Anna Tomkins - The Adventures of a Small Businessman in the Forbidden Zone

Hi. My name is Sean and I work for myself. It wasn’t always that way, of course. Before that I worked for a bank. I must have been mad.

I left Hull University in 1981. I was 21 years old with a B.Sc. honours degree in Economics, and more usefully, a clean driving license. I don’t think I ever met anybody from University who then actually went into the same subject as a career move. Take Joe for instance. Joe took a degree in American Studies and was always rather vague if you asked him what it was about. As far as I know he has never been to America and possibly never actually spoken to an American. There was Rob; maybe you could count him. He left with a degree in law, but after working as a junior clerk in a law firm for six months, announced that he would rather have third degree burns than do this for the rest of his life. Last I heard he was a civil servant with the Department of Employment. When you have a degree in economics I suppose you gravitate toward employment in the financial sector, which is what I did. I got a job as a graduate trainee with a bank. Most days for the next ten years I went to work feeling like a condemned man. God alone knows why I stuck it so long. In common with my fellow flatmates I had applied for a job with every single brewery in Britain. None of us got as far as the interview stage, but we did get enough rejection letters between us to proudly wallpaper two walls of our common room. A rejection letter from Tetley’s was particularly prized, it being our favourite beer at the time.

When I actually got the job with the bank all my student friends thought it was hilarious. I hadn’t exactly been in financial control when at University. On receipt of my first grant cheque I had opened a bank account with the same local branch that my parents used.

At one point my parents telephoned me to say that the manager had asked them to get me to return my chequebook and cheque guarantee card until I got my spending under control. He said they had written to me on a number of occasions without a response. Well you know what the post can be like sometimes…

I discussed the situation with my good friend and fellow financial reprobate, Nick.

Nick advised me that I was now a wanted man – the only way to keep ahead of the pack was to never cash a cheque in the same place twice, and never ever to use a branch of my own bank. So I continued to cash cheques all over town – well books are expensive you know? During the summer holidays I worked eighteen-hour days in a sausage and pie factory to pay it all back.

The other thing I knew about banks from my student days was that they could be an excellent source of home decoration. Late one Saturday night. Sunday lunchtime I walked a young lady home from a really excellent student party and was invited in for ‘coffee’. Imagine how pissed off I was when coffee was what I actually got.

No matter, the point is that this girl’s bedsit was like the bloody Amazon rainforest – luxurious plant life abounded. I asked her where she got all the plants from and was well impressed when she told me she used to steal cuttings from the floral displays in the foyers of banks.

Soon my own bedsit was a veritable Kew Gardens. Rubber plants, Swiss cheese plants, spider plants, all sorts of stuff. Very therapeutic. I actually had a Swiss cheese plant for over twenty years. It was a very small sorry looking soul when I rescued it from the reception area of a Bradford & Bingley building society office (their bloody lazy staff never watered anything!). I had to leave it behind when I moved to Africa in 2002. It was huge and healthy when I left but died soon after. The pain of separation must have been too much for the poor green bugger.

One of the big banks in town where I would occasionally cash a rubber cheque had a customer suggestion box in the foyer. Customers where requested to leave any suggestions they might have for improving services or facilities. The best suggestion each month was awarded with a book token. No expense spared there then.

I stuck in two suggestions (anonymously of course – it wasn’t my bank). Firstly I wanted them to upgrade the floral displays to include more exotic species like Venus Fly Traps and Antler ferns. Maybe even splash out on some orchids! Oh boy, orchids! Yes I know a very selfish suggestion this one.

Secondly, I suggested that to get more students and young people to open accounts with them they incorporate a nudge/gamble option onto their hole-in-the-wall cash machines. You know, like they have on one armed bandits.

So say you asked the machine for a withdrawal of £20. You would be given the option of gambling up to £100 or exchanging the money for a chance to win fabulous prizes, like a motorbike or a meal for two in an expensive restaurant. Or a night on the town with a topless model, that sort of thing. Or lose the twenty pounds. Obviously the bank has to make a profit.

I maintain this would be a real money-spinner. After a few cheap beers in the Union bar students would be queuing up to use this kind of facility. It would at least be more open and transparent than the bank charges and interest that they levy on customers.

Needless to say I am still waiting for the book token.

So despite all the warning signs as to incompatibility shall we say, I accepted the job with the bank.

There were some good days and I did work with some great people. But honestly? I should have left after my first month and done something more useful in life. Like rob the crap hole at gunpoint and fled to Brazil. My fault but then I always have been a bit stubborn. And on those wages I could not afford to buy bullets for the gun.

You see I left University full of youthful enthusiasm and zeal. I wanted to make a difference in the world. I wanted to help people to build their businesses and their futures. I chose the wrong job.

When you work for a bank, at least the one I joined, you do exactly what you are told to do, the way you are told to do it, at the time you are told to do it. There is no room for individualism. There is more freedom of expression in the Borg Collective on Star Trek. And God help you if you bend the rules a little and it goes wrong. “Resistance is futile” as they say.

My first day at work I arrived bright and early, eager to learn the ropes and make new friends. I was told to sit and wait in reception until the manager had had a chat with me.

I sat. I sat and waited for almost two hours before the manager could be bothered to find ten minutes from his busy schedule to have a word with me. Lovely start to my career I thought.

Eventually I was summoned into the Great One’s presence and offered a seat by his secretary who then left the two of us alone. The manager was reading my application form, slouched back in his comfortable leather chair his feet up on the desk pointing in my direction – very, very rude that in Middle Eastern circles. A bit like telling somebody you think he is scum. I think the manager was aware of this too. He didn’t speak for some time.

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.