Portia MacIntosh - Drive Me Crazy

As Caroline stands up and walks around her desk, I see this as my opportunity to shift a little of my already light workload onto her.

‘You on the move, Caroline?’ I ask.

‘Yes, why?’ she replies curtly.

‘Oh, it’s just Wi- Mr Starr,’ I stop myself from calling Will by his first name, because this ‘display of disrespect’ always seems to irk her, ‘asked that Rick and the IT boys sign Charlie’s card.’

As I say the words I remember the other person who I was supposed to have sign the card: me. I grab a pen and quickly scribble something inside.

‘Did he ask you to do it, Candice?’

‘He just said it needed doing. He didn’t say that he needed me specifically to do it.’

Caroline carries on walking.

‘You know what they say,’ she lectures me. ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’

‘I don’t care if it’s done wrong,’ I call after her hopefully, but she’s gone. Crap. I’ll just have to do it myself.

I drain the last of my tea before exhaling deeply. It’s not that I don’t want to do any work, it’s just that I can’t face the ‘banter’ of the warehouse, nor the weirdness of the IT department.

I stand up and smooth out my dress before grabbing the card and a pen, and making my way along the corridor towards the warehouse. The nauseating yellow corridor walls seem especially harsh on the eyes today. Yellow is very much the colour of the company, and it’s clear that a variety of marketing experts over the years have really abused the fact the company name is Starr. Queue lots of space puns to do with storage and light speed in relation to deliveries. The logo is a little yellow shooting star, going round in a circle, which is OK, but the idea of having yellow walls to match is just too much. They would’ve been better having dark walls, with little twinkling lights in the ceiling to look like stars in the night sky – but I was removed from the marketing department, so what do I know?

‘…and you know how hard bloodstains are to remove.’

As I walk into the warehouse office, I catch the end of whatever Tommy is telling Rick, and it doesn’t sound great, does it?

As I enter the room, they both pause and stare at me for a second.

I try to be well mannered at work, well, with everyone expect Caroline and now the new guy, I guess, but with everyone else I do quite well. I keep myself to myself, but most of all, I keep my bitchy comments to myself. That said, if someone were to put a gun to my head and force me to break character by asking me what I thought of the warehouse staff, then I’d most likely admit that I thought they were all probably serial killers, with a couple of sex offenders thrown into the mix for diversity. OK, maybe the term sex offender is a little harsh, but only because charges were never filed. Matt, one of the warehouse minions, has been spotted touching himself on several occasions and everyone here at the flagship Manchester branch knows it. I, personally, have never seen him at it, and Will tells me it’s an urban legend, but I’m not so sure. I just passed him on my walk through the warehouse – he always looks so shifty.

If anyone were going to put a gun to my head and force me to do something, it would be Tommy. Tommy is truly terrifying, and I always seem to catch little snippets of his conversations that make him sound like his hobbies involve strangling women before chopping them up and dumping them in the canal. Tommy is Scottish, and a retired semi-pro rugby player. He’s very tall and broad with big arms, perfect for choking the life out of women. Thanks to his bald head, bulging eyes and big ears, he looks like a pale version of Shrek, and thanks to his accent he sounds like him as well. Apart from being bald too, Rick is Tommy’s polar opposite. He’s short with very little muscle, but he doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting Tommy does. Rick is the manager down here so he mostly just tells people what to do and ‘rides’ the forklift. He always has a helmet on, making him look like an old, Mancunian Bob the Builder.

With no one prepared to explain the blood remark to me, I decide it’s best to get the card signed and get out of here before I end up in pieces, in a crate headed for the seabed.

‘Rick, I need you to sign Charlie’s card, please.’

He beckons me over with his hand and takes the card from me. Rick is the very serious, silent type around women. I have witnessed him laughing and joking but it’s very much a with-the-lads kind of thing. Around women, he just clams up. Not Tommy, though. No one is safe from his banter.

‘How’s tricks at the top of the banana with the boss?’ he asks me.

The banana is what we call the yellow spiral staircase and subsequent corridor up to Will’s office. Were it not for the fact everyone calls it that, I might wonder what he meant by it.

‘Fine, thanks,’ I reply. ‘How’s…’ I glance around, taking in my surroundings. Even though we have a lovely canteen and staffroom here, this place doubles up as both Rick’s office and a sort of man cave for the warehouse workers. The walls are covered with posters and pictures, and the only ‘piece of art’ that doesn’t involve a naked lady or a car is a framed photo of the warehouse team doing Movember last year. They’re all standing huddled together, clutching the massive cheque that shows just how much money they made for the cause, and it was a lot, in spite of the fact most of them have moustaches all year round anyway.

Other than Rick’s messy desk, there are two tables. The first is in the centre of the room, surrounded by chairs. This where Tommy and Rick are sitting, with both playing cards and dominos laid out in front of them. There’s a work surface at the side of the room that looks a bit like a pop-up amateur meth lab (or maybe I’ve just been watching too much Breaking Bad ) where they have all their protein powders and bars and all the various bottles and mixers and tools they need to remain ‘hench’ and ‘make gains’ and all the other stuff I hear them say before going back to my desk to google what the fuck it all means.

‘How’s…this?’ I ask, unsure what word to use.

‘All good. Just killing time before the meeting with the pricks from HR,’ Tommy tells me. ‘There’s been a few complaints.’

I decide not to ask, nor tell him that he probably shouldn’t refer to the HR team as ‘pricks’.

Rick hands me back the card so I thank him and head for the door. As I close it behind me I hear Tommy resume their conversation.

‘So I’m scrubbing at this bloodstain with that meat tenderiser powder shit that Sharon cooks with, because I read online that it helps…’

I decide not to stick around and listen to the rest of their conversation, lest I become an accessory to something unsavoury – and I’m not talking about whatever it is Sharon cooks with her ‘meat tenderiser’, whatever the fuck that is.

Next up I head for the IT department, which, unlike Rick’s office with its big windows that look out over the warehouse, has no windows at all. I knock on the door before stepping inside. All six of them are gathered together as Garth, who is head of IT, animatedly tells them a story.

‘…and I looked down at my chest, and this sword was sticking through it, bloody everywhere! I look up, and there’s an army of them in front of me as well as behind me, and I desperately need an adrenalin shot to get my health up…’

Garth pauses as I enter the room but, unlike Tommy the serial killer, he feels he should probably explain himself to me.

‘This must sound well weird.’ He laughs. ‘We talking about the Oculus Rift,’ he tells me, like that makes things crystal clear and this not seem weird. I remind myself to google that as soon as I get back to my desk.