Devious Car Dealerships

Pulling into the hospital car park roared the unmistakable silhouette of an Aston Martin recovery vehicle.  They’re as rare as ravens in this neck of the woods so I stopped to stare at the racing green and gold-trimmed truck.  My morning had been tedious and repetitive, so I felt much uplifted when the driver hopped out of the carriage and asked the way to Reception.  I resisted the temptation to say ‘Oi! you can’t park that there here chum’ and asked the question we usually ask of ambulance drivers.

“Picking up or dropping off?”  It had to be one or the other.

“All sorted.  Service time for some lucky chap.” Sensing I might be envious of his cargo rather than nosey, he completely misread my body language and carried on talking just as the Hospital Director trotted towards us jangling the keys to his red thing.

“Everyone wants one of these” the driver confided. “How about you?” 

“Sorry … it’s not for me.  I’d prefer something younger.”  Like the compact Mercedes AMG hiding in a sea of Mini Coopers on the staff car park.  I can’t afford one of those either.  Well, not this month.

My old Peugeot is due it’s 15th MOT imminently and not looking or sounding great either.  Against my better judgement, I’ve set about touring car dealerships hoping for a cheap, barely-driven replacement with mixed results.  Alphonse solemnly volunteered to accompany me but I’ve decided to fly solo on this one.  Experience tells me they would ask him all the tech stuff and interesting questions and I’d only be consulted when it came to colour choices.  Besides, we wouldn’t get far in one day because he starts to drool at the sight of a Toyota GT86 brochure and frankly, it’s undignified.

Aware of the pitfalls?  Indeed I do and sure in the knowledge that sales people use all sorts of psychology to size up the weight of your wallet, I parked the Peugeot at Morrison’s.  I’m 5’3” tall in Primani ballet pumps, so would automatically be shunted into Ka, Micra, Aygo, Adam, Twingo, 500 and Up! territory. You know the mindset - one size fits all!  I landed in the bottom section of the car lot amongst the unpriced, mainly abandoned wrecks, and quickly spied an 03 plate Yaris with a very low mileage.  This would be perfect for my seven minute commute to work which has ultimately wrecked the Peugeot’s engine.  The main dealer alerted me of this a while back so I queried whether I should drive via Carlisle three days a week just to blow out the engine?  Humourless to a fault, the bloke didn’t crack his face.

For a chunk of the last decade I made a weekly round trip up the M6 to Manchester which was made bearable only by a German touring car.  The only flat bit is the Toll Road, the outside lane is filled with brake-happy morons who tail-gate and Stoke on Trent is better on an empty stomach.  None of this compares to driving in Leicester; up here we've changed the rules:

• The Highway Code is forgotten once you’ve passed your test.

• Traffic lights are an advisory measure only.

• Stopping at roundabouts?  Why?

• Clarkson Parking in the centre of two usable spaces is de rigeur.

• Women are to be driven over if you’re late for Friday prayers.

Don’t believe me?  Last week I spied a city-blue Citroen which had broken down on the grass verge opposite a huge branch of Sainsbury’s.  In less than 24 hours the tyres had gone although it had been thoughtfully left on bricks.  Another 48 hours passed until I next drove by and some wag had graffitied it with ‘Welcome to Leicester’.  Quite.

Car salesmen should come with a Haynes Manual.  Fans of “The Fast Show” will remember the genius creation of Swiss Tony with his pale grey suit and immaculately groomed quiff, who insisted cars should be treated ‘like a beautiful woman’.  Not this morning it wasn’t as I received a teeth-chattering greeting from his counterpart Swiss Tariq.  Oddly, he seemed to know less about his cars than I did and as he escorted me back to the showroom he made the stupidest mistake in the book.

“So Raven …” they get your name first “what’s your favourite car on the lot?”  I replied with my characteristic, savage honesty.

“The compact Mercedes.”  Well he asked!  Poor Tariq wanted me to choose the titchy Noddy cars I’d been inspecting but somehow they didn’t make me drool.  Ever keen, I was gently ushered inside past a woman who sits on a plinth and reads the paper; it’s her job apparently.  I declined a machine coffee and listened patiently while he dismissed the cheaper cars on the list because of their poorer resale value in five years time.  I didn’t care about five years from now when the Peugeot’s MOT is due in five weeks’ time.  Tariq wanted me to buy a new shape box with 13K miles on the clock costing three times the amount I’d declared as top of my budget.  He mentioned it’s major selling point.

“It has parking sensors.”  Did this idiot come fitted with earplugs or what?  Enough now.

“I’ve been driving for forty years …” longer than he’d been alive by the look of it  “…and I don’t need parking sensors to put an OXO cube on wheels between two other vehicles.”  Undeterred, he leaned back and sighed, then tapped extra information into the computer.

“So, let’s have a plan.”  I had a plan and it was to go somewhere else but I’m too polite.  Tariq was still talking.  “So … we’ll put a thousand pounds down and finance the rest on the pretty white one say over five years and you should be paying around a hundred pounds a month and before you make the final payment, it’ll be worth … scrap value.”

“…”  I’m good at maths particularly when I’m being robbed.

“So let’s have a look shall we?”  The printer spewed out a piece of paper that came up with a number I was unhappy with.

“What happened to my deposit?” 

“Oh that’s in necessary charges.”

“Well make them unnecessary!  If I pay this every month for five years and haven't driven the cube off the cliff in the meantime, I’ll be paying somewhere nearer ten grand for a car you’re telling me is only close to six which is well over my budget.”  Deep breath Raven, deep breath.  “And I don’t like WHITE cars.”  Tariq remained unfazed and delivered his coup de brass neck.

“So when can we get it ready for a test drive?”

Talons firmly fixed into my palms and drawing blood, I fled from the dealership and for a moment took a fleeting glance at the Ford Dealership over the dual carriageway.  No.  Not them again either.  Clutching my redundancy in 2007 I dropped in for a chat about a new motor and was told “when madam has decided what car she’d like and how much she’d like to spend, perhaps she’d like to come back.”  I believe car dealerships are one of life’s little tests. Like on-line dating sites and chia seeds.

Tip of the Beak:  One of our auditors is having problems finding true love in London.  She’s tapped countless apps and finally hit on a dream date only a few weeks ago.  I understand he was gorgeous, clever, funny, beardless and obviously quite well-healed, and they hit it off up to the point where he offered to drive her home.  She accepted gratefully but on jumping into the front seat she experienced a moment of true horror on discovering he had Batman-themed car mats.  She was gutted.  Her perfect man was flawed.

“Is that it?”  I exclaimed at the brevity of her short list.

“Those car mats sound great … where can I get some?” asked Alibone.

Even Lucinda was interested.  “What’s his number?”  But the poor bloke had been rejected purely on his inappropriate choice of car mats and our lovelorn auditor had failed another one of life’s little tests.

Raven 

The Racking Rocks

A fascinating two-page spread in the Leicester Mercury caught my beady eye this week. The sparkling new A&E Department at the Royal Infirmary opened it’s doors to casualties for the first time on Thursday.  Everyone was smiling for a change.  Such a massive project must have taken planning, organisation and substantial hard cash to achieve and with true East Midlands reserve the first customers dubbed their experience as “alright”.  Across the city and roughly coinciding with their ribbon cutting ceremony, our own more modest project kicked off.  

Our Rocking Racking had comfortably held 25K files for 25 years until an unearthly creaking meant we had to call in The Health & Safety Man.  Before entering The Bunker he apologised for his chronic personal hygiene saying his clothes had borne the brunt of a previous job; I guessed drains were involved. He also timed his arrival perfectly to witness a whole section sag towards the centre of the room.  Without breaking out an allen key, he condemned the lot as ‘unfit for purpose’ then stalked off to have a bath.  Then nothing happened for three months.

Off the back foot of the new financial year the chin scratching and measuring up started in earnest.  Will we get the go-ahead or won’t we? I wondered. “We will!” said The Racking Man.  He’s the chipper chappy who came along with grand ideas above our budget.  He included sit-stand work stations in The Plan so we could yo-yo the desk height according to the user.  Very ergonomic, yes.  Very British?  No.  The Scandinavians love these things and we’d had them at the Leeds HQ of my old firm.  After the novelty wore off, they were stealthily disconnected by the owner saying “this is my desk, set at my height and you’re not moving it.“  Worse, the expensive desks were simply ignored.

In my pre-hospital days most of what I’ve learned about the medical world is from the television. I had no idea the great 80’s series ‘St Elsewhere’ was a black comedy and, strangely, I find Casualty and Holby City much funnier than Car Share or Benidorm.  So when the rocking racking was designed by someone who wasn’t going to work in it I knew there would be trouble.  I’d also been tasked with relabelling notes to accommodate a change from portrait to landscape storage.  So unsure of the technique’s efficiency, I stopped to check with Cristabel, our hyperactive supervisor.

“Am I doing this the right way up?”  Deep thought and a group discussion ensued.  

“Yes.”  Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending chaos.

“Fine but don’t ask me to re-label them if you’re wrong.”  Cristabel suddenly developed ‘urgent email syndrome’ and I carried on with the efficiency of Seven-of-Nine in Star Trek: Voyager.  I was vindicated later when The Blokes came to rip out the old racking confirmed the awful truth.

“Your numbers are on the wrong side for the new setup.”  There are not my numbers mate.

We had one team meeting before the project kicked off and I thought it better to get the difficult question out of the way first before Cristabel had finished her latte.

“Who’s the project manager.”  My last project had a £60M price tag so I ruled myself out as being overqualified.  I also needed to exclude the know-it-all 22 year old Psychology Graduate from the job.  She has grand ideas but no knowledge of budgets, timescales, resource or who’s going to pick up the dross when she’s gone travelling again.  Cristabel's answer stunned me.

“No-one.  It’ll be ‘orrendous.”  In a hospital full of administrators who have never worked in the real world I abandoned tactlessness and phrased my next question gingerly.

“Who will be making the decisions then?”  When oh when will I learn to keep my beak zipped?

“The Racking Man said we’d have to reduce our stock by 33% before next week or it won’t go back in anyway.”  It’s difficult to write the real Leicester accent as dialogue but it’s much worse than Gary Lineker.  Cristabel ploughed on regardless.  “Still … it’s only a couple of days of disruption then we’re back to normal.”  In the absence of a project plan, I’ve drawn up my own list of jobs for the available resources:

Know-It-All Psychologist - She’s out of the way typing up lists of files and not making decisions.

Cristobel - In charge of arm waving and shouting “Change Of Plan” every couple of hours.

Andrex Puppy - Constantly in meetings before making U-turns and causing overall disruption.

Fruit Bat - Booked annual leave for the duration but still wants to attend the aftermath curry party.

Cherrypickers - Early starters who disappear upstairs before the tough jobs are allocated.

Rubber-Necking Consultants - All permanently in shock when they realise Med Recs staff exist above ground.

Grafters - There’s five of us.  Do the maths.

Shite Stirrer +/- Nosey Parker - In our hospital, she’s the same person.

The sign on the door read No Entry. Medical Records staff only.  With five warm bodies sifting and relabelling patient records the banter and bad language mainly revolved around paper cuts and Alibone’s new puppy.  Even before the door creaked open we knew who was behind it.  Nosey wanted to stir it a bit.

As a pre-emptive strike she chirped “I’m not coming in.”

“Good.”  The deductive logical side of my brain went back to what it was doing.

Nosey was undaunted.  “But I need a file.”

“Tough.”

“It’s important.  Could you look for it please?”  It looked like a Fishmonger’s auction in there with 150 huge crates stacked three deep and she wanted one file.  Normally the embodiment of customer service, I flipped into evil bird mode.

“What box number is it in?”

“How would I know that?”  I lifted a lid so she could peer in for a quick gander.

“So how would I know where your file is hiding amongst twenty five thousand others?”  After Nosey disappeared Alibone, who has adopted the Clean Eating regime, rattled a bag under my beak.

“Walnut anyone?”

We continued to sift and despatch files while the decorators were grafting away with magnolia paint and after lunch I decided to check on progress of The Bunker by peering through the spy hole.  They had stopped for tea and wanted to share an incisive view of the week’s proceedings.

“Why did you agree to put the racking back where it came out?”

“I didn’t agree to anything.”

“You have the look of a manager.”  I’d prefer it if I had the look of a millionaire.

“Go on.”

“Well it’s such a shame … if you’d moved the racking ninety degrees you’d have had double the office space.” I went back to Alibone shaking my head.

“We’re screwed.  Gimme some more nuts.”  When I explained the painter’s logic to her, she had to be helped into a crate for a nap.

No doubt, when we’re back to normality in a constantly shifting room of high anxiety and number dyslexia we will be giving guided tours to visiting dignitaries.  The management will take the credit as usual while we shrink under our desks and cringe.  Oddly enough, the first tour has been announced by email for Tuesday 2nd giving us just enough time to rest and repair wounded bodies yet it’s too soon to soothe egos.  All things I’m sure the staff at Leicester Royal Infirmary seem to have taken in their stride.  Or have they?

Tip of the Beak:  Thoughtfully, the Leicester Mercury vox-popped the first customers to use the glistening new facilities on Day 1 and featured one lady who ranked her experience as “quite good.’’  However I doubt they will report what happened on Day 2.  Overall the acclaim was so glowing that a number of citizens pitched up whether they were sick or not.

“We’ve heard about the new A&E Department.  Can we have a look around?”

I’m guessing they have a Duty Manager “Er … no!”

“But we’ve paid for it … the Tax Payer … that’s us.”

“Still NO!”  

“Pity.  The Leicester Mercury says it’s rather impressive.”  The dejected citizens wandered away and down the road a bit to visit Richard III, who’s resting in a very grand bunker indeed.

Raven