Fun Times On The Bright Side

So, during lockdown I’ve been working as normal, albeit with a watered down staffing issue. Everybody has been covering the hours left vacant by 4 members of staff who have been personally effected by the virus.

For a few weeks we were literally down to the bare bones, spending the majority of time at work, leaving home life behind.

That was until the arrival of George. He arrived one morning unexpected by myself and my colleagues, but as it turned out, expected by our manager, who had decided to make a rare but welcome appearance. The doorbell rang, the door was opened and there stood George, asking to see the manager whilst brandishing his identity card. I ushered him in whilst attempting to prevent one of the residents from. A- Escaping and B- from jumping on our visitor (As he’s prone to doing)

George rushed past me and ran straight upstairs to the open door of the office, where our manager was waiting to greet him with a smile, immediately followed by “John, this is George, George, this is John, he’s going to help out whilst we’re in a pickle”.

I could tell by his accent he wasn’t local, he sounded like Paul Gascoigne. For those who aren’t familiar with that name, he was/is an imfamous but mercurial ex-professional footballer.

We didn’t see him until just before he left the property, popping his head in to say “Sees ya next week”.

Our manager informed us a few minutes after his departure that he was one of the upper tier managers of the whole company but didn’t act like one! He was a down to earth, no bullshit, get your hands dirty type of chap and that he wanted to help our team out during the pandemonium. We chatted about the shifts he was willing to cover and he had offered to pick up most of the afternoon shifts that we were struggling to cover. I asked if he lived locally, and our manager said he didn’t and that he lived in County Durham, 135 miles from where we work. I said “Bloody hell, surely he’s not travelling to work for an 8 hour shift then driving back after”? She said he was with an exaggerated nod of her head, to which I replied with “Is he a full shilling or hasn’t he got a life”? She laughed and warned me to behave.

In reality, nobody at work actually expected him to come to work, and we wouldn’t have blamed him! I ask you, a 270 mile round trip, 3 days a week to be attacked by flying faeces (An aspect of the job he didn’t know about) is not exactly an attractive proposition.

Miraculously, he came to work to following Monday, which is a whole blog that I’ll talk about in the next post.

Unfortunately, I have chores to do for most of the afternoon but, as my mate Arnie once said “I’ll be back”.