Annoyed, no annoyed wasn't the right word -- fuming, better but still not enough -- totally bloody pissed off, now that sums up exactly how I felt when my general manager finished giving me the good news of what I was due to be doing for the rest of the week in work.
I had turned up for work as usual on Wednesday morning expecting a day much like any other. I work for a large country stores outlet in the heart of the Devon countryside as a gunsmith. It may seem an unusual occupation but as a farmers' son I had been around shotguns and air rifles ever since I could remember and the careers officer at school arranged an apprenticeship in a gun shop when I left at 16. I spent the next 10 years learning and mastering my craft until our little shop was bought out by a major chain of country stores and I was employed in their gun room as their in-house gunsmith.
Gordon was sat in front of me and had just finished explaining how Ivan, our lorry driver, had broken his ankle the previous evening slipping from his cab in our yard after the days deliveries. He continued to ramble on about how there were no agency drivers available this week due to it being August and the middle of the holiday season, how store deliveries were of paramount importance for a profitable business, how several of the 40 shop employees could drive our 3 pickups for small deliveries but no one had a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence for the 26 tonner -- no one that is except me!
The bombshell! Of course! I had never made any secret of the fact that I held a Class 1 lorry licence, I had passed my lorry test as soon as I was old enough just to help dad out around the farm, it went together with the tractor, forklift, telehandler and cherry picker licences I also held -- to be fair there wasn't a vehicle I could think of that I didn't have a licence for.
And that was it. Gordon said he had already spoken to Matthew -- the manager of the gun room -- who had confirmed he could handle things whilst I took over the delivery driving for the remainder of the week. That was a laugh, I had a cabinet full of work pending, none of which he was qualified to deal with or even remotely competent to look at but he had assured Gordon he was going to placate the customers and Gordon had bought it.
I couldn't get out of it so decided to make the best of a bad lot. Whilst Gordon arranged for the yard lads to load the lorry I headed to our workwear department for a change of clothes. The store staff wore a corporate 'uniform' of pale blue polo shirts and cargo trousers, but in the gun room the clients expected much more of a "country house gent" feel so I was in my usual outfit of a tweed jacket, tattersal shirt, dark brown corduroy trousers and oxblood brogues. I grabbed myself a pair of steel toecap boots as well as black cargo trousers & black polo shirt too as well as gloves, high visibility waistcoat & jacket (I was now just another one of the pod people) and booked it to the company account before making my way around to the yard.
The warehouse guys had loaded three orders comprising 12 pallets of a wide range of feed, bedding and other products onto the stores' one year old Scania 94D 6x2 curtain sider. I grabbed the delivery notes from the yard manager, climbed into the cab and after inserting my digital tachograph card I put the first address into the sat-nav and headed out to a farm some 60 miles away. The sleeper cab of the truck was extremely comfortable and very well set out. Ivan had kept it meticulously tidy since he had been driving it.
The run to the first drop, a sheep farm, went off without a hitch and my mood began to lift as I was unloaded by tractor having just needed to open and close my sheets. Job number 2 was an easy 40 mile trip to a large stables complex where again a lad on a forklift unloaded their pallets whilst I drank a welcome cup of tea provided by a very cute young stable lass wearing a little strappy top and figure hugging jodhpurs -- an added bonus.
The route to job 3 was taking me back towards the store but in a meandering manner since I was now out in the sticks and negotiating often quite tight country lanes. I grabbed a proper truckers lunch at a roadside burger van -- a jumbo sausage and bacon roll with a big mug of tea -- and duly rested and refreshed I arrived at the cattle farm to be handed the keys to their shiny new telehandler and asked to unload myself & pop the full pallets into one of their barns. The day was honestly getting better and better and I was thoroughly enjoying the variety of people I was meeting as well as the conversation, cups of tea & warm August weather.
I was back to the store by 2.30pm and figured that was it for the day but the yard manager handed me one more delivery note explaining this was a drop that had to be done today but was only 10 miles away. Just 3 pallets went on the wagon as I tried to get the sat-nav to give me directions but it kept rejecting the address. With no map book in the cab I headed into the store to see who had taken the order and if they could direct me.
It was then that the day took another major downturn as I found it was Gordon's second-in-command who was responsible for the order. Why did it have to be Hannah, the store assistant-general manager, who I had to speak to! It was universally accepted that although she had only been in position for 6 months she was an utter and complete ball-breaker -- there was not a single member of staff who had failed to receive a bollocking for some perceived transgression or other. When she had tried it with me I had given just as good as I got since it had been yet another Malcolm cock-up I was getting grief for.
The thing is though, if she did not have such a disagreeable temperament and rotten attitude every bloke in the place would be trying to spend as much time as they could around her rather than studiously avoiding her because she was gorgeous, not just gorgeous but Playboy or FHM centrefold gorgeous.