The Adventures of a Small Businessman in the Forbidden Zone

He was on his way home when he walked around a corner and straight in to a security guard delivering cash to the bank. Taking this as a gift from heaven he punched the security guard hard in the stomach, making the guard drop the bags of money he carried in each hand.

The intrepid thief grabbed the bags and set off down the street like an Olympic sprinter. The only problem was that the bags contained ten pence pieces, two pence pieces and a bag of pennies. Total Value: about lb160. Total weight: slightly more than a Toyota Landcruiser complete with mum and dad, 2.2 children and fluffy Golden Retriever called Ben. I am trying to emphasize that his haul was very, very heavy.

The thief got about fifty yards down the street before he had a coronary thrombosis from the weight of the coins and collapsed in a heap. The security guards casually walked up to him and held him until the police arrived.

The highlight of the working week at the main branch was the Monday lunchtime review of the weekend security camera tapes.

At the time the bank was conducting an experiment at several big high street branches, one of which was ours. They had rented a shop as close as possible to the branch and fitted it out with automatic machines for customers to use to get cash, pay into their accounts, change details to standing orders, that sort of thing. Access to the building was by way of swiping your bankcard through a locking mechanism on the door – the idea being to keep the riff raff out and stop tramps using it as a hotel. The trouble was that the machines were technically operational twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. So if you had a card you could get into the nice warm room at four AM after you and the new found love of your life had been kicked out of the nightclubs.

You can imagine some of the things the cleaners found in there after the weekend. For instance, enough half eaten takeaway fast food to alleviate famine in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Okay you could conceivably be so drunk that after getting your money from the machine, you have no recollection of where the pizza marinara next to you came from, who owned it or why your elbow was wresting squarely in the middle of it. But how could you leave a city center building and forget to put your shoes and knickers back on?

One Christmas Eve we found a big sack in there full of carefully wrapped presents labeled to ‘Johnny from Mum &Dad’ and to ‘Sally from Mum & Dad’. Not enough information for us to return them in time for the big day I’m afraid. Even Santa Claus needs a postal code. I hope ‘Dad’ had an understanding family or that would be a recipe for a pretty unpleasant Christmas morning.

The cleaners were going mad about the stuff they had to clean up in there after the weekend. Our lost property locker quickly expanded into a lost property room. After one particularly wet week in November we ended up with enough umbrellas, hats and coats to open a market stall. Every couple of weeks the office messenger would take the lot down to the Oxfam shop – if he didn’t the stuff would have taken over the entire branch. Soon Oxfam were doing so much trade they expanded into the empty premises next door and were in danger of moving into the supertax bracket.

Then some extremely unsavoury items started to turn up – used needles. The leftovers from injecting hard drugs. Next thing we knew, we were collecting more hazardous waste than the local hospital

This was the last straw for the cleaners.They insisted something be done about the situation or they would go on strike. That was when the spy camera was fitted and the fun really began…because apparently the good citizens of Wakefield & District really didn’t care if they were being filmed or not.

The spy camera was connected to a special slow motion video recorder. The recording quality was not brilliant but you could certainly tell what was going on, and just as importantly, who was doing what with whom.

The staff turned into a bunch of voyeurs – this was Real Life TV way ahead of its time. On Monday lunchtime we would gather in the staff room. While drinking coffee or tea and eating lunch we would put the tape on fast forward search and stop it if anything interesting happened. We were rarely disappointed. One pair of young lovers used the place for sex every weekend – if they came into the branch during normal hours the counter staff would spontaneously start to sing “Some enchanted evening, I will shag my true love…” Their exhibitions only ceased when they were cautioned by the police.

Once when we were watching the tape, Julie (one of the typists) recognized her brother in law. He wasn’t alone but accompanied by a young woman obviously dressed for a night on the town. And she wasn’t Julie’s sister. They both looked more than a little tipsy.

“ What the hell is Darren doing in there? He’s supposed to be in Blackpool on a stag party with his mates from work.” she announced. The situation quickly went from bad to worse, when the young woman bent over one of the machines and lifted her skirt up around her waist to reveal a big pale white butt and no underwear. At least she wouldn’t be leaving any knickers behind for the cleaners to find.

Darren unceremoniously dropped his trousers to his knees and began to goose the lady energetically from behind. Full marks for effort but very poor technique I felt. Not so much as a kiss on the cheek.

The recording didn’t include sound but “Yes, yes, oh God no! Yes. Yes!” is pretty easy to lip read. Just in case anybody present was in doubt Gordon came to the rescue. “I think she is saying, “Yes, yes. Oh God no.Yes.Yes,” he said helpfully.

“Do you think she’s checking her account balance?” Andy inquired from everybody watching.

His mate Dave had a bright suggestion: “Perhaps she can’t remember her PIN number and he’s trying to jog her memory.”

This idea had all of us howling with laughter. All of us except Julie anyway.

“I’m going to kill the cheating bastard.” She announced. I believed her too. Julie was a big, big girl.

We didn’t have time to find out if the girl’s memory received a lot of jogging or only a quickie jog, as a furious Julie snatched the tape from the machine and left in tears.

I believe the divorce was uncontested. Judging from Darren`s concept of foreplay, his wife was better off without him.

One delightful morning I arrived at work to be confronted by one of the cleaners, a right old battleaxe called Ingrid. It was difficult to form any sort of working relationship with Ingrid because she was never actually at work. Ingrid was ‘bad with her nerves’. She got stuck into me as soon as I got through the door.

“I’m not cleaning up bloody rabbit shit. Says nothing in my contract about rabbit shit. If I liked cleaning rabbit shit I would get a job in a bleeding pet shop.”

Brilliant, I thought, the daft old cow has lost the plot altogether. Maybe she really is bad with her nerves.

“Have you been putting the vodka on your rice crispies again Ingrid?” I asked. “Run out of milk this morning, did we?”

Before I got a reply some of the girls came over holding six gorgeous fluffy white rabbits.

“Look Sean, look what somebody left in the speedbank machine room last night. If nobody claims them I want two for the kids.”

“Hang on, hang on a minute, I’ve just got in the door and already the day is going pear shaped. Nobody is taking any rabbits anywhere until we check the security tape and find out which cretin forgot he was carrying a box of rabbits. Honestly, do all you people here still have lead water pipes or what? How the hell can you forget you are carrying a box of rabbits?”