“ Actually that is a mistake,” I said even though I had no recollection of putting it in my original application Then again it is hard to recall all the bull shit that I wrote in an attempt to get a job in a time of rising mass unemployment. I certainly had not been vice captain of the University chess team for a start. Nor had I actually read all the published works of Isaac Azimov. I still haven’t.
“Yes that’s definitely a mistake,” I confirmed. The manager looked visibly relieved.
“So you’re not a Left Footer then?”
“Actually I am embarrassed to admit that I’m pretty useless with my left foot other than for walking or running around on. No, I am a right footer and can play in defense or midfield, but I prefer midfield.
“Oh bloody marvelous,” he looked unaccountably upset by my information. “Not only is he a Left Footer but he thinks he’s a bloody comedian to boot. Just what I bloody needed.”
“At least I won’t have to give you a lift to the Lodge meeting every month”. He carried on reading.
“Jesus Christ you’re Irish!” I thought he was going to have a seizure. “Is this some sort of bloody joke?”
His facial expression read ‘the doctor has told me it’s malignant and I have only days to go’.
“Okay. I’m a man who likes to call a spade a spade. So I am going to tell you straight how it’s going to be.”
I hate that expression. The people that use it try to justify themselves as being completely honest and open, when in fact they are usually just bloody rude and uncaring of other people’s feelings. This ‘Good Old Boy’ was a classic example. The manager then went on to tell me he didn’t know why they kept sending him graduate trainees every year. They never stayed the course. So why do they keep sending intelligent people here on suicide missions, I thought. What a waste of everybody’s time, money and talent.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I don’t expect you will turn out any different.”
Perhaps he was the reason why I stuck the job for so long – he got my back up and I wanted to prove him wrong.
My new bigoted boss gave me the rest of the good news. “I have been sent a two year training program for you from Head Office. The office manager will be in charge of that. You get one day off a week to study for the Banking exams (I didn’t – we never had enough staff to cover for me), other than that you will keep your nose clean and do what you are told. If you don’t like it, you know what the alternative option is. I joined the Bank 23 years ago and I started right at the bottom. Just like you are going to do.”
And that is precisely what happened. For the next six weeks I made tea and coffee twice a day for twenty-five people. The rest of the time I filed. I filed index cards, loan applications, correspondence, and memos. I filed every possible type of paperwork.
I was bored fucking delirious.
I eventually discovered that being a Left Footer meant being a Roman Catholic, even though I was now essentially an atheist and hadn’t been inside a church for years, it didn’t matter. The records at Head Office said I was a Left Footer. It felt a bit like those people you hear about who can’t get credit anywhere but have no idea why, and eventually discover that they have been accidentally put on a computer credit card blacklist. Once you are down as either a bad credit risk or a Catholic, it’s a bugger trying to get people to change their opinion.
It was even more of a problem in the Bank that I was with. They actually had their own Masonic Lodge for like minded White Anglo Saxon Protestants, membership of which was difficult to achieve for red haired freckly Irish Catholics. If you were not in the ‘Club’ your career was taking the slowest of slow boats to China. So I was a little confused as to why I was given the position in the first place – it just didn’t make sense.
I found out some time later how I had managed to slip through the net.
The bank would take on about a dozen graduate trainees every year. It turned out that the Recruitment Manager who hired me had been pushed sideways in some bitter office politics (the Nazi bastards probably discovered his grandma was Jewish or something equally inexcusable).
This had aggravated him to the point that he had gotten himself another job with a big finance company. As a parting gesture, this year’s graduate intake included two other Roman Catholics, an insufferable bible bashing born again Christian, a hippie drug addict, an Asian (What the hell was the Recruitment Manager thinking of!) and worst of all, two women.
When I left ten years later, the Bank had well over two hundred branches nationwide, but not a single branch had a female manager in charge. And I never ever met an Asian working for them. Not too forward thinking in the area of equal opportunities this bunch.
After six weeks we all met up back at Head Office for the next stage of our accelerated training program. When I say ‘all’, I really mean to say ‘the survivors’.
The Asian and one of the women had lasted just a week. As had one of the ‘normal’ recruits. The hippie drug addict lasted five weeks but only managed to make it in to work on the first Monday – he never managed another Monday. He then didn’t manage to make it in to work for ten days on the trot. The hippie wasn’t on the phone so eventually the Manager called at his flat on the way to the branch. The hippie answered the door in just his boxer shorts looking seriously hung over and bleary eyed. When asked when they could expect to see him at work again he replied, “When the vibes feel right, man”. Brilliant!
The dismissal notice was hand delivered later that afternoon. Shame, I liked him.
My two years spent at the first branch were not all bad. For instance there were the Bank Holidays to look forward to. Once the fog was so bad we were sent home early. That was fun.
I had my most entertaining day of my banking career ever working at this branch. It was the day of the bomb alert. The branch I was working in was situated quite close to the main train station. At the time the IRA had extended its lethal bombing campaign to mainland Britain. No town center was safe from these nasty bastards.
One morning we got a notice from the police to evacuate the area. An old Ford Transit van with Northern Ireland number plates had been left for nearly 24 hours in the short stay car park at the station. There was a suspicious looking box in the back of the van and the bomb squad had cordoned off the area.
The bank in its wisdom had sent a memo to all office managers instructing them to formulate plans for such an eventuality. The office manager now read these instructions out to the assembled staff.
He had already prepared notices to put in the windows to advise customers why the bank was closed. All of the staff was to assemble in a safe place except for four male members of staff. These four were instructed to stand in front of the plate glass windows around the bank building to ensure that customers didn’t hang around outside where they would be in potential danger of serious injury from flying glass.I kid you not.
“And what about us, the four male members of staff?” I asked.
“Er… how do you mean?” He wasn’t quick this guy.
“ERR…I mean what about us and any potentially dangerous flying glass?”
Silence greeted me. All the staff was staring at the office manager, waiting for him to explain this rather bizarre aspect of his well thought out plan.
Still silence. I broke it for him.
“Tell you what,” I said, “while you stand outside that bloody great plate glass window thinking about it, wearing that ill fitting pin striped suit for protection, me and the other guys will go join the ladies somewhere safe. OK?”
With that we left and spent a pleasant couple of hours in the Town Square, chatting and drinking coffee.
