Читать книгу It’s Not What You Think and Memoirs of a Fruitcake 2-in-1 Collection - Chris Evans - Страница 37

10 Try to be popular

9 Incentivise as opposed to reward

8 Recount stories of when they were a junior employee and how things used to be

7 Repeatedly state to the year how many years they have been in the business

6 Have their teeth whitened or their hair coloured—OK for girls but really not good at all for blokes

5 Return to work after a boozy ‘lunch’

4 Expect anyone who gets paid less than them to care as much as they do

3 Get drunk at the Christmas party

2 Employ a secretary or assistant that they stand any chance of finding even vaguely attractive

1 Use their position to steamroller over other people, especially the little people

Decisions are so much easier when they are more or less made for you, even if it’s down to circumstances and events beyond your control.

There was no way I could sustain the life I was leading. I was so tired. I was losing my focus at the shop in the day and it was affecting my performance on the show at night, but the show was all I cared about, the shop for me was now purely a means to an end.

The thing was, though I still wasn’t getting paid ‘anything’ for the show (not that I minded, none of the other kids were either and that had always been our deal right from the get go), it was just that I didn’t have any other source of income except my job. So for a while it looked like I was going to have to give up the one thing I loved, the one thing I thought I would never get to do and that I was now doing, the one thing that I thought I could make a life out of—the wonderful world of the wireless.

Not so, however, an archangel was about to swoop down to my rescue in the guise of the grumpy old git of a newsagent. Not Ralph from my first job but my new boss, who took grumpiness to a whole new level.

When I wasn’t on the radio, or at the radio station, on the road or asleep, I would be at work listening to the radio. It was still my link to the outside world during daylight hours when I was stuck in the back of the shop for most of the day.

This shop didn’t have an actual office—so while the shop girls looked after things out front, I had to do all my paperwork in the stockroom, but it wasn’t really a proper stockroom even, it was more like a large cupboard, stacked to the rafters with cartons of fags and boxes of confectionery. It also had a barred-up window, which I thought was kind of appropriate.

I arrived for the evening mark-up one afternoon, breezing through the shop as usual, except this time when I went to say hi to a couple of the girls, normally so cheery and pleasant with me, on this occasion they were barely able to bring themselves to murmur a reply.

‘Strange,’ I thought, they were never like that, they had the air of children about them who know there is something wrong but don’t want to let on in case Mum or Dad find out.

I entered my cell as usual, took off my coat and immediately noticed something wasn’t right, there was something missing, I didn’t know what at first and then it dawned on me…there was silence. My radio wasn’t on. I looked around, not only was it not on, it wasn’t even there. I ran out to the front.

‘Does anyone know where my radio is?’

‘It’s been confiscated.’

‘What do you mean it’s been confiscated?’

‘He confiscated it, he said it’s a disruptive influence and it had to go.’

Confiscated, where are we, at school?

It transpired that the Oliver Cromwell of the retail world had come in that lunchtime and declared he’d had enough of me and my delusions of grandeur but most of all he’d had enough of my bloody radio, and what’s more he preferred the funereal silence of pessimism as opposed to the soundtrack of optimism. It was his shop and that was how it was going to stay.

‘What a coward,’ I thought to myself, ‘what a snivelling miserable snake in the grass.’ I had done nothing but work my nuts off for him and he didn’t even have the decency to have a conversation with me first before taking away the one little luxury that kept me going. ‘Even prisoners are allowed a radio,’ I thought to myself.

This was obviously why he was so bloomin’ miserable all the time. He couldn’t convey his feelings about anything. He had a great business, a nice car, a nice house, by all accounts, and yet he begrudged me my little radio, in the back, never loud enough to be heard out the front, never gonna disturb anyone. What a loser.

But surely there had to more to it than this—of course there did. His rage manifested itself in the confiscation of my radio but it was obviously a metaphor for wanting me out as well. To him the radio represented me, just as I represented it—why else would a grown intelligent man stoop to such petty depths where a junior employee was concerned?

It also has to be said that, he was a moaner, one of the least attractive and useful traits a human being can adopt.

When somebody moans about something, it’s never about what they say it’s about, it’s always about something else, that’s why they are moaners in the first place and if you can be bothered to dig deeper it’s usually about the fact that they are personally unfulfilled in some or other aspect of their lives.

If anyone comes to me and says they want a word about something I always immediately ignore whatever it is they first talk about and then ask them, ‘What’s really the matter?’ It always works, they either tell you straight away what it is or never come to you again for fear of having to have a real conversation about something.

So, in my opinion, if the old git wanted rid of me and didn’t have the bottle to tell me so himself, I would do the job for him. I informed the girls that I had enjoyed working with them but I was now leaving and I would probably never see any of them again.

‘What about the evening paper deliveries?’ said one of them, in a tizz as I walked out of the door.

‘No offence to you,’ I replied, ‘but I don’t give a stuff about him or his papers any more.’ I had suddenly become buoyed by a new-found sense of freedom, ‘and tell him,’ I added, ‘that I bought that radio with my own money—technically what he did by confiscating it was theft.’ And with that I was on my way.

Sadly I never saw my beloved radio again. I would give a thousand pounds for it now. But the old git had indirectly done me a huge favour, he had pushed me away from him and his doom and gloom towards a better place. Bad people always do this if you give them long enough. They can’t stand positive people being around: it threatens their equilibrium of shite—they might try and infect you with their poison but once they see you’re having none of it, they’ll run a mile rather than run the risk of feeling happier about themselves. Ridiculous but true.

More by chance than design, I was now finally free to put all my energy into my work at the radio station, albeit having just lost my only source of income.

As a result of this drop in status I was skint within a couple of weeks, but there’s always a job if you want one; anybody who says otherwise is telling porkies. It may be a rubbish job with terrible wages but there will be a job somewhere.

I had to find a job that left me free Monday to Thursday but paid enough for me to survive. I didn’t care what it was or what prospects there were. As far as I was concerned my future was in radio, so all I needed was the cash for petrol to get me there and food to keep me alive.

I can’t recall how it came about but the perfect solution to my dilemma was waiting for me at a rusty old lock-up garage in a small village called Vulcan, which is a tiny place a few miles outside Warrington, famous for the production of railway locomotives.

Somebody (for the life of me I can’t remember who) told me about a job selling seafood out of a basket around the local pubs—shrimps, prawns and crabsticks—all that kind of stuff.

Apparently all you had to do was turn up on a Friday and Saturday night at this mysterious garage, pick up your basket, fill it with stock and then set off on your round. If you could put up with the initial banter from the lager lads then you were well on your way to earning a good few quid. It was just like being a paper boy again, but a bit smellier.

I loved it, it was great fun, the banter was banal but bearable and the pubs generally friendly and welcoming. Sure, the hours meant I couldn’t go out and socialise like all my mates but I was sort of out anyway and whilst everyone else was spending their money I was saving mine and all for the greater good. I could easily make over fifty quid for a couple of nights’ work. I could have the radio on as loud as I liked in the car plus I had the rest of the week free to spend back at Piccadilly.

Bingo, the miserable old git had set me free, my life had been transformed—for now at least.

Having saved up enough cash from my seafood sales plus a few other odd jobs, eventually I had enough to see me through for a while and went to work at Piccadilly full time—more than full time in fact: I was there for as many hours as they’d have me in the building. I didn’t want them to be left in any doubt as to how much I was desperate to be part of what they did. All the time I was learning; it was invaluable in every sense but what I really needed was a paid position, and once again I was running out of options.

I hung on for as long as I could but there came a point when I had to face up to a reality check, I had been working there for ages now including weekends and I still hadn’t earned a penny of actual wages. Of course I would have paid them to do what I was doing if I could have—I liked it so much—but that wasn’t a ‘real’ situation and a guy’s gotta live.

Regretfully I concluded that maybe the ‘me working for free for ever’ bit of my original deal was now no longer a sustainable situation and that at some point if I was to carry on being able to work there, money would have to change hands—preferably from their bank account into mine.

I conveyed my circumstances to the management but was told in no uncertain terms that this was not going to happen, it was not a possibility. They appreciated what I had done for them and were not ungrateful but they knew I needed the experience more than the experience needed me. I was still last in when it came to the pecking order for the next full-time paid job and things didn’t look like they were going to change anytime soon; they did, however, offer me a stopgap.

The deal was, I would be paid bugger all for any work in the week, which I was still very much expected to do, but I would get paid at weekends for the Friday and Saturday night technical operating overnight shifts—the ones that nobody else wanted to do. ‘Fine by me,’ I thought, I did want to do those shifts—and for money, you’re not kidding! As long as I could afford to eat and get there I was happy, more than happy, in fact—I was ecstatic.

I was working at a radio station and being paid for it, not much admittedly, but nevertheless I was official…sort of.

Yeeeeeeesssssssss!

Nooooooooooooo!

As it turned out, I quickly discovered that the money on offer wasn’t actually going to be enough to fulfil these two lowly criteria. On what I was receiving I could afford to either eat or drive but not both, and seeing as I wouldn’t be able to drive if I was dead, I thought I’d better eat first and think about petrol second.

However it wasn’t long before the writing was once again on the wall and this time I was at breaking point—I wasn’t being overly dramatic or precious, I was simply skint and was forced to face up to reality. I was left with no choice—I had to leave Piccadilly Radio and I had to do it now.