Men at Work [Quick Read]

CONTENTS

“What would you do if you won the Lottery?”

It was just after ten on a Sunday night in May and thirty-one-year-old Ian Greening was sitting in the Red Lion with his girlfriend Emma Kavanagh having one of their amusing but daft conversations.

“How much are we talking?” asked Ian. “Many millions or just the one?”

Emma considered the question. “Many,” she said after a few moments. “I reckon you’d need six or seven million to totally change your life.”

“Cool,” said Ian. “Six or seven, eh? Where to begin? Well, it’s obvious that I’d buy us a new house with his ’n’ her bathrooms so that I wouldn’t have to walk over your underwear to get to the shower. Then maybe I’d pay off my mum and dad’s mortgage. A luxury yacht would be nice and I’d get myself a season ticket for the Blues. Actually scrub that. I’m a millionaire now, aren’t I? So I’d be able to afford a box at the Blues!” He glanced over at Emma and grinned. “Oh, and I suppose I’d have to take you on the holiday of a lifetime because if I didn’t you’d moan at me for the rest of my life.”

“And is that it?” asked Emma.

“Obviously I’d buy a few flash cars. You know the drill, a couple of Ferraris and maybe a Range Rover for when I need to take you to Tesco’s but other than that I think I’m pretty much done.”

“And what about work?”

“What about work?”

“Well, I assume we’d both give up work. So what would you do with all your spare time, you know, when we weren’t jetting about or lounging on our yacht?”

Ian laughed. “What are you talking about? I’d be more than happy for you to give up work, but what makes you think I would?”

Emma stared at him in amazement. “So you’re telling me that if you won seven million pounds on the Lottery you would still get up every morning, make your way through the traffic to get to work, put in your eight hours and then fight your way home again, even though you didn’t have to?”

“Yeah, of course I would,” replied Ian. “There’s no way I’d ever give up work. Not in a million years. Not even for seven million pounds.”

“But why not?” said Emma, more than a little bit confused by her boyfriend’s reply. “Why would you carry on working in what – no offence, babe – is a temp job that you never quite found the energy to leave?”

“I just would,” said Ian.

“Why?”

“I just would. There’s no reason. I just would.”

“BUT WHY?”

There was a silence and then Ian said, “Because I love my job, okay?”

Emma looked at him. Her face was puzzled. “I know you like your job but
you
actually
love it
?”

Ian nodded. “It’s true! I don’t care who knows it. I love my job.”

“Yeah, but when you say you love it, you really mean that you like it a lot, don’t you?”

Ian shook his head. “Nope, when I say I love it, I really do mean that I love it. I adore it. If my job could get up and move around I would follow it and kiss the ground it walked on. That’s how much I love my job.”

“But you don’t love it more than anything else in your life do you? For instance, you don’t love it more than those awful sandwiches you’re always making?”

“You mean the Greening Cheese Wonder?” Ian felt hungry at the very thought. “Ham, cheese, Branston pickle, with a layer of crushed salt and vinegar crisps all wedged between two slices of white bread and garnished with a half radish?” Emma nodded as Ian found himself wiping a line of drool from the corner of his mouth. “Yeah of course I love work more than those.”

“Okay,” said Emma, clearly still wanting to make her point. “How about your comic collection? I can’t believe for a minute that you love work more than those X-Factor things you’re always going on about.”

Ian sighed heavily. “X-Men, Emma. They’re called X-Men.”

“X-Men, X-People what’s the difference?”

“What’s the difference?” Ian couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Only last week he had sat Emma down to explain why Wolverine and Sabretooth were sworn enemies. “I’ll tell you what the difference is, young lady! One is a group of cool outlaw mutants who are forever saving the universe from certain doom and the other isn’t!”

“Fine!” said Emma crossly. “X-Men it is! But the question is, do you love your job more than your X-Men comics?”

“Yes!” snapped Ian. He was getting cross with Emma for getting cross with him. “I do indeed love my job more than I love my X-Men comics, okay?”

“No,” said Emma. “Not okay. I’m still finding it hard to believe that you love your job more than those dusty old comics because you won’t let me anywhere near them! But that’s fine. I don’t mind. Let’s take a look at this. You love your job more than you love those stupid sandwiches and more than your comic collection. My final question to you is this . . . do you love your job more than me?”

Ian looked at Emma and could see that she was deadly serious. Emma, his girlfriend of the last six years, really wanted an answer and she wasn’t going to take any old rubbish. “Oh, Em!” he said with a sigh. “If you have to ask, then all I can say is that you really don’t know me at all.”

One year later

“Moonwalk! Moonwalk! Moonwalk!”

It was just after ten on a Friday night in May and a very, very drunk Ian Greening was being hounded by his chanting workmates. They wanted him to climb onto the table and perform the “It looks like I’m going forwards but actually I’m going backwards” dance routine made world famous by Michael Jackson. And the reason they wanted Ian to do his Michael Jackson dance routine was simple – they wanted a laugh. Ian worked on the fourth floor of Holling House in the Policy Planning department of the Department of Work and Pensions in Birmingham. And as far as the workers there were concerned, Ian Greening
was
a laugh and had been ever since his first day at work eight years ago.

Although Ian had usually worked in poorly paid jobs, he had always managed to make them fun. For instance, when Ian had worked at a large DIY store he had organised trolley races along the aisles whenever the store was quiet. When he worked at a petrol station near Ladywood he had made up a game called the “Carless Car Wash Challenge”. This involved trying to find out which member of staff could stand in the car wash in borrowed Scuba gear the longest.

Then there was the time that he worked as an orderly at Selly Oak Hospital. He got the other orderlies to join him during their break in a game of 101 Uses for a Non-Latex Glove. Whatever the job and whatever the situation, Ian had never doubted that there was a way of making it fun. But that was then.

Ian had been just twenty-three when he joined the fourth floor of the Department of Work and Pensions as a temp in what was then known as the “Office of No Hope”. On his first morning, he walked up to the drab concrete building and watched his fellow workers, armed with their passes, make their way through security up to the fourth floor. And he had wondered whether he was about to make the mistake of his life. He had never seen a building quite so grey or fellow workers who looked quite so beaten down by the daily grind of the work routine. This would either be his worst defeat or his greatest success.

Five hours later, as he moonwalked across a row of tables in the local pub, having talked half the office into coming for a lunchtime drink, he found out. The people who staffed the “Office of No Hope” were nowhere near as boring as he had feared they might be. In fact they were the best bunch of people he had ever had the pleasure of working with. All they needed to bring out their inner party demon was a bit of booze, a smattering of Eighties music and a bit of moonwalking. Even after eight years of performances at their after work drinks dos, that always got a laugh.

Sometime later on that Friday night in May, he had led the entire room through several different karaoke versions of Queen’s greatest hits. And done an impression of his line manager that was so accurate that even people who didn’t know him were crying with laughter. Then Ian decided to make his way home.

A little bit worse for wear, he looked around for a taxi and was relieved when, after ten minutes, one pulled up next to him. He jumped into the back, settled into his seat and mumbled his address to the driver. He pulled out his phone to check his messages. Just as he had expected, there were well over a dozen texts from his workmates thanking him for making Big Friday (as he had christened it) such a laugh and saying it was the highlight of their week. Ian always felt good when he read these messages. As though he had found his place in the world. It made him feel as if simply by turning up to work and being himself he was doing a good thing.

He saw that he had a few missed calls from his girlfriend, Emma. He thought about checking his voicemail but then he got sidetracked recalling just how funny his impression of his line manager had been. He then fell asleep, only waking up as the cab pulled up outside their two-bedroom terrace in Bearwood.

Ian handed the cabbie a ten pound note, told him to keep the change and made his way into his house. He headed straight for the kitchen to grab a glass of water in the hope of staving off the hangover he knew would be coming his way.

With his glass in hand, he was about to turn on the burglar alarm and go upstairs when he noticed a light on in the back room. He went to check. Sitting on the sofa, looking for all the world as if she had spent the whole night crying, was Emma.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, immediately sobering up as he raced to her side. “Have you been crying?”

Emma nodded. “I’ve been trying to call you all night!”

“Oh babe,” said Ian as he remembered those missed calls. “It was noisy in the pub. I’m sorry. You know I’d never ignore you. Tell me sweetheart, what’s the problem?”

“It’s bad news,” she said. “Really bad news . . . I’ve lost my job.” And then she burst into tears.

Emma was so upset that Ian didn’t even bother trying to get any more detail out of her. Every time her sobs seemed to be on the verge of dying down, she would open her mouth, but before the words reached her lips another wave of sadness would crash over her. And she would be in tears again. Hugging her tight, Ian thought that the best he could do for now would be to stroke the top of her head, tell her everything would be all right and try not to yawn. Although he really needed to go to sleep, what he wanted more than anything else in the world was for Emma to be okay.