The Office Part 3

During my time working at the office I learned one thing, you never knew what was going to come through the front door next. I do think a large part of what went on was due to the fact that it was an all male salesforce. Put fifteen men in a room for the day and lock the front door and for sure fun and games would happen in spades.

On the day of the impotent birthday boy's birthday, sometime about mid-morning, in came a stripper-gram girl. As we did with the boss the week before, we got the man hidden away in the back room before letting that sexy chic loose in the main office. After a few minutes we brought Mr Impotent back into the room and the comely wench started her routine.

Now like lots of folk I had always thought that striptease was more than a little on the seedy side. In fact, it turned out to be all good clean fun and really quite hilarious. First the girl did her striptease routine to the sound of music coming from a ghetto blaster she had brought along with her. Every single man was surprisingly well behaved and remained at his desk. All except for the birthday boy.

Digsby, as he shall be called, was led by the stripper's hand to the centre of the wide open room and was pushed to his knees. Then the lass also got down on all fours in front of Digsby and reached behind her to stick a marshmallow candy on her right bum cheek. The idea was that she would set off crawling around the office on all fours whilst Digsby tried to catch up with her, on all fours, and get the candy off her pretty posterior only with his teeth.

The girl gave herself a head start of a few feet. Digsby, being middle aged and clearly physically unfit didn't have a cat in hell's chance of catching the girl. I have never seen anything so funny as Digsby stuttering around the office and sweating profusely as he tried as hard as he could to catch that girl and get that candy. In the end she slowed down enough for him to catch her and get his reward. It was the happiest I had ever seen Digsby in all the time I worked there.

I sat at my desk smiling, not only at the Shenanigans with Digsby and the stripper, but also because I had managed arrange a dozen sales appointments way down in Southend-On Sea, about a 500 mile roundtrip. If all went well I would be returning home from the two day trip with enough signed contracts to guarantee me a five thousand pound weekly wage, all paid in cash on the following Tuesday. Alack alas it was not to be.

I usually did well on these trips, but not this time. I did not manage to sell a single contract. Worse still, as we were all self employed commission only salesmen there was no fall back basic wage. Added to that was the fact that I had to fund all my outgoing telephone calls, desk and light payments to the company. Plus I had to pay my own transport and hotel costs. In all The job cost me 500 pounds a week! And then I had to make sure that I also had enough money to pay my taxes and my accountantcy fees. The big attraction was that it was quite possible to earn anything up to 20,000 pounds a month. If you had a bad week you just had to bite the bullet or suck it up princess. Whichever way you slice it, it sucks.

On this particular occasion matters just went from totally crap to appallingly crap. My last appointment was my last chance to at least earn enough cover my 500 pound costs. No such luck. It was a Friday afternoon and the little shit kept me waiting seven hours. I had given him my mobile number and asked him to call me if there was a problem. He made no such call.

Eventually the swine turned up at his house and tried to slip past me unseen. I knocked on his door and out he came. He told me that he couldn't see me as he had to go right back out and he had had second thoughts anyway. I was absolutely furious. "So why did you not call me on the mobile to tell me that. I have been here kicking my heels for seven hours man." I said tersely.

"Oh I believe in telling people to their face, even if it's bad news." he replied, trying to be all self righteous and sanctimonious. All I could do was walk away before I self righteously gave him a big fat punch on the nose.

The long 250 mile drive back home through peak hour traffic on a night of torrential rain simply added to my depression at not having earned a penny piece and being 500 pounds in the hole. The only small comfort I derive from the journey home was the fully specced up beautiful Volvo 750 I owned at that time. The car used to belong to a famous pop group as their limo and wanted for nothing. Leather seats, air con, electric everything. It was a pitifully short small comfort due to the fact that about 45 minutes home from a six hour drive I got rammed off the road by a forty ton truck. The car was a wreck, a total write off. Worse still the truck driver, having been the cause of a multiple pile up on the motorway, simply sped off. Thankfully nobody was seriously injured.

On the following Monday I got up to a knock on my front door. There stood a uniformed policeman, backed up by a heavily armed swat team pointing their weapons at me from just a few yards away across the street.

"Good morning sir, can you tell me where your car is please." said the officer.

"Of course, it's right behind you officer." I said as I nodded my head the BMW hire car the insurance company had lent me.

"No, not that car, the gunmetal grey Volvo sir."

Oh that was wrecked on Friday evening on my way home from a long trip. It is now in a wrecker's yard."

"Have got a contact number for that wrecker's yard sir?" he said.

"Of course, come in. Can you tell me what this is all about? This is all a bit scary huh."

"Yes sir, your car, or one like it, was used in a serious bank robbery on Saturday morning where somebody got killed."

I was in total and utter shock.

The policeman called the wrecker's yard who confirmed that on the Friday evening my car had been recovered from the motorway and was now sitting atop three other wrecks.

It turns out that the thieves had used an identical car to mine and had cloned the registration number plates to avoid detection. It did later occur to me that one innocent wrong move when I first opened my front door to that policeman could have got me killed. It was a sobering thought to say the least.

In the end, working at the office was all too much of an economic roller coaster for me. Yes you could earn five thousand pounds in one week, but you could also draw a blank two or three weeks on the run and find yourself in a very big black hole. For all the fun back at base in the office, it just wasn't worth the stress of continually facing ruin. I left for a less economically rewarding contracted, stable position closer to home.