Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire - Am I Mad ???????

Been away from here and now no longer in Sydney.... but back down under down under.

More posts re the auction business will appear "in good time". [In fact someone else is [allegedly] working on one as we speak! Isn't she! You know who you are!

But back to the present.

Got back down here and almost instantly people from both sides of politics were asking me to run for Council in the upcoming local elections. I did a bit of research, spoke to some other people on both sides of politics, sitting and former councillors and decided to make a late run!!

The current Council is bordering on dysfunctional with numerous reports of in-fighting, block voting and other stupidity... some of it allegedly in contravention to local government legislation..... some of it allegedly worse than that....

There are ten candidates for five places [councillors serve (?) four years, but half the Council gets spilled every two years. In reality there are probably five or six candidates going for two or three places as some of the old guard are likely to get substantial votes.

However, there is widespread dissatisfaction within most sections of the community and last time round only two candidates made their electoral quota, with three more getting in on preferences. It may be possible to get elected with less than 200 primary votes.... am a little bit tempted to say, "Vote 2 for Dave".... as an experiment.....

Results come out on December 22nd.

If I do not get elected I will not be unhappy,; I just think that residents here deserve better options than the councillors they have currently.

So.... I've been very busy going through electoral rolls, writing pamphlets etc and an election blog [davidgsbc2009.blogspot.com]. Hasn't helped that the place where I live has had a bush fire through it. 90% of the vegetation on the block is just charcoal and sand, leaving a weird oasis of green around the house and sheds. No power and no water over a week later because our underground cable was destroyed in the intense heat and the assessor is moving at herd speed.

Mmmmm.... didn't lose much.... until you start counting it up, like my brother's classic Alfa Romeo that he was rebuilding.... and all the vegetation. Looks like the block has been shelled for a week.

Many thanks go out to all the friends, neighbours and other locals who have offered help and support.

More later

Auction Adventures 1.7 - Larry The Jeweller

It was not long before the sallow-faced youth known as Larry began to receive 'special attention' from the boss. He was the second youngest employee and the least experienced. He professed an interest in antiques, but had little knowledge..... and less common sense. The boss thought he was perfect. Maybe, depending on your view point, maybe he was perfect.

The boss introduced Larry to the 'cabinets'; a section of mis-matched display units some in wood, some metal, some tall, some short, some with keys, some without. Contained inside were all small items of interest that had been consigned over the last week. These items were allegedly collectible and, generally, of interest. The bidders on the cabinets auction were different to the ragged crew that sought bargains amongst the general junk; the pairs of skis, boxes of sundries, cheap furniture, metal storage units, money counting machines, broken photo copiers, golf clubs and garden ornaments. 

Cabinets had to be set up, displayed, stickered, secured and auctioned meticulously. There were sometimes as many as two hundred and fifty lots, but usually there were less than one hundred and eighty. Larry was 'tutored' by the boss, often with interesting results. Even after Larry had been there months he would still get suckered into the boss' reality bubble like a fly being led into a web.

One week Larry's eye was caught by a wooden carving of Buddha's face. It was painted green with highlights done in shiny gold. Larry grabbed it and took it over to cabinets. "Hey, Fat Git, man.... look at this! This should be in cabinets!"

"What you got there?", replied the boss from a distance.

"Look! It's a Buddha with gold on it.... it's cool"

"Oh Yes.... Oh yes Larry.... that's gold leaf...." enthused the boss. I was approaching him at the time and, hearing the comment, looked from him to the carving...... and back again. He had a smirk on his face. The carving was obviously not finished in gold leaf. It was over half a metre tall and crudely fashioned. On closer inspection, like within ten feet, it was obvious that the gold paint had more in common with plastic than precious metal. 

I smiled back at the boss, raising an eye-brow. 

"What they doing out there?", screeched the Black Widow from the office, "Is Fat Git talking to Larry again?!"

I looked over, then turned back to the boss.

"What estimate have the staff put on it?", he continued with his routine.

"Er.... a hundred and twenty bucks..."

"Should be more like two fifty.... see what I have to work with!"

"Yeah, they don't know what they're doing, Fat Git."

"We need more people like you Larry. Why can't they get it?!!"

"They're dumb, I suppose."

Twenty minutes later I passed the window display and saw the Buddha face. On the inventory sticker 'estimate $120' had been changed to 'estimate $250'. Next to that, written in Larry's distinctive fountain pen scrawl, "Gold Leaf".

Earlier, in his first week on cabinets, Larry had begun to make a name, or series of names, for himself. The boss took him over to the cabinets with the big bunch of keys. He pointedly instructed wonder boy to keep everything locked up, at all times. "Never leave the keys out, some-one will steal them."

At the end of the day the boss went to Larry for a friendly chat, "How d'you go, mate?"

"I got a lot done."

"Finished?"

"No."

"Show me what you've done then." They walked over to cabinets and the boss began complimenting Larry on his display. "Nice work. How many cabinets did you do?"

"One - everything was such a mess. I had to sort it all out..... Who did it before?"

"Er hhrrm", responded the boss, probably remembering that he had been doing cabinets before Larry. "Have you lotted any Larry..... Larry, Larry! Where are the rings?!! The gold rings!!!"

"Ah, er.... they're there Fat Git."

"There's only two!"

"Uh, yeah."

"There should be five! Where are the other three!! Quick!!! Look!"

The pair of misfits searched frantically for twenty minutes but the rings were never seen again. Any other staff member would have been sacked for this negligence. Not Larry. Not Larry The Jeweller.  The boss forgave him and then promoted him off the warehouse floor to the coveted role of being in charge of cabinets.

When I left that night, Larry and Fat Git were still hunched together over some displays. The short fat man with the round face and the tall lanky idiot without a clue..... a vision came into focus somewhere in the reptilian part of my brain - here, in the half light of the warehouse, we had our very own Laurel and Hardy.

Nobody was rolling around in these aisles.

Auction Adventures 1.6 - Fat Git, Larry And The Black Widow

In dramatic writing they say that you need three characters. Two is not enough to create 'drama', dahrling. When I first got to the auction house there was an unholy trinity in place, made up of Fat Git, The Black Widow and Peru, the book keeper. It was not long before Peru had fallen to the wrath of Fat Git, primarily for being honest. This left a gaping hole in the dynamics..... The Black Widow dug a pit, spun her web in it and waited to suck me in. Fat Git also tried to get me into the mix. I played dumb..... but not stupid. The pair of them tried to entangle me in their partly drugged-up, partly crazy world, but I decided to be Swiss and did not get involved.

We had a recruiting problem. The boss had been through around 75 staff in three years. A turnover of about 450%. We regularly employed backpackers on a casual basis, but needed a few more long term prospects.

One particular week, after a one of the boss' sacking frenzies [more on that in later posts] we were in need of staff. The boss wanted some-one he could train up. Someone young who might stick around. If only I had known then what I know now.......

The Black Widow had a solution. Surprisingly, it did not sound totally insane, at least not back then.   "Hey, Black Widow, you know anyone we could use?", I had asked.

"My nephew has a mate from school who is looking for work", she replied.

"Any good? What's he like?"

"I don't know..... it's a good school, some fancy private thing."

"Alright, can you check him out? Then get him in so we can have a look at him - we could try him out."

"Yeah, sure."

This was all a bit too easy. Perhaps it was the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to rise, or the single cold trickle of sweat between my shoulder blades..... I had a bad, bad feeling like a rock in my stomach..... Still, just getting this kid in couldn't do any damage.... could it? "What's his name?"

"Larry"

"I thought you said he was a kid. He sounds like some kind of Shakespearian actor who wears tights.... at home"

"No. He's nineteen, I think"

"Ok, nineteen year old Larry it is then"

Larry ambled in the next day..... around five eleven tall..... skinny like Kate Moss..... head hanging low as if his frail neck could barely be bothered to support it..... long lazy lashes over slowly moving eyes..... nervous and doe-like, at this first appearance. He wore the inevitable skinny black EMO jeans, torn trainers and a white t-shirt with holes deliberately ripped into it beneath the hand-scrawled writing..... a quote stolen from The Clash..... a song from twenty odd years ago.

He did not seem that enthusiastic: like many his age he was affecting a laid back indifference to a world he did not yet understand. He thought he did but...... you'll just have to read the stories. He definitely was not going to motivate others by his example. It transpired that his "fancy" school had been Steiner. My expectations sank a little lower. Steiner had a vision for education. Many parents swear by it. Most of those parents did not actually go to Steiner schools themselves - they did not exist back then. Steiner thinks we should not teach reading and writing to kids until they have their second teeth, because their brains cannot understand the concept of language until then. It is true that, if you do this, kids learn language very rapidly..... but it does not take account of what is actually going on in the outside world. Kids are bombarded with language from the time they are born. They do not live in some Eden-like 'golden age', but in a world where they are literally being attacked by language on a daily basis. My experience of employing ex-Steiner kids is invariably the same. They can talk the talk but, in a work situation, they can rarely walk the walk. Kids from other private schools often stand out because they are reasonably intelligent and have a strong work ethic. Not so with Steiner's kids. Despite being at risk of over-generalisation, in the specific case of Larry, I was bang on the money.

So, I was less than keen to hire this guy. He talked the talk, but he was barely strong enough to lift a broom, he had 'lazy' written all over him and, above all else, he thought he was a lot better than he actually was. It was likely that he would be unable to do the work. It was certain that he would not fit in with the staff.

The boss loved him on site. "He's interested in antiques.... he's intelligent, Dave"

"I'm not sold, Fat Git"

"He's just what we need"

"Can he do the work?"

"Can he, can he.... he's the future!"

"I'm not convinced.... but, if you're keen, let's get him in and see how he goes"

"Yes, yes..... yes! I'll go and tell him" The boss was like the kid in the toy shop window, face pressed up against the glass, "Daddy, Daddy, can I have that one.... pleeeeease!"

Larry started the next day and the boss began to shadow him. It soon became evident that Larry was not one of the staff: he was the boss' private staff member. By the end of the week Fat Git was making excuses to get Larry to work alongside him. Once Larry was with the boss a weird thing happened to time. It slowed r-i--g---h----t------d-------o--------w--------------n.. . .  . at least it did on planet Larry/Fat Git.... Elsewhere it must have been speeding up. No matter how long Larry and the boss had to do a job..... it was never done. 

Pretty soon the rest of the staff were carrying the boss and the young pretender. This did not help the wage bill, which had come down around $1100/week in the time I'd been there. More importantly, it was having a divisive effect on the staff. I began sending Larry out on pick-up jobs where I knew he'd be forced to carry furniture. He managed this once. The next time he was on site, a clipboard and cheap pen miraculously appeared in his hand and he did not lift a thing. The next time I sent him on a job he did not even go. Instead he went to the boss and got him to send some-one else. This was starting to piss me off. It was hard enough trying to run the business with Fat Git around. Now we were a man down every day.

The Black Widow had her own take on all this. She was starting to sound like Peru, "Whatzedoing? Whatzedoing?.....", she would hiss when looking up from her work in the office. "Is he talking to Fat Git again?.... Doesn't he do anything!"

"You recommended him Black Widow", I would say, mischievously. I could see the beginnings of a jealousy that would later consume her. "I'm going out there to see what they're up to. I'm not standing for this! He's got to do some work!"

She would stomp out there, cheap black dress fluttering behind her, and find a reason to interrupt the boss and Larry. "What now, Black Widow!", the boss would say, hamming his frustration up for Larry's benefit. "Fat Git, I need these checks [sic] signed?" [She never did realise that the correct spelling was 'cheque', despite it being boldly written on the cover of every cheque book we ever used.] She would then find an excuse to stay and talk. When she left the boss would nudge Larry and say something they thought was funny. Some of the time this would just be, "Laugh Larry, laugh so she thinks we are talking about her".

Soon The Black Widow was referring to Larry as 'Fat Git's new boyfriend'. This started a staff-wide debate of 'is he or isn't he'/'are they or are they not'. In the early stages this was harmless staff gossip, something that occasionally came up. The Black Widow added petrol to the flames and the issue became all-consuming for her.

"Where's he now Dave?!!", she'd cry, "Is he with Fat Git.... Is he doing anything?"

"Dunno Black Widow.... haven't seen him", I'd reply. By now I'd written Larry off as a staff member. I hoped the boss would soon tire of his new toy, boy, I mean. I was wrong. If anything, the boss' interest in Larry was turning into an infatuation.

The situation was driving The Black Widow crazy.  Larry was the boss' 'new best friend', which meant The Black Widow no longer held 'best friend' status. The fact that she had recommended Larry for the job was particularly painful to her and she kept reminding me that her nephew was not Larry's mate. Instead, "Everybody thinks he's a dick head, my nephew says", she would drone. "I did ask you to check him out first", I'd reply tiredly. 

I personally have not called anyone 'my best friend' since primary school, so this was all a little amusing. What was less amusing was Black Widow not being able to do her job because of her paranoia. A paranoia amplified by the ever-increasing amounts of Prozac she was gobbling in her lair. She was irrational, unstable, like a black sun ready to go super-nova. Some days she used to literally quake as the pressure built up inside her. She still had a hold on the boss: I was unable to sack her and unable to get her to train anyone to do her job. I began to spend less time in the office and more out on the floor. It was saner talking to the vendors waiting at the loading dock. They might be trying to consign a ute load of rusty bicycles, a broken rake, a TV with no plug and a claw foot bath with three feet missing, but hanging out with them was more fun than being near the gravitational pull of The Black Widow. 

If you hung around her too long reality began to stretch beyond recognition. It was as if her and the boss were locked in to a titanic struggle of competing paradigms. Sooner or later something was going to snap. When it did, things would not be pretty.

Larry seemed to work out the boss on one level and the boss had him pegged on another. Larry's parents were splitting up so the boss inserted himself into the father's role. Larry inserted himself into the boss' world as the great white hope that would resolve all problems.... mainly just by existing.

The boss and Larry began eating breakfast lunch and tea together. Most of the other staff were lucky to get a ten minute break. Larry and the boss would sit around for up to an hour, laughing, eating, scheming.  One scheme, straight from Larry's mouth, was to reduce the amount of lots put up for auction every week. The thinking was that we dealt with too much crap and by reducing the lots we could improve their overall quality, whilst reducing costs. Larry delivered this news to me as a done deal, despite the fact that this junior employee had not run anything by management, just the boss.

"We're going to reduce the number of lots by half, Dave."

"Oh alright... who are we going to sack?"

"Wha...?"

"If we reduce the lots by half, we reduce our income by half, immediately."

"No, the quality will go up."

"Not immediately, we'll have to find new vendors with better stuff. If we halve the number of lots, we will have to double their average sale price to make up for the loss in income."

"Oh...."

"So if we do halve the number of lots, we will also have to halve our costs, like staffing. So, who shall we sack?"

"Uh.. I'll talk to Fat Git."

"Okay."

Nothing came of this half-baked plan, apart from me being labeled as 'unhelpful' by the boss. I had headed off some stupidity, but had also torn up a strategy dreamt up by wonder boy and Fat Git. It was obviously my fault the plan was not going to work. Other ideas came and went. some were tried out, like the Bar-analia Sale that raised around two hundred dollars, others were too surreal to get a run.

The boss clung to his belief that Larry was going to save the business, despite all evidence pointing to a different inevitability. In fact, the more their ideas did not work, the more they believed in their ability to come up with better ideas. Soon they had developed a bunker mentality, where everybody else was against them and they alone knew what was wrong and how to fix it. If things did not go the way they had planned, it was some-one else's fault. If anything good happened it was because of them.

Larry was to hang around for some time to come. The longer he was with us, the more obsessed Fat Git became with him. I began to hear stories from punters, staff and ex-staff of previous obsessions.... always with young men. It was said that the boss had once put one such man into a unit where he paid all the bills. 

Staff speculated that the boss might be gay. I did not believe this to be true, and would not have cared if it was. I began to suspect that the boss had 'underlying issues', probably dating back to his own childhood. Perhaps he was trying to recreate the ideal upbringing that he did not have, by lavishing praise, attention and perks on this young gormless lad. 

Either way, the boss would have done well to work on his issues, instead of blaming everybody else. The business was not travelling well and, given that all the staff were sacked every few months, there was only one common thread: the boss himself. 

I began to keep an eye on the boss. On what he got up to during the day. How many times he went to the safe. When he did bankings. Even though the business could have easily been dramatically improved, without the boss, I found it hard to believe that we were doing as badly as we were.

Auction Adventures 1.5 - Demolition Man

I've often been surprised by how much influence a boss can have on a workplace. Change one person and the culture changes dramatically. You can have the same staff, same customers, same systems..... but when the boss changes: everything changes.

At the auction house the boss had definitely created a unique culture. It had not even the slightest link to what others call reality. In his head the boss saw himself as a lone buccaneer on the high seas of life. In reality he was more like a lone gunman with a vendetta against society in general and his staff in particular. Nothing the staff did ever satisfied him. He complained bitterly to me about every member of staff we had.... apart from myself. He did not have the guts to do anything to some-one's face...... unless he was totally losing it. I suspect he also resented other people's success. If he failed it was never his fault. If some-one else succeeded it was because they were a cheat, underhand or in some way dishonest. Some people might call that 'projecting'.

Early on, when I was doing time there, staff used to work through the night, without penalty rates, breaks or much appreciation. Knowing this to be counter-productive, morale-sapping and generally subject to The Law of Diminishing Returns, I resolved to put an end to this little bit of madness.

Within a few weeks I'd changed things a little and the staff had made a big effort. For the first time in a long time we were all ready to go home around six pm. Unfortunately..... the boss saw this as an opportunity to get back at us.

"Right Dave, get some of the lads: we're going to take up the floor at the back of the warehouse!"

"Wha....?"

"Come on, come on! We're taking the floor up!"

"But, Fat Git, we don't have any tools...... and this is the first time we've been in front since I've been here." 

"We'll use the tools that have been put into auction."

"But most of them are broken Fat Git. Also there is probably a reason that the false floor is there in that particular corner of the warehouse."

"Come on, come on! No excuses" replied the boss as he headed off to round up some backpackers that I was about to send home. He had the fire in his belly now and this train was steaming down its track, heading for a tunnel called stupidity. Nothing, except possibly a piece of four by two with a couple hundred large nails in it, was going to stop him.

One of the backpackers, a late twenties guy from Liverpool [need I say more?] was giving enthusiastic support - he wanted more hours. "Come on lads: let's get into it. We'll have this done in no time." For the boss this was more fuel to the fire. Reluctantly, and somewhat incredulously, we set to work. It was quite amusing, in a mad clown with an axe kind of way. The boss barely knew which end of a crow bar was which. Quite rapidly, however,  most of the flooring sheets came up to reveal the studs beneath.

"See!", said the boss, "All it needs is a bit of enthusiasm!"

It was exactly at this point that the problems began to reveal themselves. Firstly, it became apparent that part of the fake floor went under the wall. Secondly, a whole section of the concrete floor beneath the studs had subsided onto a crazy angle. Thirdly, it was revealed that parts of the concrete had damp problems, causing loose and broken patches. Fourthly, after a few people had tripped over a few times, it became obvious that there were bits of old bolts sticking up through the concrete. Fifthly, the scouser had gone from excited enthusiasm to paranoid fear in minutes and was suddenly less than keen to be anywhere near the demolition. Sixthly, the boss wasn't worried about any of the above.

At about this point the scouser pulled me aside and said he had to go so could he get his pay for the day. I was happy to oblige because of the way he was acting, he was hopped-up enough, or crazy enough, to be the boss' long lost Liverpudlian cousin. They were opposite in appearance but identical in craziness..... for opposite reasons, as it later transpired. (One was on drugs and the other should have been.) I sorted out his pay, shook his hand and kept a straight face as he said,"Cheersmatealrightmanniceone. Canyougivemeacallifthere'slikeanymoreworklikeyouknow." 

He was talking about forty to the dozen and seemed unable to keep any part of his body still for longer than a nanosecond. With his cash in his hand he ran out the door saying, "Iwouldn'tgoanywherenearthatlikeman. FatGitisdangerous. Thewholewallcouldlikecomedownonyas. Itain'tsafelikeman. YouknowwhatImean. Likeman!" 

I watched him run out and by all accounts he kept running right up the East Coast to Brisbane or Cairns or somewhere. Anywhere but Sydney. He had been sleeping with a drug-dealing Islander's girlfriend behind his back whilst getting speed off him in front of his back. He'd been warned..... but had gone back for more. Not the sharpest tool in the box..... but definitely a tool.

Meanwhile..... the demolition continued. Scaffold bars fell from behind the false wall, almost hitting some-one, but the work continued. Part of the wall began to fall down but an Irish backpacker got in the way and held it up. "Careful!" shouted the boss, about thirty seconds after the event, "We don't want anyone getting hurt."

"Well then, let's all fuck off home", I thought.

Next, or perhaps seventhly, we discovered that part of the wall coming down had electrical sockets on it and wiring running through the studs behind. I was reminded of a British Army nemonic aid, used when teaching officers and NCO's leadership skills: "PPPPPP, or Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance." We could have got John Cleese to film this operation and use it in one of his staff training films on how not to do things..... But here, in real time, there were no cuts or re-takes. Instead, the nightmare continued.

It was now approaching nine pm on this warm Sydney summer evening. Everybody was covered in sweat and dirt with rat shit sticking to them while the boss ran around saying things like, "We need a screwdriver.... a flat head one.... or one of those other ones - the star ones. Get it Barry!"

"What Fat Git?", said Barry the truck driver, "What sort of screwdriver?"

"You know what I mean. Get it! Get it quick! There'll be one in the tool auction."

"Barry", I intervened, "He means a phillips screwdriver.... a small one."

"Yeah, alright Dave, I'll get one", sweated Barry as he scuttled off.

"Hurry! Hurry!", cried the boss. Barry came back with a fistful of what looked like bent and rusted bits of metal. "Dave. Dave! Here you go", panted the boss, passing me a large flat head screwdriver. Take the sockets off."

"Er.... Fat Git.... any idea where the fuse box is?" I replied, "These sockets could be live."

"You'll be alright. Just get it done."

"I'll have a look for the fuse box first, Fat Git. You've been here three years..... any idea where it is?"

"Hrrrr, grrrr", he replied and shuffled off. I was pleased by this. He was getting wound up and muttering a lot. The dairy-like rotting smell spreading out from him in minor tsunamis, not content with its own post code, [see previous posts] was now applying to the UN for formal recognition as a sovereign state.

Of course by now my caution, or in the boss' eyes 'lack of enthusiasm', was beginning to be a problem. I could have been home three hours ago and, unlike the boss, I had a life beyond the steel roller doors of the loading dock. He was acting more dangerous by the minute. I was pissed off but..... I needed this job.

By about nine-thirty we had removed the floor and the studs, propped various bits of sheeting up, smashed holes in the wall to free the electrical sockets and still had to leave a two foot strip of floor in place to support fifteen feet of remaining wall. Not quite a total success, but by now the demons were leaving the boss. He was flagging. this game was almost over.

We had just spent around $700 in wages, disrupted a large area of the warehouse that had been set up for auction, pissed off most of the staff, filled the truck and half a loading dock with builder's waste and finally, and brilliantly, created a potentially serious OH&S problem. 

We had also created a visual reminder of the boss' stupidity. Every auction day after that I'd chat to the auctioneers before the auction began and look past them to the corner of the warehouse. It amused me to see the furniture leaning over at a landslide angle on the sloping concrete floor we had revealed that night. I particularly liked the half demolished wall that remains to this day. 

I worked out a couple of things that night. One, the boss was full of shit. Two, he did not know his arse from his elbow, about anything. 

I also noticed something on the way home. 

There was a full moon.....

Auction Adventures 1.4 - The Black Widow

The Black Widow was not black and nor was she a widow. She earned her name from the black clothes she wore and her twisted and aggressive attitude to people wanting her to do her job. In addition to this, she liked to spread her eight legs out as far as she could and draw as many things in towards her as could not resist. This was not 'empire-building' as such, but more a fearful and paranoid reaction to the world seen through her many-lensed eyes. I do not know how old she was, but think of her as being the wrong side of fifty, the wrong side of 'average intelligence' and the wrong side of competent.

Inside the office, at the height of summer, it got very hot. The drinks vending machine did brisk business and should have been making the boss a decent cut of the takings. For some reason his cut was zero, or so he said. The Black Widow seemed particularly affected by the heat. To cope with the this she had developed a number strategies which inevitably became habits.

A particular habit was to wave the bottom of her dress around whenever she sat down, and at other regular intervals. Unfortunately she sat at the back wall of the office whose design was inspired by a gold fish bowl. Every time she flapped her dress anyone looking in her direction was gifted a full frontal of her lacey underwear and half of her mid-riff. Not encouraging for the punters and definitely not a nice accompaniment to breakfast.

On my first day at the auction house I had begun learning the auction software from her. I soon realised that she did not really know how this overseas program worked. This was not her fault. The last person to have the job of running the software had left in a hurry, without training anyone to take their place. The Black Widow had spent countless late nights on the phone to other countries trying to get a handle on things. True, it had not occurred to her to 'RTFM', but then neither had it occurred to her to get a comprehensive, up-to-date manual in the first place. Still, she had decided on a course of action and had stuck to it like a poorly trained pit bull sticks to a child's face.

A week or two into the job I had gained enough of an overview of the auction software to realise a number of things. 1. It was excellent software. 2. It was not designed to do what we needed it to do. 3. The Black Widow was probably not using it correctly, but was using some arcane type of arachnid off-system mathematics to get round the problems she was creating. 4. At no time was I going to be the person responsible for the day to day operation of the software.

One time a pregnant vendor was trying to get paid for the items she had sold. It was her third visit to The Black Widow's window in the office in a couple of weeks. The payments were late and the vendor had every right to be pissed off. She was. Having assured the vendor previously that her payment would be finalised, the Black Widow had failed to do so. Instead she was stressed, paranoid and aggressive.

Despite being unable to accurately work out the correct payment, the Widow thought the vendor was trying to rip us off. Things became tense..... then heated. The vendor left to consign some goods and came back a while later. Still no payment. In exasperation the vendor said, "Why can't you work it out Black Widow? I need my money"

"Vendor! I'm trying, but what you think you are owed is wrong."

"It's not wrong: I've got the paperwork here."

"It's the wrong paperwork!!"

"If it is wrong, what are the right figures?"

"Listen vendor, if you weren't pregnant I'd come through that window and smash you in the teeth!!!"

What the.....?

More fires to put out.

I resolved to get some-one else trained up on the software. Nobody wanted to be in the office with the Black Widow - they knew what she was like. I managed to get the boss and the Black Widow to agree with my training idea.

On the arranged morning, the sacrificial lamb, sorry designated staff member, came to the office. "I haven't got time now" spat the Black Widow.

"But this is the designated time for me to be here"

"I don't have the time!!"

"Okay"

This script was repeated two more times before I had to think of something else. There was clearly no structure here, no responsibility, no direction and no way home. I was not really managing the auction house in the conventional way: I was crisis managing it.

I began to learn some of the reasons for this. Fat Git was at best mentally unstable. There were symptoms of bi-polar disorder, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and a series of episodes that were beginning to show a pattern of their own. On top of this the boss' 'best friend' and fellow church-goer, the Black Widow, was on a version of Prozac. She openly shared this with me one day and offered me some, "It helps if you work here", she said. I declined the offer as I did not want to fool with anything that might make me more like her. I did remember the brand of her medication and looked it up on the net later. It's good to get to know your staff.

The medical advice was to take one pill in the morning and one more at lunch time. On no account should this dosage be altered, without professional consultation, and on no account was the medication to be 'doubled-up' if a dose had been missed. On numerous occasions the Black Widow could not remember if she'd had her meds.... no worries, "Better just take one anyway." In particularly stressful moments, like actually doing some auctioneering, she had the perfect solution, "I'm going to take three before I go out there..."

"You sure that's wise?" I'd say.

"I've done it before - I can handle it."

She had not read Hunter S Thompson, had not heard, "The bats! The bats!", but was generating enough fear and loathing for a whole 'generation of swine'. I felt like I was on the search for Lono.... or maybe Gonzo would have been more appropriate.

Her over-use of stimulants certainly explained her aggressive paranoia enough for me. I had the now predictable meeting with the Boss. "Boss, I think the Black Widow is taking too much Prozac."

"She's under a lot of stress"

"Yes, but she's taking three or four times the recommended dose."

"How do you know?"

"Because she tells me and I've checked"

"Oh..."

"Yes. You need to have a word - she doesn't listen to me."

"You think she'll listen to me?"

"Fat Git, you're the boss!"

"I don't know what I can do"

"Fat Git, there are legal implications to this: workplace safety."

"Leave it with me."

Needless to say, the Black Widow continued to run amok for months to come.

There are reams of similar incidents both created by and starring the Black Widow. Months after I started it all got too much for her and she tried a power play. She said she would resign and walk out. I advised her to write her letter of resignation but wait until she had another job to go to. Perhaps she could sleep on it? "But who's going to do my job?"

"I don't know", I replied, "but you should think about yourself."

In the end, she gave two week's notice...... but stormed out two hours afterwards. Immediately staff came running to the office. "Has the Black Widow gone? Has she really gone?", they more or less chorused. "She sure has" I replied, deadpan.

"Is she coming back?"

"Not while I'm here - I've got her letter of resignation."

Happy faces all round.

It was as if a couple of atmospheres of pressure had lifted and now the sun shone through the front door and all the way into the office. All the staff and many punters felt it. Barry the truck driver came up excited, but worried,"It's great she's gone, but whose gonna do her job. We gotta pay the vendors."

"Dunno who is going to do her job yet Barry, but I'm sure nobody could fuck it up quite as much as she could"

"Hee hee hee - you're gonna have to do her job.... and your job..... and Fat Git's job!"

As it turned out a nineteen year old school leaver on a gap year, we'll call her Freddie, took over the Black Widow's desk and was doing her work in half the time in a matter of weeks...... she didn't take drugs and didn't threaten the punters once..... and, as far as I know, never flashed her underwear at anybody.

What became of the Black Widow? Well truth is stranger than fiction. Really! But that's another story. As a staff member said, "It must be hard when you can't do your job but you think you're irreplaceable."

 

No Matter How Educated You Are, It's Hard To Think In A Crisis

My friend Dr Blues got me the job at the auction house that allowed me to move back to Sydney and I promised to 'buy him a drink', as we say in London. Within two months he was apologising for getting me the job and I was suggesting that perhaps he better buy me a drink instead.

Maybe I should have known better because Dr Blues is a fully certified 'shit magnet', a 'lightning rod'. I used to think this was a good omen because if anything bad was going to happen.... it would definitely happen to him. Despite Fat Git and the auction house proving that shit could splatter over a wider area than I previously thought, I'll give you an example of what I mean.

I should point out that I heard this story from the lion's mouth.... and so did many others. But every time I hear it re-told it is a different version. Sometimes bits are missing, other times new bits have appeared. I Blame Dr Blues for this. My theory is that everyone repeats the story they were told word for word, but Dr Blues himself varies it each time. Must be the trauma.

So, before we start: this is not a version of that story, this is the true story!

Dr Blues had finished up the last painful years of his tertiary education and found himself a job in the States. He decided he needed a bit of time off in Europe on the way over and happened to find himself in a small town in Germany. Not for Oktoberfest, but slap bang in the middle of a wine fest. That first calm evening, before the shit-storm, he was in a bar sampling the local poisons and got chatting to a German family. They arranged to meet up the next night so that the Germans could show him their town, or at least the bars in it.

Serendipity is a funny thing. It can lead you on a road of happy coincidences and then bitch slap you in the face like a pimp with a '44.

Dr Blues heads out from his hostel the next night full of anticipation. He becomes slightly waylaid on the way when some backpackers share some unusual cigarettes with him. Never-the-less he is more or less on time as he enters the designated bar. It is packed full of big men and big women. Standing room only, for most, but the polite German family has managed to save him a seat. Relieved, Dr Blues sinks into the chair and starts drinking the local wine.

He feels a little floaty, from the exotic cigarettes, but the wine tastes good and the Germans won't let him pay for it. As the night wears on, however,  the floatiness in his head travels south to become a queazy feeling in his stomach. He is beginning to feel uncomfortable. "She'll be right" he thinks to himself, in stoic Aussie fashion, "She'll be right."

Minutes later things are definitely not alright. He needs to get to the toilet, not soon, but NOW! "Back in a minute" he says, rising rapidly from his seat. He turns towards the end of the bar and begins to fight his way through the sweaty mass of large half-drunk locals. "Shit!" he thinks, "I might not make it!"

Somehow he emerges from the press near the toilets and pushes desperately past the two cute girls chatting by the door of his salvation. "Mmmm.... Might have a go at them later...." Inside things are basic: a urinal and a cubicle. The free-standing kind with walls that don't reach ceiling or floor. He barges through the door, drops his trousers and sits down. "Thank God, I made it", he says to himself.

KABOOM! goes his arse in a mighty gassy explosion that pebble-dashes the entire inside of the toilet bowl in diarrhoea. All guttural conversation outside at the urinal stops..... and is followed by laughter. "Urr..." gasps Dr Blues as he sinks his spinning head into his hands. A smell like rotting possum begins to rise past his nostrils and out towards the urinal. No laughter now: just the sound of strangled gasps followed by running feet.

Dr Blues' head swims and the cold sweats begin. More people come and go from the urinal. No-one seems to linger long. Someone begins banging on the door and shouting, "Auftauchen! das Gehetze"! There is no way the patient can move or even communicate at this point, even if he could speak German. He clings to his head and stays where he is. The banging returns at intervals and gradually the nausea begins to retreat.

Some twenty minutes later Dr Blues is ready to make his move, "I've got to get out of here.... and get far away", he says determinedly to himself . He manages to sit up and reach out for the toilet roll. What toilet roll? There isn't any! "Fuckin' Europe! There's got to be something I can use". Well, actually no, there is nothing. No newspaper, no magazine..... no nothing. But.... a cunning plan is rising from the reptilian part of his brain, "I'll just have to use my hand..... not ideal..... but I'll dash out off the cubicle and use the toilet sink. If I'm real quick nobody will even notice....."

With a sense of resignation he raises himself off the seat and goes back there with his left hand. It comes back very shitty and the stirred-up possum smell again becomes unbearable. After giving himself a few minutes to recover from the shameful ordeal, he gingerly rises.... Oops! Not being used to this method of wiping his arse, Dr Blues had not done a very good job.

He sits back down. "Fuck! Fuck! What am I going to do now?" Luckily his reptilian brain is still working..... "I know, full steam ahead with plan A...." Again he raises his cold sweaty arse off the seat and this time puts his clean right hand behind him. It too comes back shitty. "Oh well: not ideal, but a quick rush to the sink and all will be well" he thinks.

"Time to get up and out of here". Unfortunately, not being big on physics, he has not forseen the fatal flaw in the extended plan A: it's a bit hard to pull your trousers up when both of your hands are covered in shit. Things still feel a bit moist behind, but with dextrous use of his elbows Dr Blues manages to get his trousers up somewhere close to his hips. "Okay...." Standing with legs as far apart as possible, to hold his trousers up, he puts those elbows to use to unlock the door. "Success.... pause for breath.... and then I'll make a shuffle for the sink.... better wait until it's quiet out there.... Right! Go! Go! Go!"

"Fuck!..... no sink!" 

"Wait..... I know I've seen a sink somewhere...... Shit! it's outside in the bar. I remember now.... it's on the wall between the two toilets...... I'll just have to go out, turn my back to the bar and get on with it..... almost home now." Dr Blues, avoiding the horrified curses of the big men coming in for the urinal, puts pedal to metal and heads out the door. 

"Hold on.... there's no fuckin' sink..... There's got to be a sink..... I've seen it!....."

"Nooooooooo..... those two cute girls chatting by the toilets have put their handbags on it!" Desperately trying to keep his trousers up above his knees, Dr Blues uses sign language and gestures at the sink with his shitty hands. By now his international communication skills are impeccable and the two German girls, understanding immediately, grab their handbags and retreat rapidly under the covering fire of their disgust.

"Thank God!", thinks the good doctor as he washes his hands, does up his trousers and disappears into the night. A faint shout follows him through the door, "Dr Blues.... vait! Zar iz schtill more vine..."