This idea had all of us howling with laughter. All of us except Julie anyway.

“I’m going to kill the cheating bastard.” She announced. I believed her too. Julie was a big, big girl.

We didn’t have time to find out if the girl’s memory received a lot of jogging or only a quickie jog, as a furious Julie snatched the tape from the machine and left in tears.

I believe the divorce was uncontested. Judging from Darren`s concept of foreplay, his wife was better off without him.

One delightful morning I arrived at work to be confronted by one of the cleaners, a right old battleaxe called Ingrid. It was difficult to form any sort of working relationship with Ingrid because she was never actually at work. Ingrid was ‘bad with her nerves’. She got stuck into me as soon as I got through the door.

“I’m not cleaning up bloody rabbit shit. Says nothing in my contract about rabbit shit. If I liked cleaning rabbit shit I would get a job in a bleeding pet shop.”

Brilliant, I thought, the daft old cow has lost the plot altogether. Maybe she really is bad with her nerves.

“Have you been putting the vodka on your rice crispies again Ingrid?” I asked. “Run out of milk this morning, did we?”

Before I got a reply some of the girls came over holding six gorgeous fluffy white rabbits.

“Look Sean, look what somebody left in the speedbank machine room last night. If nobody claims them I want two for the kids.”

“Hang on, hang on a minute, I’ve just got in the door and already the day is going pear shaped. Nobody is taking any rabbits anywhere until we check the security tape and find out which cretin forgot he was carrying a box of rabbits. Honestly, do all you people here still have lead water pipes or what? How the hell can you forget you are carrying a box of rabbits?”

That lunchtime we avidly checked the security tape. We ran it through twice and at no time did we see anybody bring in six fluffy white bunny rabbits. It was like they had walked into the speedbank room through a rip in the space-time continuum, from a parallel universe where rabbits use cash machines as a matter of course. There was just no other explanation for how they got there.

I tell you what was funny though. It was absolutely hilarious watching a couple of drunks reaction to six little bunny rabbits gambling about their feet while they were trying to use the cash machines at four o’clock in the morning. You could tell they were convinced they had the DT`s. The cleaner was right to be upset about the rabbits. They might have been fluffy and cute but they could shit for England – it was all over the place.

Truly you could make a movie about the stuff captured by our security camera, but that is not the purpose of this book. Its purpose is to educate the novice small business traveler in the ways of a nasty dangerous planet. Go on then, I will tell you one more tale before I move on to describe the next dump I worked at.

This was pure Buster Keaton. We were watching the tape one lunchtime because the cleaners had complained that somebody had superglued a leather jacket to the front of one of the cash dispensers and they could not get it off for love nor money.

At one point in the recording we noticed four or five youths enter the lobby joking around. They didn’t use the machines, but one of them took a small tube from his pocket and spread something all around one of the cash machines. They all laughed like it was the funniest thing ever and left.

Ten minutes later another customer came in, drunk as a soggy mop. It took him about eight attempts to swipe card the door open. When he staggered into the room he was absolutely legless, doing the One-Man Whiskey Tango. You’ve seen it surely. The drunk is totally unable to move his left leg, which appears to be nailed to the floor, while his right leg vainly attempts to make progress forward in a sort of crescent motion. His torso swaying precariously in all directions. The One-Man Whiskey Tango.

Eventually he made it across the room and slumped against one of the machines. He managed to get his card into the slot and actually remember and key in his PIN number, luckily without any help from Darren. So far so good. Both arms were supporting his weight by leaning against the machine as he waited for his card and the money. The money arrived but he couldn’t take it. His arms had been superglued to the sides of the screen and he could not move them.

His frustration turned to rage when the machine sucked the cash back in because he hadn’t taken it in the required twenty seconds – a standard security feature. Hey come on, if the customers can forget a box of rabbits you have to admit it is not inconceivable that they might forget the money they just asked for either. I’m pretty sure that it’s down to the lead water pipes but I remain open to other explanations.

The poor drunk tried everything to get free – trying to throw himself towards the wall, contorting his body in directions only a drunk would think might be helpful. At one point he was so twisted up he was strangling himself. Eventually, like Harold Houdini escaping from handcuffs and restraints, he managed to actually climb out of the jacket and ended up sat on the floor breathing heavily. He stood up and aimed a vicious kick at the machine, missed and ended up sat on his bum again. He left on his hands and knees, covered in sweat. No card, no money, no coat. God it was funny to watch. Wish it had been in colour instead of black and white.

Back when McFier had been really driving me to distraction, our branch had received a visit from a personnel officer with Regional Control. He was in charge of staff levels and transfers and interviewed everybody because Head Office had become so concerned at the hours we were working. Which roughly translated means they had become most unhappy about the overtime they were having to pay for.

Anyway I told this guy that I would like a move to the Northwest so that I could be closer to my family and friends. “ The bank is your family,” the smarmy bastard told me. “Do we run any orphanages that I could transfer to,” I asked him. I don’t think it went down well.

Three years later I received a notification that I was being transferred to Manchester branch, perfectly placed for where I wanted to be. Happy? You bet I was. My house went up for sale the same day. Then the boot came in. I received a memo saying that as I had requested the move (back in the eons of time) the bank would not fund the removal expenses. I was not a happy camper. I accepted the move and immediately started applying for other jobs. Unfortunately Northern England was trying to get over the effects of the miners strike. Job opportunities were thin on the ground.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the new branch to discover I really, really liked it. All the staff here were friendly and nice. They and the manager went out of their way to welcome me and help me fit in. Even the customers were good fun. A couple of nightclub owners banked with us and anytime the staff decided to have a night on the town (pretty much every weekend) we would be treated royally – no queuing to get in, best seats in the house.

Even though he was a fully paid up member of The Lodge, the new boss was a great bloke. I had been there for a couple of months when he called me into his office for a chat.

“Fancy a drink,” he asked.

“Is the Pope a Catholic,” I replied. He poured both of us a generous shot of Famous Grouse.

“So how is it going then?”

“Fine. I `m very happy here. Everybody has been great with me.”

“Yes. Nice people round here,” he agreed. “ You know I wasn’t looking forward to having you here when I first read your file. Who on earth have you upset? You are nothing like the person described in your file.”

He read out a couple of excerpts for me. I would have sued if he had given me a copy.

I told him that I had been applying for other jobs because I was so unhappy at how I had been treated, but he urged me to reconsider. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” he advised me. “ You have just been unlucky with some of the people you’ve worked under. Give it a chance and see what happens.”

So I gave it another chance and settled happily into life in Manchester.

For the first time in six years I no longer suffered from the dreaded PMT on Sunday evenings and thoroughly enjoyed my time at work. The boss was disgusted at the refusal of Head Office to fund my removal expenses and made sure that I was given every opportunity to earn extra money from travel expenses for relief work at other branches and bad debt visits. As I said, I found him to be a very decent bloke.

Having said that, it was while I was working here that I got arrested. There was a clever fraud being conducted that it took the police and us ages to catch on to. Customers would come in to complain that they had tried to withdraw cash from the hole-in –the-wall machine but the money didn’t come out. Later when we checked the computer records they showed that the money had been taken. We were baffled as to what was going on. Head Office insisted that the system was foolproof, the customers insisted that they didn’t get the money and we were piggy in the middle taking all the flak.

The only clue we noticed was the pattern. Always it happened on Thursday or Friday lunchtime, when there was a big queue for the cash machine and customers were drawing out large amounts for the weekend.

We contacted the police and they told us about a scam they had heard of which could well be our problem. Very clever is this. It involves two crooks in the queue either side of the intended victim. The first crook pretends to use the machine but in fact he is actually sticking a piece of black card over the hole where the money comes out.

Then he stands to one side and allows the genuine customer to order cash. The cash can’t come out because it is blocked by the piece of card, which cannot be seen by anybody over three feet tall. Then crook number one tells the victim that his money didn’t come out either and suggests that they both go inside to complain. This allows crook number two to remove the card, take the money and saunter off to pick out another victim. Told you it was clever.

The police promised to put some plain clothes officers in the area to keep an eye on things and hopefully catch the crooks red handed.

One Thursday lunchtime I was just going out of the door of the branch to buy a sandwich when a customer I knew stopped me to complain that the cash machine had kept his money. I dashed out hoping to catch crook number two, reached for the cash dispensing hole in case the card was still in place, and was promptly smacked hard against the wall face first. My arms were wrenched sharply up my back and handcuffs snapped shut around my wrists.

“You’re nicked,” shouted a triumphant voice.

Funny that. I was under the impression that the British police were supposed to go through all that “Anything you say can and may be used in evidence against you…” crap. No. I just got the phrase ‘you’re nicked’ and my face scraped along the wall until the officer was satisfied that the top two layers of skin had come off.

“I’m the managers assistant. Let go of me you bleeding fuckwit!” In the circumstances I thought I showed a great deal of restraint in my choice of language.

The officer looked at the people in the queue, still scraping my face across the wall.

“He’s not is he?” The people in the queue mostly nodded that he had indeed just assaulted the manager’s assistant. “ Oh fuck,” he said. At least he stopped mutilating my face with the brick wall.

Luckily his boss quickly arrived on the scene. He apologized and instructed the officer with the fridge temperature IQ to release me immediately. The customer was able to give a good description of crook number one and the crime team was arrested later that day doing another bank on the other side of town.

I really enjoyed working in this place – the atmosphere was just so friendly and the customers were lovely. At Christmas we received lots of gifts: bottles of wine and spirits; boxes of chocolates and the like. We got loads and toads of greeting cards. All the banks closed at lunchtime on Christmas Eve and we had a bit of a party together and raffled off the presents so that everybody took something home. All the other places I had worked in the managers had kept the gifts for themselves.

For the first time I was receiving top grade appraisals!

All good things come to an end as they say. The boss had been singing my praises to the new Personnel Controller for the region, and he had listened. I received a promotion and a move to the biggest branch in the region. It was just thirty minutes drive away, so at least this time I didn’t have to move house.

Then two things happened in quick succession to convince me that I really didn’t want to work for this company any longer.

Firstly in a pay deal voted through by senior managers, they got company cars and we junior managers lost our overtime payments. So now I was working longer hours, with more responsibility and a lot more work, but actually taking home less money than before I got promoted. This displeased me greatly.

Secondly I booked a family holiday to Turkey. Unfortunately when we arrived the company announced that it had gone bust. The holiday was a nightmare. The hotel we ended up in was a cockroach farm. I believe the chef later headed Saddam Hussein`s weapons of mass destruction program – if the portions he produced for Saddam were as small as the ones he served to us, no wonder the Americans couldn’t find anything in Iraq. It is the only time I have ever lost weight on holiday. Sad really because Turkey is a beautiful place with lovely people and we had an awful time. The only consolation I had was that I had used my bank credit card to pay for the holiday so I was entitled to a refund from the credit card Company.

Once again my penny-pinching employers did the dirty on me. I applied for a refund the same way any other customer would but heard nothing for weeks. Then my latest boss (another great bloke and emphatically not a Lodge member) called me into his office.

The matter of my refund had been referred very high up indeed for a decision. He had received a phone call to instruct him to tell me as clearly as possible that “one simply does not claim against one’s employer if one expects to have any sort of future in the organization.”

My boss was as livid as I was. If I had just been ‘Joe Public’ the bank would have paid out without batting an eyelid. My stubborn streak took a complete U-turn. Now instead of wanting to prove my first boss wrong, I was determined to do everything in my power to get a different career as soon as possible.

But what line of work to go for? Something else in the finance sector perhaps?

The opportunity came to me from an unexpected source. My father had recently been made redundant when the Company he worked for had closed down one of its subsidiaries in a streamlining operation. Dad knew all the customers and the suppliers, so rather than work for another company, he decided to open his own firm doing what he knew best. He asked me would I be interested in joining him. What the hell, I thought. Can’t be worse than working for a bank now can it?

So I handed in my notice and embarked on a new career. No longer would I be a junior manager in a bank, now I would be… an ice cream man. Well my girlfriend already called me Mister Whippy (Why? Mind your own business) so it seemed kind of appropriate. The world was now my oyster. God help me.

Small business tip:

If you really want to make money, don’t work for a bank – rob it.

And remember to leave the bags of pennies behind or you just might get caught staggering away.