No Place in the Sun (2 page)

Walter stood up slowly and carefully and dusted himself off. ‘He’s telling you the truth, son, there’s no money here. There was a time when we’d have a few bob in the safe maybe, not much, but a few bob. Since that Whitebox place opened across the way we have less and less.

Tom pressed himself up from the floor. ‘It’s true; business is very bad here since that Brit place opened. Why didn’t you rob them? Waste of time coming here.’

The raider was calming down a little; he held the bag by his side and had stopped waving it around. ‘They have a bleedin’ security man, and you can’t get near the bleedin’ place with security fucking cameras. Have yous no bleedin’ money at all?’

‘No, not a cent.’ Walter shook his head.

The other youth poked his head around the porch door. ‘Come on, for fuck’s sake, Macker, I’m burstin.’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming; they have no bleedin’ money.’

‘They must have fucking money.’

‘They fucking haven’t.’

‘Get something so, get playstations or something.’

The youth pointed the bag at Tom. ‘Hey, ya big ginger fuck, I told ya to get down on the floor.’

‘The carpet is dirty, it’s destroying my suit. Don’t worry, I won’t move from here though.’ Tom sat on a low stack of microwaves at the end of the row.

‘Gimme a couple of playstations so and I’ll go.’

‘We don’t do playstations; Miltons only does white goods and tellys and computers. You’ll have to go to Whitebox for the playstations.’

‘What else have yous? Any phones?’

‘We don’t do phones, but we have kettles. Do you want a kettle?’ Andrew held up a box with a plastic kettle in it.

The raider swiped at the box, sending it spinning to the ground. ‘What would I want a stupid fucking kettle for? Who’d buy a fuckin’ kettle, you can get them for nuttin off the social. Stick it up yer fucking hole, will ya? This is bleedin’ mad, so it is.’ He moved towards the door. ‘Stay where yous are for ten minutes, don’t call the bleedin’ coppers or I’ll come back and kill yous. I will!’

Walter walked carefully towards the door and peered out. ‘They’re gone, no sign of them.’

Tom came to the door and looked across the car park. ‘We’re ok, should we call the cops, or should we bother?’

Andrew was sitting on a chair by the computer desk. ‘Oh my God, this is the worst day of my life; I thought I was going to die.’

Walter picked carpet fibres from his suit. ‘I doubt if he had a gun, if he did he would have taken it out of the bag, but you can’t take a chance. I reckon there’s no point in calling the cops.’

‘But we have to, don’t we?’ Andrew looked worried.

‘Walter is right.’ Tom took off his jacket and brushed it off. ‘They didn’t get anything, and if the cops come they’ll close us for half a day, no commission for us and a lot of lost business for your uncle Maurice; he won’t be too pleased, Andrew. I’d say just carry on, forget about it.’

‘Ok so, you’re right I suppose. But I won’t be the better of this for ages.’

‘I wouldn’t fancy a repeat of this morning’s caper.’ Tom put the drinks on the table by the window. ‘It wasn’t too bad at the time but it’s a bit scary looking back at it.’

Walter picked up his pint and took a long swallow. ‘I still think he didn’t have a gun, I’d say it was just a bluff.’

‘I’m still shaking. It took me completely by surprise. When I walked out on the floor I assumed he was a customer. I couldn’t see you guys, I thought you were in the stockroom.’ Andrew spun the ice around and around in his gin and tonic.

Tom put his change back in his pocket and sat down at the table. I’m not going to worry about it, it’s over and nobody got hurt.’

Walter laughed. You’re right, Tom, there was no harm done. Do you know the worst thing about it?’

‘Yeah, having to lie on that dirty carpet. It looks clean until you have your face down beside it.’

‘Not that, the fact that there was no money in the till at ten o’clock on a Friday morning; I remember a time when there would be a dozen cash sales made at that time of the day.’

‘That’s a fact.’ Tom hadn’t thought about it, but it was true enough. ‘Between the robbery and this wet weather and the sales for the last few weeks, I’m fed up with it all. The job isn’t the same lately.’

Walter shrugged his shoulders sympathetically. ‘We’re all in the same boat since the Brits opened, but we have to keep going the best we can. I’m well down on last month and it’s getting worse every day.’

They pondered their problem silently. It used to be easy to sell washing machines and fridges, but since the competition opened it was getting tough. The basic wage was no use on its own; you had to be making a lot of commission to make it worthwhile.

Andrew gathered the empties from the table and went to the bar for another round.

Walter looked at his departing back. ‘It’s all right for fairycakes there, he doesn’t have to worry.’

Their colleague stood to inherit the business when his elderly uncle passed on, which wouldn’t be a minute too soon as far as Andrew was concerned. He often joked with the others that the old man was looking poorly, and that they would all be out of a job when he sold his inheritance and moved somewhere where the boys had dusky skin and the sun shone all day.

Andrew put the fresh drinks on the table. ‘Cheer up, lads. At least dear Uncle Maurice isn’t worth any less after today.’

They laughed at his attitude. Both of them knew that there was no love lost between their friend and his uncle. Andrew just humoured the old man to avoid being cut out of the will.

‘You’ll just have to invent a few new tricks for parting the customers from their money, Tom.’ Walter didn’t always approve of Tom’s methods for closing a sale.

‘The punter is the enemy, don’t you know that? You need all the tricks you can think of to beat them.’

‘Like telling them that the machine they are looking at is the same as the one you have at home.’

Tom laughed. ‘Come on, every salesman uses that trick. If the punter thinks you bought the same model, they’re happy.’

‘That’s all right as a last resort for closing a tricky sale, but you do it to them all.’

Andrew laughed along with Walter. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but you’re renting that flat, you never bought a washing machine in your life.’

‘Come on now, be fair. I’m not the only one that uses a few tricks to make a sale.’

Walter joined in the ribbing, the strain of the morning’s events almost forgotten. ‘First you tell them that they are buying the most reliable machine in the shop, and then you sell them a guarantee, in case it breaks down.’

Tom laughed. ‘Guarantees are good. For commission anyway.’

‘True enough, but you don’t have to push them on every old lady that buys a kettle.’

Tom shook his head. ‘Come on, Walter, you’re missing the point. You can’t go around telling the truth if you want to sell stuff; that would never do.’

Walter laughed and slapped him on the back.

‘I have to hand it to you, Tom; you’d sell shoes to the footless. You’ll go a long way if they don’t catch up with you.’

It was cold in the canteen after the weekend, and the vending machine was acting up. Eventually Tom managed to get it to produce a cup of coffee and he joined Walter and the other three salesmen at the table. These monthly sales meetings were a nuisance, coming in an hour early on a Monday was nobody’s idea of fun, but on the other hand it was good to find out how the month had gone and what products might carry an extra commission.

Milton sipped his tea and looked around at his staff. They talked about the attempted robbery for a while, and then he opened his file and started what Walter always called his state of the union address.

‘Well done to everyone for a good effort, but we are hurting badly since our English neighbours arrived.’

They nodded in agreement; there was no doubt that the competition was having a major impact.

‘Walter, you topped the league again, well done.’ Walter was a shrewd old goat, a long time around and able to thrive where others would die. He had pulled in a big sale of television sets to the new hotel down the road, more because he played golf with the manager than anything to do with his selling skills. Still, a sale was a sale and you had to hand it to him.

‘Tom, you did very well, number two slot; good work even if you had to make a lot of small sales to do it.’

Tom smiled, he had hoped to top Walter’s score but never mind. Next month would be different.

‘Andrew, good steady performance, I know it’s hard to do big money in small domestic appliances but you did very well indeed. Well done.’

Andrew smiled and went back to his daydream.

Milton turned to young Robert, the computer specialist who had been paraded as the great white hope when he had joined the firm a year earlier. He shook his head sadly.

‘What happened to you this month?’ he asked the hapless teenager. ‘Not a single computer sale. What on earth were you doing, young man? Do you think we can run a profitable computer department just by selling a few ink cartridges?’

Robert tried to stammer a few words in his defence, but it was obvious that the computer department was not doing the business. Whitebox had a sister company with a worldwide reputation for computer sales, and they had opened a few weeks earlier just two doors away. Blackbox computers was sucking up all the computer business for miles around, with their special offers and heavy television advertising. It was impossible to compete, and everybody knew it, but Robert was feeling the heat. He muttered something about having a lot of hope for the next month, but it was clear enough that he didn’t believe his own words.

Milton didn’t pursue the matter and Robert relaxed a little, the focus off him for a while at least. They were getting to the interesting bit, the bonuses and the list of stock that needed to be cleared and that would carry extra commission.

‘Walter, good month for you, just over fifteen hundred commission; excellent!’

Walter smiled, that was slightly better than he had expected.

Tom, one thousand two hundred, you’re catching the old fellow. Well done to you both, good result in bad times.’

He pulled out another page and perused it. ‘Walter, you should be doing better on the extended guarantees. You failed to sell them in around sixty percent of cases compared to Tom’s closing rate of seventy percent, he only dropped three in ten customers. I know that they are a bit of a nonsense from the buyer’s perspective, but you need to forget that and push them harder; they are difference between profit and loss on a lot of items.’

Milton never discussed Andrew’s commission at the meetings, and this month it was clear that he wasn’t going to mention Robert’s zero sales any further. He shuffled the papers in the file and drew out the list of appliances that had been de-listed, replaced by new models. It was essential that these were moved quickly before the public realised that they were obsolete, and the extra commission made sure that the salesmen focussed on this old stock. He passed around this list of dead stock to all the team.

Tom studied the list carefully. There were some good ones in it this month, brand leaders that would be easy to sell. He was already doing a mental tour of the store, taking in all the items that he would be trying to offload before Walter found customers for them.

The list seemed longer than usual this month, but then he realised that there were a lot of computers on it. Still, that was Robert’s department, no point in thinking too much about those.

It was Robert who spotted the problem first, and he spoke out in astonishment.

‘I don’t understand; are we de-listing all the computers in the store?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Got it in one, my boy.’ The old man tidied up his papers to signal the end of the meeting.

Robert was red faced.

‘But what are we doing with.....’ his voice trailed off as he realised that he had just been publicly sacked and humiliated. He got up and left the canteen quickly, leaving a stunned silence in his wake.

Milton was preparing to leave. ‘Ok, team, let’s get stuck in and take the fight to the Brits. This is a tough business, lads; we’re fighting for survival.’