1972 Working with women is not a problem to me but there was one woman that I could not really get on with and that was the manageress of the Carless and Horton South road Waterloo shop. She was of Italian decent and had come over to the UK after the war. She thought she knew how to run the shop but everything was done on a knee jerk reaction, nothing seemed to be planned. Whenever staff had to book holidays she panicked because she had to do the shift rotas and alter girls hours about. When it came to doing orders she expected me to make sure she had stock ready at a minute’s notice. I had to do the frozen food orders for her as she could not think what had been sold over the week so as to restock. I showed her that she must keep a minimum stock of the basics but still she could not grasp what I meant.
One afternoon I was busy boning and rolling hams ready for the next morning’s roasting when she shouted she wanted a ham for the shop. I said give me ten minutes as I was busy with raw meat and had to clean up first. She lost her temper and started screaming that she had run out and wanted it now as a customer was waiting. I said I would get it as soon as I was cleaned up but why hadn’t she asked for it when she saw she was running low. She just lost it and started shouting in Italian words I did not understand. She stormed out of the kitchen and left me to get the ham prepared for her. Five minutes later the roast ham was in the shop and I apologised to the customer for her wait and she was quite happy with her really fresh sliced meat. I went back into the kitchen and carried on with my work.
About an hour later my boss arrived and walks into me with the manageress behind him. “ What happened with the ham for the shop? “ he asked. I told him exactly what happened, and his reply was that I should have got the ham straight away. I said “I got it as quickly as I could because of what I was doing.” He took her side and said that I should have done what she said. I asked him “ who is responsible for the stock control in the shop?” he said “she is”. My next question was “ why didn’t she notice that it was nearly all gone and ask for another earlier”. “That’s not the point, you should have got one into the shop straight away.” “If you think I am going to bow down and kiss her feet every time she tells me to do something, you have got another think coming.” “What do you mean?” he asked. “If I am under her control you can stick your job, I resign” and I got out of my kitchen whites and packed up my knives. He said “what are you doing? You can’t just walk out.” “ Just you watch me” I replied. I put on my motorbike helmet and jacket and went out the door. “ Just send me my P45 and what you owe me in the post please.”
I really had burned my bridges but did I care no I did not. I rode my bike up to my bacon suppliers Coffeys in Seaforth and knocked on the door asking if they had any jobs. I was told to leave my name and address and I would be contacted. Now all this happened on a Friday afternoon, the next morning I was having a lie in when there was a knock at the front door. Mum answered the door and shouted up the stairs “Stephen it’s for you”. I came down to find a big round faced man waiting in the living room. He introduced himself as one of the directors of Coffeys bacon and said there was a job for me at their Southport company and I was to be there at eight o’clock Monday morning to start. I asked how he was offering me a job without any interview. He said I had been recommended t to him by the sales man from Coffeys that I had been dealing with at Carless and Horton when I had been buying all the bacon and hams.
Southport Provisions Company was based in a yard off Tulketh street in Southport, it was a general groceries supply company and it took me about 30 minutes to get there on my motorbike. They had five other staff besides me, Stan the manager, a young office girl, John the main bacon hand, Ken the warehouse man and another young bacon hand like me. I really got into the swing of things quickly, John asked me to bone and roll a complete side of bacon in one piece to show him what I could do. I had it done in just over ten minutes, he said that was faster than the other young boy and I would do for him. He was from Burscough and lived down school lane. He had driven for Laveries cakes as a young man before it had become Elkes and Foxes where my dad had worked. It was a great job, five days a week, eight until five and one Saturday morning in two, I had never worked as easy hours. Stan the boss came to see me after a few weeks and said “ would I be prepared to learn to drive if the company paid for lessons?” I said “of course I would.” I was booked in to learn with the driving school at Holland Motors and he came and took me out twice a week for eleven weeks all around Southport. I did not have a car and neither did my Mum so I did not get any other practice. I was getting paid for the lesson time as well. I booked my test for the November and passed first time. I started driving the firms Transit van the next week. I had quite a few scratches and scrapes but never anything serious, it was much bigger than I was used to. I had to drive out as far as Wigan and North Liverpool delivering groceries and provisions.
It was hard work in the warehouse especially when the wagon arrived from Denmark. It would have up to one hundred bales of bacon on the delivery, each bale would contain either four side of bacon, ten shoulders, ten gammons or five middles. Each one could weigh as much as one hundred pounds and there was no pallets to use a fork lift truck as the fridge was not able to take the weight of a truck. We had to unload all the bacon by hand into the fridge, it was wrapped in hessian sacking and was soaking with the brine. I stunk by the end of the day and needed a shower every night when I got home. I was never skinny but I was kept fit by all this heavy work. One thing I do remember was going around to the local bakers, Dorothy Rouledges, on Eastbank street for lunch, getting the home made meat and potato pies and a big cream cake.
No comments:
Post a Comment