One of the things about village life (and particularly this village) is how fucking rude some of the wizened old cunts are who live here. Now if I were a brain surgeon or someone who had a job of great responsibility whose merest mistake would result in death and destruction for those involved, then I could understand that anger and vitriol of those whose lives I’ve wrecked with the slip of a scapel or poor decision behind a desk in Whitehall.
However, for my sins, I bought a newsagents shop. Yes, a shop, that predominately sells newspapers. One of the main responsibilities we have is to get newspapers to our delivery customers and this is brought about by our team of paper boys. Now, there’s a lot I can moan about in this business, but our boys aren’t one of them. They are loyal, hard-working and helpful and I will not have a word said against them. I will defend them till my last breath, because without them…well…I’d have to deliver the papers…
But seriously, we have a good team and though sometimes there might be lateness or a missed day, they are good at what they do. We support them and I believe the majority of the boys we’ve employed have either gone onto college or gotten proper jobs in the real world. I like to think that we provide a little of the foundation of that.
I am glad that I have a hands-off approach to the business today because my poor suffering mother had to deal with grumpy customer one (for gossip hounds, names and addresses will be published when I leave here – it should make tasty reading). They phoned saying that there paper was late, but no mind they would collect it. So far, so good – nothing wrong with that so far – customers sometimes appreciate that we have a “paperboy malfunction” and are gracious enough to accept it.
On seeing the customer’s car outside the shop, my mother picks up saved newspaper and magazine and delivers it to the customer who is sitting in their car. Again, so far, so good. Nothing to report here – no incident could possibly happen? This has happened before and customers usually just drive off with their papers and their delivery charge refunded.
A few minutes later customer returns to the shop, only this time she is irate. Someone has sounded their horn at her while she was sitting in her car and somehow it is all our fault. She wants retribution so she cancels her papers there and then, tells us we should fire the paper boy and then goes into a rant about how our business is worthless and shouldn’t be for sale for the amount it is. They want us to lose our money, they want us to fail, they don’t like us, etc. The final nail in the coffin is if she had the money she’d buy the business and fire the lot of us her tirade is punctuated by her calling my mother a “cow”. The incident is so quick that it is all that my mother can respond by saying that we are leaving anyway.
I have the video footage of this from our security camera and the incident only lasts about a minute, but what a minute. I always thought I was a little paranoid about this place but, for whatever reason, they really do hate us. They don’t appreciate the awful time we’ve had here or the fact that 99% of the time their papers arrive in a timely fashion and get good daily service.
The next customer step forward and does her best to calm my mother who is a little rattled by the experience. But this is one of the reasons I don’t stand down there because if anyone ever spoke to me in that fashion I think I would do them an injury.
Norfolkers are a breed to themselves – while the majority of them are friendly enough, there’s a real undercurrent of resentment, hatred and spitefulness in some of them and this extends not only to us “foreigners” but to their neighbours, their own families or anyone else out there who they perceive might have done them wrong. Whereas we might bitch and curse about the world privately or in our dark moments alone, these people act it out and often cut off their nose to spite their face.
I am glad that we are on our way… (Fingers crossed)
