that
you-cheeky-cheeky-fockers
look on his face. But all he saw was the retreating backs and shaking shoulders of ten black uniforms as we all fled back to the channels, crying with laughter. We could still hear the little yelps and cries for help as we slid away.
Why she didn’t let go of the bag, I’ll never know, but that part of the airport floor around the baggage carousel got a bloody good polish.
An officer whom, unfortunately, we didn’t get to play that trick on was Richard. Even we, his fellow Customs officers, hated him, so God knows what everyone else thought of him. He was the world’s most perfect example of why ‘Richard’ should sometimes be shortened to ‘Dick’. And he was another one that we were surprised to find had a wife, but simply because we couldn’t fathom how he’d got another human being to stand him long enough to make it up the aisle. We thought a stun gun must have been involved.
He arrived at the airport as an experienced senior officer but, from day one, he started making enemies. One of his first official acts was the implementation of the red line in our duty-log signing-in book. The two day shifts started at seven and eight o’clock. At seven o’clock, Richard appeared with a ruler and red pen and proceeded to draw a red line in the book, meaning that any one arriving a minute late would have to sign in under the line. He did the same for the eight o’clock shift. Not a good way to make friends with new colleagues.
He carried on not making friends as if it was a sport. Patrick pulled over a young lad who had arrived from Amsterdam. A baggage search revealed that cigarettes weren’t the only thing that he’d been smoking in the Netherlands. Patrick needed the agreement of a senior officer to carry out a further search. Unfortunately, the senior officer was Richard. Pat explained to him why he wanted the search, and, without a moment’s hesitation, Richard replied, ‘Well, he’s black, search him!’ Now, that wasn’t the type of people we were: we didn’t distrust anyone, we distrusted
everyone –
equally. So Patrick immediately turned on his heel, returned to the young lad and said, ‘Right. Don’t do drugs! Now bugger off!’ He didn’t even search him; it was his way of trying to redress the balance. It didn’t take long for word to get around about Richard’s little outburst. His hate rating increased but he seemed to enjoy it even more.
We did some research and found out that he had a history of being about as popular as a turd in a swimming pool (on his good days, he moved up to being as popular as a fart in a space-suit). He had attempted to join the Investigation Division. The ID was strict when it came to your first six months’ service. If you didn’t shine, you were returned to your original post. Richard started rubbing people up the wrong way from the beginning. But they had their own ways of dealing with his type. He was sent on a solo mission to Dover. His instructions: to identify a white Mini (registration not known) that belonged to a known criminal (name not given) arriving on a ferry (which one not known) from France. Richard’s job was to follow it to its final destination in the UK. Easy job, but what Richard didn’t know was that the operation didn’t exist.
His first white Mini took him into Wales, but when he contacted the senior officer with the address he was told, ‘No, that’s not our man. Back to Dover!’ So he returned. The next white Mini took him to Manchester, and he received the same answer from the senior officer. The third white Mini took him to Newcastle, the fourth to Birmingham and the fifth to Cornwall. He was on the road for a total of six days before it dawned on him that this operation was a ‘sickener’ – a job invented to crack him. It worked; he drove back to London and requested a transfer. Good for ID, bad for us.
After three months, we’d had enough of him. We could do nothing right in his eyes.
you-cheeky-cheeky-fockers
look on his face. But all he saw was the retreating backs and shaking shoulders of ten black uniforms as we all fled back to the channels, crying with laughter. We could still hear the little yelps and cries for help as we slid away.
Why she didn’t let go of the bag, I’ll never know, but that part of the airport floor around the baggage carousel got a bloody good polish.
An officer whom, unfortunately, we didn’t get to play that trick on was Richard. Even we, his fellow Customs officers, hated him, so God knows what everyone else thought of him. He was the world’s most perfect example of why ‘Richard’ should sometimes be shortened to ‘Dick’. And he was another one that we were surprised to find had a wife, but simply because we couldn’t fathom how he’d got another human being to stand him long enough to make it up the aisle. We thought a stun gun must have been involved.
He arrived at the airport as an experienced senior officer but, from day one, he started making enemies. One of his first official acts was the implementation of the red line in our duty-log signing-in book. The two day shifts started at seven and eight o’clock. At seven o’clock, Richard appeared with a ruler and red pen and proceeded to draw a red line in the book, meaning that any one arriving a minute late would have to sign in under the line. He did the same for the eight o’clock shift. Not a good way to make friends with new colleagues.
He carried on not making friends as if it was a sport. Patrick pulled over a young lad who had arrived from Amsterdam. A baggage search revealed that cigarettes weren’t the only thing that he’d been smoking in the Netherlands. Patrick needed the agreement of a senior officer to carry out a further search. Unfortunately, the senior officer was Richard. Pat explained to him why he wanted the search, and, without a moment’s hesitation, Richard replied, ‘Well, he’s black, search him!’ Now, that wasn’t the type of people we were: we didn’t distrust anyone, we distrusted
everyone –
equally. So Patrick immediately turned on his heel, returned to the young lad and said, ‘Right. Don’t do drugs! Now bugger off!’ He didn’t even search him; it was his way of trying to redress the balance. It didn’t take long for word to get around about Richard’s little outburst. His hate rating increased but he seemed to enjoy it even more.
We did some research and found out that he had a history of being about as popular as a turd in a swimming pool (on his good days, he moved up to being as popular as a fart in a space-suit). He had attempted to join the Investigation Division. The ID was strict when it came to your first six months’ service. If you didn’t shine, you were returned to your original post. Richard started rubbing people up the wrong way from the beginning. But they had their own ways of dealing with his type. He was sent on a solo mission to Dover. His instructions: to identify a white Mini (registration not known) that belonged to a known criminal (name not given) arriving on a ferry (which one not known) from France. Richard’s job was to follow it to its final destination in the UK. Easy job, but what Richard didn’t know was that the operation didn’t exist.
His first white Mini took him into Wales, but when he contacted the senior officer with the address he was told, ‘No, that’s not our man. Back to Dover!’ So he returned. The next white Mini took him to Manchester, and he received the same answer from the senior officer. The third white Mini took him to Newcastle, the fourth to Birmingham and the fifth to Cornwall. He was on the road for a total of six days before it dawned on him that this operation was a ‘sickener’ – a job invented to crack him. It worked; he drove back to London and requested a transfer. Good for ID, bad for us.
After three months, we’d had enough of him. We could do nothing right in his eyes.
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