The Sound of Laughter

by Peter Kay

  Chapter Nine

  We Be Jammin'

  Ding Dong! Now that was the doorbell, I didn't even have to tip my head to one side this time because I heard it loud and clear. It was my new driving instructor, Marion of Marion Moran's School of Motoring and I was expecting her to call. My driving lessons had come to an abrupt halt after I'd decided to let the inimitable Raymond go, way back at the beginning of the book. I'd been itching to get behind the wheel again ever since and then as fate would have it Marion drove into my life, literally.

  I'd got a new part-time job working as a cashier at a local petrol garage and one day Marion came in to fill up her Clio. She looked pleasant enough as she limped towards the counter dragging her orthapaedic shoe, so I plucked up the courage to ask her if she'd take me for some lessons.

  I briefly told her about my past history with Raymond and she laughed. Apparently I wasn't the first person to suffer his pipe smoke. We set a date for the following week and then she left owing me a penny, a sign of things to come.

  Originally, I'd only taken the job at the garage because I thought it might educate me in the ways of motoring. I'd already had over thirty driving lessons by this point and still I hadn't even been put in for my test. I needed as much help as I could get and surely I'd be able to pick up a few tips working in a garage. But the sad reality was, I remained totally illiterate when it came to cars.

  One night I had a drive-off. Some knobhead filled up his car on the forecourt and sped off. It wasn't even busy, but the smart-arse had hung a beach towel out of the boot so I couldn't read the reg. The only thing I did manage to read was '. . . zarote' down the side of the beach towel as he screeched off the forecourt.

  We had CCTV cameras installed at the garage but they didn't work. Vernon, the manager, was a tight-arse and he'd just had them wired up to a battery so that the light flashed constantly as a deterrent.

  The police eventually rolled up about four hours later (no surprise there). I was still in shock. I remember the policeman asked me,

  'What kind of car was it?'

  I said, 'It was green and it sloped down at the back like this.' (I motioned with my hands.)

  'Oh well,' he said, 'we've as good as got him.' The sarcastic pig.

  It wasn't my fault the drive-off had covered up his registration plate with a beach towel! Anyway, even if I'd got his reg I still don't think the police would have done much. They way they saw it was Esso's petrol and a big company like that was guaranteed to be insured against theft, so what was the point of chasing a two-bit chancer over a tenner's worth of unleaded?

  I would have pushed the panic button if I'd known we had one but in the fortnight I'd been employed nobody had bothered to mention its existence – it was left up to me to discover that the hard way.

  One Saturday afternoon after much soul-searching I decided to help myself to some Juicy Fruit. When I say help myself, I mean steal. I'd seen a few of my co-workers helping themselves to the odd bar of chocolate or the occasional packet of crisps, so I thought I'd have a go, seeing as the coast was clear and it was sat right in front of me on the counter. Well, it was either Juicy Fruit or a Magic Tree and the latter didn't look very appetising.

  The forecourt was dead. The weekly convoy of Saturday shoppers had already passed by, their cars now safely nestled in various NCP car parks around town, while their drivers sat in Debenhams' cafe eating a cream tea and admiring the purchases they'd got in the Blue Cross sale. Meanwhile, three and a half miles away, I was sat eyeing up a packet of sugar-free Juicy Fruit. I was about to drift over to the dark side once again.

  My co-worker Steve was round the back vacuuming his Escort, so casually I moved my left hand towards the spearmint rack and reached for a packet of Juicy Fruit. As I innocently gazed out of the window, my right hand was completely unaware of what my left hand was up to. Like a perspiring Dr Strangelove I was just in the middle of peeling back the silver foil when two police squad cars came skidding on to the forecourt and screeched up outside the shop. I jumped out of my skin which sent the evidence hurtling into the air.

  'Shit, they're on the ball here,' I thought, 'it's only a packet of Juicy Fruit.'

  Two officers came bursting into the shop and ran up to the counter asking me what the emergency was.

  'Emergency? What emergency?' I said.

  It turned out that unbeknownst to me, I'd leaned back in my swivel chair about half an hour before and accidentally pushed the panic button under the counter.

  The coppers weren't happy. I tried explaining to them that I'd no idea that we even had a panic button but they were having none of it. It was only later, after they'd gone, that I realised it'd taken them over half an hour to respond, the bloody cheek! By that time any panic would have been well and truly over. I could have been lying in a pool of blood, riddled with bullets, by the time they'd finished their tea and headed over.

  Anyhow, it was a lesson learned and I made damn sure I didn't lean back on my chair the next time I decided to help myself to a bit of Juicy Fruit.

  When I first took the job at the garage I was surprisingly shy. I wouldn't have said boo to a goose, which never turned out to be a problem as we never had much poultry buying petrol. But I got so stressed with my new job that I almost quit after the first few shifts. I'd never had to deal with the public before, handling money, swiping credit cards, it was all too much for a seventeen-year-old to cope with. I was used to packing toilet rolls and I'd spent most of my life surrounded by family and friends. . . and nuns.

  I didn't have a clue. I remember an Asian lad coming in once and asking for some Rizla papers. I thought he was looking to buy some kind of Asian newspaper. I had no idea what he was on about and immediately informed him that we didn't sell any magazines or newspapers.

  Ironically, it was the customers themselves that coaxed me out of my shell. It wasn't the idle banter that we exchanged at the counter or the humorous small talk that we indulged in during payment, it was the fact that a large percentage of the customers were miserable bastards and I was tired of them treating me like shit.

  The customers all had one thing in common: they seemed to hate visiting the garage. I mean, when you think about it nobody really wants to go to a garage. They resent it because garages are a necessity and if it was up to most drivers they'd sooner drive round on fumes all day with their orange fuel lights flashing than pull into a garage for petrol.

  As a result I became a target for their frustrations. They seemed to blame me for everything, the hike in fuel prices, traffic congestion, England being out of the World Cup, whatever it was that was pissing them off the buck stopped with me. It got to the point where I'd had enough. It was time for me to shape up or ship out, so I began to give them as much back and in doing so I unleashed a dark sarcastic side to my nature that I'd never seen before.

  When filling up most drivers liked to round things up. The cost of their fuel always had to be £10 or £15 and they hated it when they went over by a penny. No matter how meticulously they tried to fill up, that penny always popped up at the very last second. It was the straw that broke the camel's back for one customer and he came charging into the garage like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

  'What's going on? That car was at ten pounds exactly when I pulled out that nozzle, now the price has mysteriously jumped up a penny. Did you do that?' he said in a deranged fashion.

  'Eh? Why would I want to do that?' I was shocked. I couldn't believe he was actually accusing me of rigging the pumps so I could pocket the extra penny.

  'Well, it all adds up, doesn't it, a penny here, a penny there, before you know it thirty customers and –'

  '– and what?' I said. 'I've got 30p? Look, get out before I push the panic button.' I looked around – I couldn't believe that it was actually me that had said that. I was shocked. Then he threw a ten-pound note at me and walked out owing the penny. Then he got back into his squad car and sped off.

  I was joking about the squad car but i
t was hardly worth calling the police over a penny. I couldn't have cared less anyway, I was still in shock for standing up for myself. But I'd enjoyed it and so it didn't stop there. It started to happen all of the time.

  Vernon, my boss, docked the penny out of my wage. He did it to all staff if a customer refused to pay. We used to get our revenge by pissing in his milk. I'm only joking (or am I?)

  I got a customer in one night who'd filled up his car with fuel and before he got to the counter to pay he was distracted by the sweet rack. He got a few bags of chocolate and when I tilled up the amount it came to a total of £12.42.

  And then he did what most people do at that point: he fumbled around in his wallet like a tit and said,

  'Do you want the 42p?'

  I said, 'Yes, I do, otherwise it'd just be twelve quid and that's not enough. Fool.'

  I was starting to think maybe I needed to enrol on some kind of anger-management course.

  And on one particularly bad shift a bloke leaned round the shop door and asked me if we had a toilet.

  'The whole place is a fucking toilet mate,' I replied.

  He just nodded and sheepishly shut the door.

  We used to make plenty of brews at work and as a result there was always a half-bottle of milk sitting in the shop fridge next to cans of Coke and Diet Lilt (as if normal Lilt doesn't taste bad enough).

  A customer approached the counter to pay once and said,

  'Do you know you've got half a bottle of milk open in your fridge?

  'Yeah, we keep in there to stop it going sour,' I said.

  'Crikey, I know what you mean, there's nothing worse than sour milk, is there?' he said.

  'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'Aids is a bit of a pisser.'

  Crestfallen, the guy picked up his Tiger Tokens and left. Now that was cruel, I know, but I was starting to hate small talk and what you've got to remember is that a lot of the customers were just as bad. I remember a guy coming in and asking for a vacuum token so he could clean his car out round the back. Five minutes later he barged back into a packed shop, pushed his way to the front of the queue, slammed his vacuum token down on the counter and said, 'You call that a vacuum? The wife sucks harder than that.'

  I was truly speechless.

  The worst customers were the ones that religiously collected their Tiger Tokens. I don't know if you remember them but a few years ago Esso garages used to give away these things called Tiger Tokens 'free' with every six pounds of petrol. They were an enormous success and the British public went mental for them. They'd hoard the tokens like gold.

  I even used to get drivers filling up their cars with an extra bit of fuel, just so they could pick up an extra Tiger Token. Once you'd collected all your tokens you could redeem them against various gifts in the Tiger catalogue, but most customers couldn't wait and with the tokens burning a hole in their shell suits they'd impatiently redeem them for a Tiger frisbee or a God-awful Tiger T-shirt.

  Other customers had been collecting their tokens for ever. These people were on an unstoppable mission to redeem their tokens against the biggest and best gifts that the Tiger catalogue would allow, like a deluxe set of family-size leather luggage or a Black & Decker power bench. You could bet they'd be worth about ten thousand tokens and as staff we'd have to count each and every bloody one of them.

  That could take an eternity. The manager of the other Esso garage in Bolton had the wisdom to buy a set of Tiger Token scales for his staff. They saved so much time. All you had to do was pop the tokens on the scales and, hey presto, the total amount would appear on screen. The scales were the way forward but Vernon was a tight-arse so there wasn't much chance of us ever having a pair of them.

  'Have you seen how much they cost?' he'd complain every time we mentioned them. 'I don't see why should I fork out for scales when all you have to do is count.'

  But, as I found, the problem was it could take ages and the arseholes with the most tokens would always want to redeem them at the worst possible time. Like when we were just about to shut or in the middle of my shift with a queue snaking out the door.

  I'd really had enough of these people and one night in the middle of the rush hour I saw a fat couple struggling to get out of a Sierra. It was a hot July evening and as the husband heaved himself out of the driver's seat I could see he was clutching a carrier bag full of Tiger Tokens. My heart sank.

  'Please GOD, not now,' I said, looking through the window at the gridlocked forecourt.

  They waddled into the shop. He was wearing a Tiger bumbag and she was dressed in a colourful XXXXXX-large T-shirt, sporting cartoon images of black children cavorting round a cartoon map of Jamaica and the words 'We Be Jammin' underneath. I hated them both already.

  Slapping his carrier bag down on my counter, he said, 'There's nine thousand tokens here, son, and we want to order a set of conservatory furniture.'

  'The deluxe set in Nigerian bamboo,' his fat wife added, standing on tiptoes because her head only came up to the screenwash display.

  'I stand corrected,' said the husband. 'There's actually nine thousand and fifteen. We want one of those fancy Tiger T-shirts an' all.'

  A queue of impatient drivers was already forming behind them and before I could tell them to FUCK OFF! the husband tipped his carrier bag upside down and emptied the tokens on to my counter. I was livid.

  I wanted to slap them and shout, 'Why are you doing this now, can't you see we're busy?', but I didn't; instead, I calmly leaned over my shoulder, lifted a pad of Tiger Token order forms off the shelf and said, 'I'm really sorry but we haven't got any of these left.'

  Totally flummoxed, the couple looked at each other in shock, scooped up their nine thousand (and fifteen) tokens and left. I couldn't believe that the gormless sods had fallen for it. I had the order forms right there in my hand. Spurred on by my success, I started to do it all the time with any other customers who attempted to cash in their zillion Tiger Tokens at the most inappropriate moments.

  Nine out of ten times it worked, but occasionally I'd get a smart one who'd just look at me and say,

  'Aren't those the order forms in your hand?'

  That's when I'd have to reply awkwardly, 'Oh yeah, so they are.'

  Thwarted, I devised another technique that would take the 'no order forms' scam to the next level, literally. One night I had a woman stroll up to the counter just as we were cashing up. She was pulling a tartan shopping trolley that was piled so high with Tiger Tokens that they were spilling on to the floor as she walked.

  Before she even had chance to open her mouth, I went over to a side door behind the counter and, tilting my head upwards I shouted,

  'Kev, have we got any of those Tiger Token order forms up there?' (Then I paused for effect.) 'Next week you say. OK, I'll tell her.'

  Disgruntled, the woman left the garage leaving a trail of paper tokens fluttering behind her.

  As she got back into her car I could see her looking at the one-storey garage with confusion on her face. There was no upstairs, there was no member of staff called Kev and the side door behind the counter only led to a dusty store cupboard where we kept out-of-date Fruit Pastilles and melted Twixes.

  The garage was the longest job I had. (Obviously that's if you don't count the one I do now.) The only reason I stayed so long was because I had such a good laugh. Lord knows, it couldn't have been for the money, because the wage Vernon gave me was a pittance. I got £1.80 an hour until I was eighteen and then it went up to £2.40. Downright disgraceful. But there was always plenty of overtime and any shitty part-time job had to be better than signing on. Plus I got to nick my own body weight in Duracell batteries and I never had to buy a blank video or cassette for the next five years.

  Every year in August Vern and his wife Pam would go on a golfing holiday to Florida, and before they went Pam would make up our wages and leave them in the safe. I opened mine one week and realised it was a couple of quid short. I was furious as I hardly got much as it was. Luckily Verno
n had left the telephone number of the hotel in case of an emergency so I took the liberty of calling him – well, it was an emergency to me.