The World According to Manager Mark, page 12
Naturally, it’s more likely you can’t afford to do either because you’ve already spent every spare penny you had and, in many cases, you’re up to your eyeballs in debt so you opt for the next best thing… you rent a self-storage unit!
Up until a few years ago there wasn’t such a thing – well, there was but it was for people who were between houses and needed to place their furniture somewhere. Another alternative, if you needed to make some room by getting rid of some possessions, was to head down to your local car-boot sale. The trouble was that you often ended up worse off because half the time you’d end up buying more items than you sold and most of it pretty ropey stuff, like mechanic’s overalls, boxes of nail varnish, video cassettes (non-VHS) and fake brass rubbings.*
It appears we’ve become not only a nation of shoppers but a nation of hoarders, and these storage units have simply added to the problem. Not only have we spent more money by buying stuff we don’t actually need but we also have an extra monthly outgoing: the expense of renting a storage unit!
The answer is simple really, a bit like my diet plan: ‘Don’t buy bigger clothes.’ So if you haven’t got room for it, whatever it is, don’t buy it. You don’t bloody need it!
*Statistics provided by the Car-Boot Aficionados Association.
SHAGGY-DOG STORY
I love a good Shaggy-Dog Story – here’s one of my favourites…
A butcher is busy when he notices a dog in the shop. He tries to shoo him away but the dog refuses to budge. He goes over to the dog and notices that there is a note in his mouth. The butcher takes the note, which reads, ‘Can I have twelve sausages and a leg of lamb, please? The dog has money in its collar.’ The butcher checks and, lo and behold, there is a twenty-pound note.
The butcher deposits the money and puts the sausages and lamb in a bag, placing it in the dog’s mouth. The butcher is so impressed that he decides to close the shop and follow the dog. The dog walks down the street and approaches a pedestrian crossing. The dog puts down the bag, jumps up and presses the button. Then he waits patiently, bag in mouth, for the lights to turn. They do and he walks across the road, with the butcher following him all the way.
The dog then comes to a bus stop and checks the timetable. The butcher can’t believe his eyes. The dog sits on the bench, picks up a copy of The Times and reads patiently. When the first bus arrives, the dog walks around to the front, looks at the number and goes back to his seat. Another bus comes. Again the dog goes and looks at the number and lets it go. The third bus arrives and, this time, he climbs on.
The butcher, by now open-mouthed, follows him onto the bus. The bus travels through the town and out into the suburbs, while the dog completes the crossword. Eventually, he gets up and moves to the front of the bus, where he stands on his two back legs and pushes the stop button.
Then he gets off, groceries still in his mouth. The dog, still closely followed by the butcher, walks along the road and then turns into a driveway. He walks up the path and drops the groceries on the step. Then he walks back down the path, takes a big run and throws himself with a huge bang against the door.
He goes back down the path, runs up to the door and throws himself against it again. There’s no answer, so the dog goes back down the path, jumps up on a narrow wall and walks along the perimeter of the garden. He gets to the window and beats his head against it several times, walks back, jumps off and waits at the door.
The butcher watches as a man opens the door and starts swearing at the dog. The butcher runs up and stops the man. ‘What on earth are you doing? The dog is a genius. He’s brilliant. I’ve never known such a clever dog.’
The owner responds, ‘Clever, my eye. This is the second time this week that he’s forgotten his key.’
SHOE SHOPS
Another one of my pet hates is shopping for shoes, although I know that, for many women, it’s an obsession. Marilyn Monroe once said, ‘Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world,’ although I’m not sure many of her fans ever looked at her footwear!
Imelda Marcos, the widow of the former President of the Philippines, is probably best known for her collection of 3,000 pairs of shoes, of which nearly 800 are in a museum. I’m not a great one for museums at the best of times and, unless you are Jimmy Choo or have some sort of shoe fetish – or both – that’s definitely one to avoid.
What I really hate about some shoe shops is the fact that it would appear the management doesn’t trust you. So they hide half the bloody shoes. In most shops, even when you have found what you consider to be the perfect shoes, you have to take a number! It’s a bit like going to A&E or a bakery. It’s funny that both such places work on the same system of queuing. I once had to attend A&E when one of Derek’s fins went into my eye and, because I couldn’t see properly, I went into a bakery by mistake! I ended up with a crumpet instead of an eye patch and I can tell you the butter didn’t help my eye at all.
Anyway, back at the shoe shop… You then have to wait until an assistant eventually calls out your number and he or she will then reluctantly disappear into the back stockroom, for what seems about half an hour, to search for the other shoe.
I can only assume they think you’re going to run off with them, which is why they only let you have access to one shoe at a time. When you go out to buy a suit, both the jacket and trousers are there together on a hanger. You can pick up the whole ‘whistle’ (I bet you didn’t know I am bilingual and speak fluent cockney) and take it into the changing room to try it on. They don’t let you help yourself to the jacket but then take a number and wait because all the bloody trousers are hidden out the back!
Once, when trying on a pair of desert boots, I complained to the assistant that they were completely ill-fitting and that she must have given me the wrong size. She then pointed out that I had crossed my legs and I had put them on the wrong feet…
Unbelievable!!!
SMOKING
This may prove unpopular among some of you but then I’m not here not to upset some people. Sometimes I don’t know why I’m here but it’s certainly not to upset people. Every year we have a ‘National No Smoking Day’. Well, I’m going to suggest a ‘National Smoking Day’. There, I’ve said it. While you’re taking in the enormity of that idea, let me explain…
Smokers save non-smokers a bloody fortune on TAX because some packets of cigarettes now cost almost £10 a packet – most of which is the tax. It costs far less to treat smokers’ illnesses on the NHS than the government raise in tax on cigarettes so, if all the smokers gave up tomorrow, they’d have to raise taxes to cover the deficit. In fact, never mind a National Smoking Day, I’m now so agitated that, if it was up to me, we would have a ‘NATIONAL EVERYONE SHOULD SMOKE DAY’!
Of course, in recent years the dreaded smoking ban has come into effect. What really annoys me is that it started in Europe and yet over there – while they may display a big ‘No Smoking’ sign on the outside of the premises – the actual counter area is often lined up with ashtrays. Half the people in there are sat smoking their heads off and no one seems to mind!
In this country it’s a different story: no one dares defy the ban for fear of the ‘smoking police’ slapping an £80 fine on them – we’re a compliant lot, us British! Having said that, in reality, when was the last time you actually heard of anybody being fined £80 for smoking inside? It hardly ever happens.
A few years ago I was attending a wedding (a great occasion: very enjoyable and romantic – obviously not one of my own!) The only trouble was that it was pouring with rain and so, not wanting to get wet, I stood inside the doorway puffing away. I thought, if I do get caught, it’s only £20 more than a parking ticket and how often do we take a ‘chance’ for five minutes and pull up on yellow lines… anyway, I got away with it! To be honest, I’ve never actually seen any smoking police and am beginning to think they’re a bit of a myth. But it does still make me cross.
I now need a fag to calm down and I can tell you it won’t be one of those E-cigarettes. What are they all about? To me, it’s not proper smoking. You won’t see me with a personal vaporizer – sounds like something out of Dr Who! I can’t imagine imbibing a liquid concoction and blowing out great plumes of smoke at passing strangers.
I wasn’t even keen on those menthol-flavoured cigarettes. To me, it’s like inhaling a tube of Colgate toothpaste… and without ‘The Ring of Confidence’. No, I was sad to see the back of the ‘Wills Wild Gold Leaf Woodbine Super Tar’. And then, of course, there is the whole routine and paraphernalia of rolling your own, which I’m told, for some reason, was very popular in 1960s California. I know smoking isn’t good for your health and has been described as a filthy habit but I can think of many other much filthier habits. (I won’t list them, as this book is family friendly.)
There’s much more I’d like to say but I might find myself in deep water, which can be even more dangerous to your health!
SPAIN
Ever since they invented the cheap package holiday, Spain has been a firm favourite with us Brits. The weather is, of course, a great draw – their winters are more like our summers – and it’s also cheap. But for lots of Brits, donning their sombreros and dousing themselves in suntan lotion, holidaying on various Costas once or twice a year isn’t enough. They actually take the plunge and leave good old Blighty to start a new life in the sun.
My sister Jenny and her husband Joe were two of those who decided to join the migration, bid farewell to the cold winters and fulfil their dream of running a bar in Spain. They headed to Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol.
Joe really hated the cold winters and was desperate to live all year round in a warm climate. It seemed a great idea. What could possibly go wrong? There was an added bonus in that he was a keyboard player – not the computer type but the one that plays a tune like on a piano. In fact, he was a professional musician and, in fairness, quite good, so they thought that, in order to make this particular bar popular and to bring the punters flocking, they would open it as a ‘Piano Bar’. In addition, to ensure they could match their competitors, they also introduced a food menu.
So far, so good. Well… sort of…
The trouble was that, although Joe was good pianist, he had never run a bar and so, once he had the keys to his own place, he wasn’t very sure what he was doing. Oh, and he didn’t actually own a piano, just a small portable keyboard. Also my sister, bless her, hadn’t worked much in a pub either, although she did spend a number of years working on the checkout in a supermarket, so she did know how to use a cash register! Jenny was certainly no chef – in fact, not even a great cook – but was more than capable of rustling up a good old fry-up or, indeed, anything with chips. She certainly wasn’t going to serve up that Spanish ‘pie-ella’ stuff, although, to compete with those establishments that did, they had some pies on the menu.
Money was tight and they couldn’t afford to employ any staff and so they had to do everything themselves. This wasn’t a problem until someone actually ordered some food. Joe was busy ‘belting’ out the tunes and Jenny had to go into the kitchen to prepare the meal, which resulted in the fact that there was no one to serve the drinks at the bar.
So Joe and Jenny then introduced a self-service system, whereby the customers served themselves and put money in the till… I expect you can see where this is going…
Well, this system – I won’t call it a plan – actually worked well for a while and, when word got out, they started to get quite busy. At first Joe and Jenny were delighted but then, surprisingly, the busier the bar became, the more money they seemed to lose! Perhaps it wasn’t that surprising and my poor sister and her husband had become just too trusting and were being ripped off.
It wasn’t long before they had no choice but to close the bar and, eventually, Jenny returned to England. Joe, however, hated the cold so much and was determined to remain in the nice warm sunshine to see out his days. So, despite his financial predicament, he decided to stay, working as a keyboard player in other people’s bars.
My sister stayed in touch with him and a number of years later was very sad to receive a phone call to say that Joe had died the previous day. Jenny knew that they tend to have funerals very quickly in hot countries but she just couldn’t get over immediately and so a few weeks later arranged a special service in her local church.
It was almost six months later when she finally made the visit to Spain to sort out the paperwork and get a copy of the death certificate (they were still officially married) and it was then that she discovered that, unlike most other things, funerals are expensive in Spain and, as he didn’t have any money, he hadn’t had one. Worse still, he hadn’t been buried or cremated… he was still in the mortuary. Since his death, he’d been stuck in a freezer and, worse still, not only did Jenny then have to somehow raise the money for a cremation but they also billed her for keeping him in a freezer for six months.
It is, of course, a tragic story but there was something wonderfully ironic that Joe, who had stayed in Spain because he hated the cold, had ended up spending six months in a bloody deep freezer…
STAFF
Although I’ve enjoyed myself owning and managing hotels, the one element that has always been a pain in the neck is the staff! Difficult guests would come and go and usually not stay longer than a fortnight, but the staff were there every week!
While some were very good and loyal, some were hopeless and my biggest problem in the end was that I was almost too scared to sack anyone. Well… maybe not scared… it was just that I couldn’t bloody afford to. I once got sued for unfair dismissal and was ordered to pay almost £20,000 to someone who I sacked because I thought they were bloody useless and were costing the business money. Well, it cost me alright! About TWENTY GRAND!!!
There was another time when a member of staff was suspected of stealing the chambermaids’ tips by sneaking round the empty rooms on departure days. This really made me angry! Stealing from me was one thing, but the chambermaids had the hardest job in the entire hotel and, actually, earned the least money, so I felt this was particularly mean.
One of my managers set a trap. To verify the suspect’s identity, he photocopied a five-pound note and then placed the fiver in one of the bedrooms. Sure enough, within twenty minutes the note had disappeared and, when we searched the suspect, we found it in her pocket. I sacked the thief on the spot!
Believe it or not, she took me to court and even more shockingly she won the case! I had to reinstate her because she claimed that someone else had been caught stealing from me in the past but hadn’t actually been sacked for it. I had been lenient with them and so it was unfair to dismiss her for stealing. It was deemed ‘unfair dismissal’. Unfair! Never mind unfair, it was unbelievable!
While sometimes I really miss the hotel business, other times I’m just grateful I don’t have to put up with employing some of the staff I did. I can remember receiving a phone call from the chef at about 7.30 one morning. In a right panic, he told me that he and the rest of the kitchen staff had been stood outside waiting and couldn’t get into the hotel to prepare the breakfast. They’d been banging on the door and ringing the bell for over half an hour! The hotel was full and, with over ninety breakfasts to cook, time was running out.
I employed a night porter, who was also the evening barman, and it was his job to look after the hotel at night. This wasn’t one of those ‘sleep-in jobs’ – he was meant to be awake all night in case a guest had a problem, or for any emergencies. He also had a list of things he was expected to do, including tasks like tidying up, cleaning the lounge, etc.
I was just getting dressed and about to dash straight down to the hotel (I lived in a house about three miles away at the time) when the chef phoned me back. The panic was over. Some of the guests had heard all the commotion and banging and had come down and unbolted the front door to let the chef and the rest of the kitchen staff in. That was a relief, but where was the night porter?
Twenty minutes later I arrived at the hotel and noticed that the lounge hadn’t been cleaned properly, the bar shutters were up and there was still no sign of the night porter. Then, as I peered over the bar, I saw something move. There, lying face down, snoring loudly, was the night porter with his trousers round his knees and still clutching an empty bottle of spirits. Not only was he drunk on duty but on my bloody whisky! My first reaction was to sack him there and then but then I thought, but what’s the bloody point? He’d probably end up suing me for providing him with a cheap scotch, rather than a deluxe single malt.
The trouble is I’m a perfectionist and, having done all the staff jobs over the years, I know exactly how they should be done. If I had my way – and as I may have mentioned once or twice previously – I would have actually cloned myself to do every job in the entire hotel and I would only have employed myself!
T
TATTOOS
Tattooing has apparently been a custom since Neolithic times, which is apparently a very long time ago – even before Coronation Street was first screened – but now the ‘art’ seems to be making a huge comeback.
This is something I really don’t understand, this latest craze to cover your body with tattoos. I know it’s an old custom for sailors and servicemen and – don’t get me wrong – some of them are really impressive, like mini works of art, but others are pretty ugly or pointless. I don’t get the idea of having LOVE on one hand and HATE on the other, or branding your chest with the name of a girlfriend who’s long dumped you or a wife who you’ve divorced – therefore making it embarrassing when you start dating or marrying again. (Well, it certainly wouldn’t have been a good idea for me.)
