management material

The shop was in good order. The delivery had been put away. The shelves were well stocked, with the label of every bottle of wine facing the right way. Every shelf-edge price label was  correctly placed. The fridge was full of beers and soft drinks, with the coldest cans moved to the  front so no customer could complain about picking up a warm one. The floor had been vacuumed and the worn green carpet tiles bore not a visible trace of dust or dirt from the street outside. The window display was tidy, attractive and arranged exactly as dictated by the instructions from head office.

Downstairs, the cellar was tidy and its floor and stairs had been swept. Fresh stock had been ordered and the paperwork was done. A tape was whirring in the VCR that recorded the output of the security cameras.

Noon was approaching and the last customer I'd seen had blown in and out more than half an hour ago to buy twenty Benson. He had stalked out, unwrapping the little gold pack and adjusting the copy of the Racing Post that was tucked under one arm.

I spread the newspaper out on the counter. The siege of Sarajevo was two months old. A photograph showed a department store split wide apart. In the foreground, a notice had been plastered to the side of a telephone booth: Pazite, Snajper!

The door to Shirland Road swung open, admitting hot air and Christine Pigeon.

"Hello, John," cooed the Pigeon. "Not busy, then?"

"It's never too busy this time of day in the week," I told the Area Manager. "Half the locals are at work and the other half are lying in dark rooms working up the courage to face the world."

Christine looked at me. It was a wide, unpleasant face. Like  a representation of a middle-aged woman formed poorly from dough. Thumbed deep into it, set below viciously plucked and repainted eyebrows, were two very dry and tough raisins. They did not catch the light.

"How do you think the shop is looking, Christine?" I asked.

She turned that head slightly.

"Yes, it looks alright."

"Did you notice the window? What did you think?"

"It's OK."

"No stock loss at all this month," I volunteered. "That's two months in a row. A bit of an improvement, isn't it?"

The Pigeon remained impassive. 

"Is the office tidy?"

"The office? The office? Do you mean the single swivel chair tucked under a length of formica-topped plywood in a windowless alcove off the upstairs stockroom? Yes, you will find it to be absolutely immaculate. Shall I put the kettle on?"

"Yes, please. No, wait. Then you'd have to leave the shop floor unattended."

"We can't have that."

"No, we can't." She found the words of the Store Manual right at the front of her hard little brain and shared them with me: "The shop floor shall never be left unattended for any reason unless the outer door of the shop is securely locked."

"Yes," I countered, "and the outer door of the shop shall not be locked during the designated trading hours of the branch other than during a genuine emergency, such as a serious injury to a member of staff."

"Very good," said the Pigeon. "You've been reading your Manual. You're better off reading that than your bloomin' posh paper there," she said, gesturing towards my broadsheet with an accusing finger.

"You're not a Guardian reader, Christine? You surprise me. I suppose you take the Telegraph?"

She looked at me again. Traces of an expression were barely discernible. Perhaps she hadn't enjoyed my remark.

"What about that cup of tea?" she asked.

"What shall I do? Close the shop? That's against the rules. Or leave you in charge? Meaning that you might have to ring up a sale on a till that you haven't signed into yourself, which is also against the rules. Or would you prefer to make the cup of tea yourself?"

"Don't worry. I'll make it myself. Do you want one?"

"But how would I drink it? It's against the rules to eat or drink on the shop floor and, as we have established, against the rules to leave the shop floor unattended."

Christine rounded the end of the counter and pushed aside the door to the stockroom. For an oddly  proportioned old bird with a stupid and ugly face, she had quite trim legs tapering down to neat ankles and a decent backside packed into her polyester skirt. I assumed that if Mr. Pigeon was in charge in the bedroom, he must surely insist on taking his lady wife from behind. The view from the rear was  just about acceptable and the need not to look at that terrible mouth must have been particularly acute as climax was approaching.

"Send them through when they arrive," she said as her arse, tights and high heels disappeared into the gloom beyond the brightly lit shop floor.

"Will do," I replied, folding up my Guardian and placing it out of sight. The snipers and shells of Bosnia would have to wait. In my pocket, I found the tie I should have been wearing with my white shirt and bottle-green apron. I hastily knotted it and placed my palms on the counter, fixing my gaze on the middle distance and waiting for punters and for Christine's interviewees.

A replacement needed to be found for Alan, the Kiwi part-time assistant who was returning to his native Auckland, having satisfied fully his curiosity about life in London. He had a place confirmed at the police academy in his home city, and was looking forward to doing battle with Maori gang members. He enjoyed telling me that they were the hardest bastards in the world.

yardies are bad news?" he used to ask me. "They're fucking pussies. Those fucking Auckland boys would eat them for breakfast."

Alan was a good bloke. It was on a dingy mattress brought from his flat that I'd spent more than eight sleepless hours on the stockroom floor the last time the alarm has failed to set properly. When I'd called the alarm company I was told that the nearest engineer was the other side of London with half a dozen call outs to deal with before he could get to me.

The shop shall not for any reason be left unattended without a fully functioning alarm system engaged, said the Store Manual.

So, because I was too much of a bloody fool to hire a part-time shop assistant, the Pigeon had flown in to run the rule over the three applicants for the job vacated by the departing New Zealander.

Christine's first and second appointments failed to show up. So my Area Manager had been tucked away for more than an hour when the fucking mad woman entered. I had sold one box of matches, a can of Cherry Coke and a litre of a British fortified wine whose taste was meant to resemble that of Sherry.

The visibly insane female smelled of butter and wore ill-matching clothes as well as an expression of crazed hatred for the world. The fearful eyes travelled over the shelves and bottles. 

"This shop is a mess," said the horrible person in front of me.

"How can I help you?"

"I'm here for an interview."

"Ah, so you must be Geraldine. I'll let Christine know that you're here."

I broke the seal between shop and storeroom. Christine had filled the little space just inside the door with her cigarette smoke and her bullshit. She was on the phone, talking to somebody as if she were addressing a person with severe learning difficulties. I smiled and announced the arrival of the crazy person.

The nutjob went in for her interview. Not even the Pigeon would hire an obvious lunatic, I thought. It's not worth the trouble. No good can come of employing somebody with mental illness so severe that it's visible to the naked eye.

Two weeks later, I wanted to kill myself. The evening shifts I'd spent in the company of Geraldine were torture. Her voice was Satan's rusty iron cock stabbed repeatedly into my soul. Each word killed a thousand brain cells. Each sentence seemed to last one hundred and twenty days of auto-sodomy by the horns of my own despair.

Three weeks later, I took the tube up the Northern Line to Totteridge and Whetstone. It was in an office above the Whetstone branch that important company business was conducted. My shoes shined, my shirt ironed and my rebellious hair beaten into submission, I was off to meet not only the Pigeon but her immediate superior, none other than the Regional Manager himself. I was to learn the outcome of my application to join the Management Training Scheme.

The Regional Manager decided that some chitchat would put me at my ease.

"What do you get up to away from work?" he asked.

I decided not to mention all the time I spent under the influence of ecstasy in nightclubs and at parties in abandoned office buildings around the country. I didn't think he needed to know about the married Polish woman I'd met some months ago and between whose sturdy legs I'd whiled away many a happy hour. I also thought better of telling him how much time I spent reading  the works  of Dostoevsky, Celine, Knut Hamsun and Charles Bukowski. It was just a hunch, but I didn't have him down as a man with whom I could discuss literature.

"I go to the football as much as I can," I told him, truthfully.
"Who do you support?"
"QPR."
"That rubbish? I'm an Arsenal man myself."

I guffawed in the approved manner. This seemed to work OK. His stone face softened a little.

"So tell me why you want to join the Scheme," he said.
"Well, I was given a shop to run five months ago. In that time I've got it looking good, stopped all stock losses, improved sales, got the stock levels down to where they should be and kept within the staffing budget."
"That's not what I asked."
"Excuse me?"
"I didn't ask why you think you're qualified to join the Scheme. I was going to ask that later. I asked why you want to join it."
"Why?"
"Yes, what makes you want to pursue a career in retail management?"
"Because I know I can do it. Because I'm doing it anyway. So I might as well get the proper training and be paid properly for it."
"So it's for the money?"
"Not entirely. It's for the satisfaction. Being recognised as officially qualified to do something."
"That's your answer?"
"Yes," I said. "What kind of answer are you looking for?"

The face hardened again. He wrote something on the form in front of him.

"Would you say you have the right attitude to be a store manager?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm sure I do."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I work hard to make the shop look right, balance the tills, keep the stock at the right level and improve sales."
"That's not really what I asked, is it?"
"Isn't it?"
"No, it isn't."

I looked from my interrogator to Christine Pigeon. She wore one of her tight polyester skirts and some sort of smile. It was hard to guess why it was there under her lumpy nose. There was a rustling noise and the crackle of static electricity when the ugly fucking bitch crossed her good legs a little higher up.

"I'm sorry, what are you asking then?"
"You told me you can do the basics of the job," replied the Regional Manager. "But I asked you about your attitude. Do you have the right attitude?"
"I think I do."
"Why?"
"Because I do everything that's expected of me and more - and that's without the proper training. So imagine what I can offer if I have the training."
"Well, I'm afraid we're not going to offer you a place on the Scheme on this occasion," he said.

I was taken aback.

"Why not?" I asked.
"That last question about attitude was the key one," said the hard face. "Because we don't think you do have the right attitude."
"I see. Why not?"
"Christine tells me you were reading a newspaper the last time she was at your store."
"Yes. Is that important?"
"Yes it is. It shows you're not focused on your work."
"But I had done all my work. The shop was immaculate. There was nothing more I could do."
"Were the shelves fully stocked?"
"Yes."
"Fully stocked?"
"Yes."
"So every line was six bottles deep? Every single line?"
"No," I admitted. "But every bottle was pulled to the front of the line and every bottle was facing outwards."
"Yes, but some of the lines were not full."
"Well how could they be?"
"You could get more stock from the cellar and fill every single line six bottles deep."
"But how could I go to the cellar?"
"How?"
"'The shop floor shall never be left unattended for any reason unless the outer door of the shop is securely locked'", I parroted. "Also, 'the outer door of the shop shall not be locked during the designated trading hours of the branch other than during a genuine emergency, such as a serious injury to a member of staff.' So, if I'm on my own, I'm not allowed to leave the shop floor without shutting the shop. But I'm not allowed to shut the shop."
"Yes," allowed the stone face.
"So I was on my own. I have to be on my own in the mornings because the staffing budget for a shop with the turnover of that branch only allows for having two staff at the busiest times, which means the evenings and Saturday afternoon. Most of the time there's only one person working there. How can that person get more stock without leaving the shop floor?"
"This is what we mean about your attitude. It's not positive."
"Not positive?"
"No, this sort of talk is not positive."
"I'm just pointing out that you're marking me down for not doing something that the company rules actually make impossible."
"Also," said the Area Manager triumphantly, "you weren't wearing a tie when Christine arrived."

He had me there.

"That's true," I admitted. "I was not wearing a tie."

In the weeks that followed, Geraldine's voice and her buttery smell nearly killed me. She continually committed the same act of theft involving the same acquaintance. Her friend would come in and pay for one item. Geraldine would fill her friend's bag with several additional items. All of this was captured on CCTV. She also allowed her ex-husband to make purchases using stolen credit cards on several occasions. This was also caught on CCTV. Christine's choice of part-time sales assistant was not really working out as hoped.

A fucking idiot named David, who was coming toward the end of the Management Training Scheme, was installed as the shop's manager-in-waiting. He was routinely late for work, routinely offended some of our more sensitive customers and quickly displayed the symptoms of a nervous breakdown.

While David was off sick, I got the shop looking decent again, smoothed over the arguments he'd caused with the upset regular punters and got everything nicely under control. The job was very fucking easy.

I never became a store manager. I was not management material.