can you tell me what happened? Lee appears to be back at his desk.”
Julie was a matronly-looking woman, dressed in a sensible dark green suit which had probably fitted her once, but was several sizes too small for her now.
“Oh, hi Kate,” she said, staring at my hair. “Yes, that was a really difficult meeting.” You what? “Lee was very open and honest with me.” He’s a serial liar! “He was very sorry for saying he was ill when he wasn’t, he knows it was wrong, but he said he was feeling very down and couldn’t face coming into work.”
Julie saw the look of incredulity on our faces and got defensive. “I phoned HR and talked it through with them and they backed my decision not to dismiss. They said I was right to take into account his history of mental health issues.”
I swallowed, hard. “He was signed off with anxiety for a short period of time Julie, that’s correct, but he did not receive any treatment, medication or counselling, so he hardly has a history of issues. Because of his attendance, Cynthia has had to put him through training three times now. He is still not performing to standard and he is quite happy to lie to us whilst he sits in a pub taking the complete piss.”
Julie bridled. “I’ve made my decision, and it’s very unprofessional of you to query it in this manner.” Yes, that’s true, but it was absolutely the wrong decision. You just did not have the balls to dismiss.
She was still going on: “Managers need to show support to one another, we are one team after all and-”
“Oh really? One team are we? But it’s not your problem now, is it? It’s become ours again!” You’ve copped out and left it for us to clear up.
“By the way,” Julie ignored me and addressed The Snake, who looked like she was about to strike, “I agreed with Lee and HR that he should have weekly one-to-ones with his team manager to ensure that he is getting all the support he requires from us. I’ll send you the notes through in due course, but you should schedule those into your diary.”
How do you want to die, venom or constriction? I escorted Julie out of the office before she came to serious harm. I told her I’d see her at the team building event. I might have said this in a somewhat threatening manner, as she looked quite alarmed as we parted.
The first face I saw as I walked back into the department was Lee’s - grinning from ear to ear. Arghhhh.
When I got home, I found a note through the letter box from next door. It read:
Sorry about your fence panels. Please do come round to our side if it helps you fix them.
Oh no. I went through to the back garden. Two panels lay on our lawn. Another looked very wobbly in the wind. Was it our fence? Next door seemed to think so. That was going to cost. What a pisser. I went to wash my hair.
Chapter Eleven