Gurriers (5 page)

“I...I...I’m here to, er see...Aidan,” I sounded so weak and vulnerable to myself that I was sure this pack of predators would pick up on it and I’d be an easy prey for them. It surprised me both that Ger was the only one to speak and what he said.

“Through that hatch, you’ll see a fat bastard with serious skin problems that’s more than likely screamin’ at somebody. That’s him.”

He might as well have been a doctor informing me that I didn’t have a terminal disease for the amount of relief that washed over me, taking my anxieties with it like a wave bringing seaweed back out to sea. As my shoulders dropped the foot or so with relief, I smiled and nodded my thanks to him, paused momentarily just in case somebody else was going to comment and then, relieved not to be of any interest to anybody, turned and made my way to the hatch. I was determined to fill out an application form and get out, never to return again.

As I approached the hatch, the muffled noises that had been in the background became louder and clearer and more functional. The base room of a courier company is a hectic place at the best of times, never short of activity as the base controllers, telephonists, management and whatever other staff had business there did their very best to deal with the unique strains and pressures involved in the running of a courier company.

The hatch itself consisted of a double wooden framed window on hinges that opened into the base room. One of these was half open with the other one bolted closed with a small bolt holding it via a hole in the blackened wooden ledge at the bottom of it. As I gingerly pushed the open window a little bit more, I realised that the figure seated closest to me fitted the vulgar description that I had received, right down to the screaming part, which he was doing down the phone.

“You fuckin’ well told me tha’ the fuckin’ thing was on board twenty fuckin’ minutes ago, ye bollix! How the fuck am I meant to control wha’s goin on an’ make sure all yous cunts gets a decent bleedin’ wage when yez think yez can spoof me like tha’? D’ye think I’m some sor’ of gobshite or sum’in? D’you think ye can take the fuckin’ piss ou’ of me an’ fuckin’ ge’ away wi’ it?”

There was the slightest of pauses to let the poor unfortunate at the other end begin to coordinate some sort of response before continuing in an even louder voice.

“Well, ye fuckin’ well can’t! Bring yer bag and radio in in the
mornin’. I’ve had enough crap off you.”

As he slammed the phone down it dawned on me that “bring in your bag and radio” to a courier meant “you’re fired”. I didn’t want to talk to this angry little individual any more than I wanted to mingle with the animals behind me, but I couldn’t just walk away from the hatch now.

“I...er...I...”

“An’thin’ else goin’ Northside, Aidan?” The courier that had been at the map had practically climbed up my back to roar over my shoulder (and incidentally, directly into my ear) at this nasty little man that controlled these nasty dirty men.

“Header on wi’ what ye have, Charlie,” replied Aidan without even looking towards the hatch. He was busy looking at the computer screen in front of him and repeatedly tapping one of the directional keys on his keyboard.

“For fuck’s sake, man,” Charlie shouted in my ear again. “I only have bleedin’ two on me, can I give it another five?”

This got Aidan to look at the hatch and then some. His glare felt as if it could melt steel. I caught more of it than this bad mannered, ignorant Charlie individual and the menace in his voice was calculated and very real as he roared.

“I said fuckin’ header on an’ if you don’t want to do tha’ then you can hand in your bag an’ fuckin’ radio! I’ve just fired four Barry, an’ I’m in the rie fuckin’ mood for firin’ some other useless fuckers…rie?”

“I was only fuckin’ askin’, ye prick.”

“Are ye goin’ or wha’?”

“You’re goin’ to get rightly battered some day, ye bag o’ shite, talking to people like tha’!”

“By you, dickhead?”

“Ye never know!”

“One more chance to fuck off an’ get goin’ or else you’re fired an’ we’ll see if there’s any balls behind tha’ mou’.”

Finally the pressure eased off my side and shoulder as this Charlie individual backed off. I leaned forward to introduce myself to Aidan, but he had returned his attention to his computer screen the instant his instructions had been followed.

I was going to have to get his attention for myself.

“I…er…I’m . . .”

“Charlie!” bellowed Aidan.

Charlie had been heading for the door when he heard himself being called and had automatically leapt for the hatch immediately. This meant that he had momentum this time and I would have been floored when he hit me if I hadn’t braced myself.

I was outraged. This bad mannered shit had no damn right to barge past me like that. I was at the hatch, why the hell didn’t he just wait until I was finished?

Charlie and I exchanged a serious glare with me holding my position at the hatch and him pushing against me to get to Aidan. I wasn’t budging to this sort of treatment no matter how much I was afraid of these fuckers.

“Loughlan O’Reilly on Baggot Street‘ll give ye a special for Coke in Drogheda. Must be dropped by four, ring me wi’ a signature.”

This seemed to cheer Charlie up no end. I guessed correctly that longer distance jobs paid better and that something classed as special would be worth more to the courier.

“Nice one! I’ll be there abou’ half three if I’m not delayed. I’ll phone ye from there.”

“Roger.” Aidan’s focus returned to the screen.

“Excuse me,” I don’t ever remember my voice sounding so small to myself in my entire life, but Aidan turned to look at me anyway. “I was-”

“Leanne from Loughlan O’Reilly on Line 3 looking for you.”

The base controller who sat opposite Aidan, facing him with the two computers back to back covering the span of the table, was putting his phone into its cradle as he rudely interrupted me.

Aidan picked up his phone, pushed the button with the light on and offered me nothing more than a direct view into his right ear. “Aidan here,” he stated abruptly in a get-this-done-as-
quickly-as-possible manner on the phone.

“Seven Mick” crackled from a little black box on my side of the counter that had a microphone attached.

“Stand by one second, Seven …no go on, Leanne, I’m still here,” Aidan said speaking into the microphone and on the phone simultaneously.

The box crackled again, “I’m in the treasury building and no one knows about a job for Tallaght. Can I have that contact name again please?”

“Just one second, Leanne,” Aidan’s voice was dripping honey as he put his right hand firmly over the mouthpiece of the phone and leaned towards the microphone. I wondered how come
he didn’t have to push a button to speak into the mike. I later found out that there was a pedal under the table connected to the mike which he was operating with his foot in order to keep both hands as free as possible.

“What fuckin’ part of stand fuckin’ by do you not fuckin’ understand, ye fuckin gobshite, Seven? When I say stand by I mean stand fuckin’ by an’ don’t fuckin’ call me ‘cos I’m fuckin’ busy!” he roared at the top of his voice into the mike before leaning back, removing his hand from the phone and resuming with his customer service voice whilst lying unfalteringly to the client. “I’ve just been onto the courier, Leanne and he assures me that he will be there before half three barring a major catastrophe. He is fully aware, also, of how fragile your package is and he will treat it with great care…well, he is one of our most experienced couriers… of course he will. Bye, bye now,” Aidan placed the phone into the cradle. “You dumb, ugly stupid fuckin’ tart.”

He had been typing on his keyboard as he had been getting rid of the customer. “Contact in treasury building is George in accounts, Seven,” he said unkindly into the mike.

“Roger,” was the muted response from Seven Mick.

“Aidan is a wanker,” came in a sing song high-pitched voice which was obviously being disguised to mask the identity of the man who dared defy this obnoxious individual.

“Now I know six more people that you’re not, ye gobshite ye.
I’ll get you some day!”

“Yee hee hee.”

As Aidan sat back exasperated, I realised that this was as good a chance as I was going to get.

“I spoke to you on the phone yesterday about a job,” I blurted out, possibly a little too loudly for the current situation but it did the trick. I had his attention. I just wanted to get an application form and leave. There was no way on earth that I wanted a job where an ignorant pig like this one thought he had the right to speak down to me in the deplorable way I had heard him speak to three different couriers in the few minutes that I had been standing there.

“Have you go’ experience?”

“Er, no.”

“Do ye know the city well?”

“Er, sort of.”

“What bike are ye drivin’?”

“CB500.”

“Insured?” he asked, his tone emotionless.

“Yes.”

“What’s yer name?”

“Seán Flanagan.”

He opened a drawer in his desk and proceeded to root around in it while giving me what felt like a well rehearsed speech that he had given many times before. It was similar to a policeman reading the prisoner his rights.

“You better get yerself a map; I don’t have time to be givin’ ye directions all fuckin’ day. I want ye in every day, twenty pound bonus if ye radio in by nine every mornin’. Don’t act the bollix over the air, Channel Two is only for helpin’ ou’ wi’ directions an’ tha’ – nothin’ else!”

I received the sternest of glares here as if it was a mortal sin to go against this rule in particular. There wasn’t much chance of this since I was reeling with shock at the fact that he appeared to be giving me a job, I hadn’t got a clue what Channel Two was and actually didn’t want to know if there was even the
slightest chance that I would suffer the kind of retribution that this beast could dish out.

I made some description of a reassuring face at him and he continued,

“Be nice to the clients; if they treat you bad, come to me to complain, not them. Take your lid off where they’re fussy about it – you’re better off anyway. Always obey the eleventh commandment.” He left this sort of hang in the air while giving me a look of something akin to expectancy. I knew I was supposed to ask.

“What’s the eleventh commandment?”

“The eleventh commandment, lads.” Aidan shouted at the top of his voice to those behind me, who replied in a drab, less than enthusiastic but still uniform manner.

“Thou shall not bullshit thine base controller.”

This seemed to amuse Aidan. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that this was probably the most creative thing that this Neanderthal had ever come up with. I learned very quickly how wrong my judgment of him had been. His day was a constant juggling act between explaining to customers that what they thought they had been promised was impossible and trying to get couriers to do jobs which would end up with them getting less work because of it, while bullshitting about reasons why jobs were delayed and mixing wits with the wiliest of operators who would leave him high and dry in order to make more money or have an easier day for the same money. Then there was the business of the pressure of not having enough couriers to cover the work that needed doing landed on his lap and the stress involved in countless (and often needless) customer queries about the location of “their” courier. This was all intensified by couriers bullshitting and skiving off and he had to be on his toes from start to finish every second throughout to keep the whole thing from going pear shaped on him. This Neanderthal was actually an extremely sharp-witted individual who was expertly funny in his own uniquely cruel but very creative way.

He found what he had been looking for in the deep desk
drawer and produced it from therein with the air of a fisherman producing a fish from the water.

“Gotcha! I knew I had one in here somewhere!” Dangling from his upraised left hand was a canvas holder that had a heavy-duty strap attached to each side of it that joined together in a loop via a toothed plastic length-adjusting buckle which was connected to one of the straps. It was obvious, even to me, that this holder contained a walkie-talkie radio and that it had been resurrected from the darkness for one purpose – to turn me into a courier.

“Number One,” cackled the black box.

“Go ahead, Vinno,” Aidan responded as he put the radio into his right hand and then handed it to me.

“Dropped everythin’; grabbin’ a bite.”

“Roger. See ya in a min.”

“Roger. Anyone in the base want an’tin?”

“Nah, we’re all sorted, thanks.”

Whoever Vinno was, Aidan was decidedly nice to him. I wondered what was so special about him.

“Rie, this is yer radio. Did you ever use one before? Okay well, ye lift up this flap here to ge’ a’ dese two switches.” He lifted a flap at the front of the holder that was approximately two inches square with Velcro around three sides. I could see the two dials on the top of the radio beside the aerial. I nodded in affirmation to him and he continued, “The first one is on-off and volume. Try to remember to turn down the radio when you’re in people’s offices - unless they’re delaying you ou’ o’ spite or stupidity or sum’in’ needless like tha’ – then blare the bastard and tell them it’s broke ‘n’ tha’ it won’t turn down. The next switch is for the channels. Channel One, which it’s on most of the time is me hearin’ you an’ you hearin’ me, nobody but me hears you, which is all you need, rie?”