When he did speak it wasn’t the “Sorry for keeping you waiting, welcome to the team”, speech that I was expecting.
Instead he sat bolt upright in his chair, his feet coming down heavily on the floor.
“Bloody hell. You’re a Left Footer! What the fuck are we doing giving jobs to Left Footers!” These were his first words to me, on my first day in my new job, and I quote verbatim.
I had no idea what a Left Footer was that it should make him so upset – I had never heard the expression before. At one of the interviews for the job I vaguely remember being told that the Bank had a sports fund intended to encourage team spirit and interaction between the branches. Each region had its own football team and they competed against each other in a Sunday league. I took a wild guess and assumed he was talking about football.
“ Actually that is a mistake,” I said even though I had no recollection of putting it in my original application Then again it is hard to recall all the bull shit that I wrote in an attempt to get a job in a time of rising mass unemployment. I certainly had not been vice captain of the University chess team for a start. Nor had I actually read all the published works of Isaac Azimov. I still haven’t.
“Yes that’s definitely a mistake,” I confirmed. The manager looked visibly relieved.
“So you’re not a Left Footer then?”
“Actually I am embarrassed to admit that I’m pretty useless with my left foot other than for walking or running around on. No, I am a right footer and can play in defense or midfield, but I prefer midfield.
“Oh bloody marvelous,” he looked unaccountably upset by my information. “Not only is he a Left Footer but he thinks he’s a bloody comedian to boot. Just what I bloody needed.”
“At least I won’t have to give you a lift to the Lodge meeting every month”. He carried on reading.
“Jesus Christ you’re Irish!” I thought he was going to have a seizure. “Is this some sort of bloody joke?”
His facial expression read ‘the doctor has told me it’s malignant and I have only days to go’.
“Okay. I’m a man who likes to call a spade a spade. So I am going to tell you straight how it’s going to be.”
I hate that expression. The people that use it try to justify themselves as being completely honest and open, when in fact they are usually just bloody rude and uncaring of other people’s feelings. This ‘Good Old Boy’ was a classic example. The manager then went on to tell me he didn’t know why they kept sending him graduate trainees every year. They never stayed the course. So why do they keep sending intelligent people here on suicide missions, I thought. What a waste of everybody’s time, money and talent.