So when the phone was ringing off the hook [A hook? Is Abu Hamza holding your phone? - ed] earlier at lunchtime, I was in no hurry to go and answer it. An excellent commitment to customer service. Except that there were no customers in front of me. After letting it ring around twenty times, I finally decided to answer it.
"Hi this is Paul from the [name deleted on legal advice] Garage in Renfrew. We have a woman going absolutely mental in the shop here."
So why the fuck are they phoning me? Last time I checked we weren't negotiators trained in psychiatry.
"Oh right." I said.
"Yes, it's because your cash machine swallowed her card."
Pisskidney.
"Well there's not really a lot we can do about that. She'd need to wait until the card was sent back to us at the office before we could give her it."
"No you don't understand, she needs the card, she's got body parts in her car."
I blinked a good couple of times. "Sorry, did you say body parts?"
"Yeah." he said.
"Right. That's what I.. feared."
"She's going crazy here."
I started to wonder where she acquired these body parts. Had she butchered someone that didn't give her a receipt in Tesco?
"Umm these body parts you speak of.... wait, what?"
"Hang on, i'll put her on."
Oh Christ.
So he does. He puts me onto the psycho. "YourmachineswallowedmacardandIneededthatmoneyanIcannaepayforthepetrol!"
Mmmm that is quite a predicament that you're in. "Right... yeah."
"I mean, what am I going to do?! I've got body parts in my car."
"Yeaaaaah, so I heard. So uhh.... what's the deal with that?"
She sighed short and hard like she was clearing a bit of phlegm from her throat. "I'm a government official, i've had to pick up body parts from Glasgow Airport and I need to deliver them as they're in ice. But now I can't pay for petrol because your machine swa-llowed my car-ddd. I need my card right now."
I said i'll see what I could do and would phone her back on her mobile.
Christ. That's a good one to explain to the ATM department. And while I was on hold to them, I was wondering what kind of body parts she had. Did she have arms? Legs? Breasts? Or was it internal organs? Perhaps she wasn't a Government official. Maybe she had the bodies of small children and their bones were going to ground down and taken as a cure for impotency?
So I explained what was happening. Naturally, because they were miles away, they didn't care about the situation and would do nothing to open the machine. This meant that I had to phone her back and tell her this. Aaaarrrgh!
However, a back-up plan was just to take her the money.
She wasn't too pleased that she wouldn't have her card. In fact, she did scream at great length down the phone. Charming. Once she calmed down, I said we'd be on our way with money for her.
Before we were about to leave, we got another call from the garage. She'd left! Hah! Done a runner with bits of body in her car!
Later on in the afternoon.... some email correspondence from my boss went like this...
Boss: "Did you pay the money back into the body parts woman's account?"
Me: "Yes, I didn't want to be out on a limb."
A reply hit my inbox a couple of minutes later...
Boss: "I torso."
I torso? That doesn't even make sense!
Me: "Now, you can do better than that? Do you need a hand?"
Boss: "I don't finger so."
Now, i'm kind of seeing what she's doing here. It's still not on the same level as mine though.
Me: "I was hoping for a comment that would make you stand head and shoulders above the rest."
I was praying that she wouldn't think that I was talking about shampoo and conditioner. A full tweny minutes later...
Boss: "Are you going to have a leg of lamb tomorrow night?"
Me: "I think i'll just have a light finger buffet."
Photo: A picture I took a couple of weeks ago of a body part belonging to the blonde one....
only blondie could have a quote written on his hand in Latin. In pen. On a Saturday night. Apparently it means "there is a middle course in all things." Interesting way to sit on the fence.
~Raccoon.~
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