Then some extremely unsavoury items started to turn up – used needles. The leftovers from injecting hard drugs. Next thing we knew, we were collecting more hazardous waste than the local hospital
This was the last straw for the cleaners.They insisted something be done about the situation or they would go on strike. That was when the spy camera was fitted and the fun really began…because apparently the good citizens of Wakefield & District really didn’t care if they were being filmed or not.
The spy camera was connected to a special slow motion video recorder. The recording quality was not brilliant but you could certainly tell what was going on, and just as importantly, who was doing what with whom.
The staff turned into a bunch of voyeurs – this was Real Life TV way ahead of its time. On Monday lunchtime we would gather in the staff room. While drinking coffee or tea and eating lunch we would put the tape on fast forward search and stop it if anything interesting happened. We were rarely disappointed. One pair of young lovers used the place for sex every weekend – if they came into the branch during normal hours the counter staff would spontaneously start to sing “Some enchanted evening, I will shag my true love…” Their exhibitions only ceased when they were cautioned by the police.
Once when we were watching the tape, Julie (one of the typists) recognized her brother in law. He wasn’t alone but accompanied by a young woman obviously dressed for a night on the town. And she wasn’t Julie’s sister. They both looked more than a little tipsy.
“ What the hell is Darren doing in there? He’s supposed to be in Blackpool on a stag party with his mates from work.” she announced. The situation quickly went from bad to worse, when the young woman bent over one of the machines and lifted her skirt up around her waist to reveal a big pale white butt and no underwear. At least she wouldn’t be leaving any knickers behind for the cleaners to find.
Darren unceremoniously dropped his trousers to his knees and began to goose the lady energetically from behind. Full marks for effort but very poor technique I felt. Not so much as a kiss on the cheek.
The recording didn’t include sound but “Yes, yes, oh God no! Yes. Yes!” is pretty easy to lip read. Just in case anybody present was in doubt Gordon came to the rescue. “I think she is saying, “Yes, yes. Oh God no.Yes.Yes,” he said helpfully.
“Do you think she’s checking her account balance?” Andy inquired from everybody watching.
His mate Dave had a bright suggestion: “Perhaps she can’t remember her PIN number and he’s trying to jog her memory.”
This idea had all of us howling with laughter. All of us except Julie anyway.
“I’m going to kill the cheating bastard.” She announced. I believed her too. Julie was a big, big girl.
We didn’t have time to find out if the girl’s memory received a lot of jogging or only a quickie jog, as a furious Julie snatched the tape from the machine and left in tears.
I believe the divorce was uncontested. Judging from Darren`s concept of foreplay, his wife was better off without him.
One delightful morning I arrived at work to be confronted by one of the cleaners, a right old battleaxe called Ingrid. It was difficult to form any sort of working relationship with Ingrid because she was never actually at work. Ingrid was ‘bad with her nerves’. She got stuck into me as soon as I got through the door.
“I’m not cleaning up bloody rabbit shit. Says nothing in my contract about rabbit shit. If I liked cleaning rabbit shit I would get a job in a bleeding pet shop.”
Brilliant, I thought, the daft old cow has lost the plot altogether. Maybe she really is bad with her nerves.
“Have you been putting the vodka on your rice crispies again Ingrid?” I asked. “Run out of milk this morning, did we?”
Before I got a reply some of the girls came over holding six gorgeous fluffy white rabbits.
“Look Sean, look what somebody left in the speedbank machine room last night. If nobody claims them I want two for the kids.”
“Hang on, hang on a minute, I’ve just got in the door and already the day is going pear shaped. Nobody is taking any rabbits anywhere until we check the security tape and find out which cretin forgot he was carrying a box of rabbits. Honestly, do all you people here still have lead water pipes or what? How the hell can you forget you are carrying a box of rabbits?”
That lunchtime we avidly checked the security tape. We ran it through twice and at no time did we see anybody bring in six fluffy white bunny rabbits. It was like they had walked into the speedbank room through a rip in the space-time continuum, from a parallel universe where rabbits use cash machines as a matter of course. There was just no other explanation for how they got there.
I tell you what was funny though. It was absolutely hilarious watching a couple of drunks reaction to six little bunny rabbits gambling about their feet while they were trying to use the cash machines at four o’clock in the morning. You could tell they were convinced they had the DT`s. The cleaner was right to be upset about the rabbits. They might have been fluffy and cute but they could shit for England – it was all over the place.
Truly you could make a movie about the stuff captured by our security camera, but that is not the purpose of this book. Its purpose is to educate the novice small business traveler in the ways of a nasty dangerous planet. Go on then, I will tell you one more tale before I move on to describe the next dump I worked at.
This was pure Buster Keaton. We were watching the tape one lunchtime because the cleaners had complained that somebody had superglued a leather jacket to the front of one of the cash dispensers and they could not get it off for love nor money.
At one point in the recording we noticed four or five youths enter the lobby joking around. They didn’t use the machines, but one of them took a small tube from his pocket and spread something all around one of the cash machines. They all laughed like it was the funniest thing ever and left.
Ten minutes later another customer came in, drunk as a soggy mop. It took him about eight attempts to swipe card the door open. When he staggered into the room he was absolutely legless, doing the One-Man Whiskey Tango. You’ve seen it surely. The drunk is totally unable to move his left leg, which appears to be nailed to the floor, while his right leg vainly attempts to make progress forward in a sort of crescent motion. His torso swaying precariously in all directions. The One-Man Whiskey Tango.
Eventually he made it across the room and slumped against one of the machines. He managed to get his card into the slot and actually remember and key in his PIN number, luckily without any help from Darren. So far so good. Both arms were supporting his weight by leaning against the machine as he waited for his card and the money. The money arrived but he couldn’t take it. His arms had been superglued to the sides of the screen and he could not move them.
His frustration turned to rage when the machine sucked the cash back in because he hadn’t taken it in the required twenty seconds – a standard security feature. Hey come on, if the customers can forget a box of rabbits you have to admit it is not inconceivable that they might forget the money they just asked for either. I’m pretty sure that it’s down to the lead water pipes but I remain open to other explanations.
The poor drunk tried everything to get free – trying to throw himself towards the wall, contorting his body in directions only a drunk would think might be helpful. At one point he was so twisted up he was strangling himself. Eventually, like Harold Houdini escaping from handcuffs and restraints, he managed to actually climb out of the jacket and ended up sat on the floor breathing heavily. He stood up and aimed a vicious kick at the machine, missed and ended up sat on his bum again. He left on his hands and knees, covered in sweat. No card, no money, no coat. God it was funny to watch. Wish it had been in colour instead of black and white.
