Blood bank

“Well it’s come to this, has it” Asked Daryl
“Yes, I’m afraid it has.” Replied his boss, “you’ll get the standard redundancy package of course” he continued.
“Fine.” Said Daryl standing up, and leaving the office. Daryl had worked in the public sector for nine years, now in his late thirties he was pretty cynical about most things, it wasn’t like that when he had started, he used volunteer for most things. Champions they called it, idiots he thought now. One of the Champions Daryl had been was the customer services champion, this involved learning a customer relationship programme in which you entered a question and through a series of options, closed questions, etc ended up with an answer. This was a common tool in call centres in which totally untrained, lowly paid individuals through these decision trees could by using the programme give advice which historical professional employees had been required to do.
Daryl had seen the rise of the call centre culture elsewhere in business but at the time didn’t think it would extend into his line of work, when he had volunteered to map his professional judgement he saw it as a new challenge and relished the prospect of seeing whether he could do it. Initially it had meant that he was retained longer than many of his co-workers, all of which despised Daryl for being involved in the project. Daryl however only realised what the project was leading to when it was too late. Walking out of the Council offices he looked at the bank across the road, loans sixteen point eight percentage APR, these banks he thought to himself. The cuts at the Council were a result of the cut backs required by central government for baling out the banks, the Council he had worked for were even worst hit by the fact that they had invested in an Icelandic bank that had gone bankrupt. Daryl wandered back to his one bedroom flat in Croydon. If Daryl had known that the Council were selling his Decision making tree programme to other Councils and squirrelling the money anyway for the future, Daryl would have been even more angry, at that time though he didn’t know this fact.
Tonight Daryl was meeting up with one of his ex co-workers for a few drinks, when he got home he made himself a jam sandwich and got ready the evening, that night he decided he would get steaming drunk. He met up with Matt in The Anchor at about eight o’clock, the place was quiet no-one could afford to drink in pubs these days. There was however a group of men in suits making and racket in the corner and drinking cocktails. Matt and Daryl mused over their pints of Guinness discussing their career options, Matt had despised Daryl as much as the rest of them when he had been laid off but tonight Matt had some information which he wanted to rub Daryl’s nose in now that they were all redundant. It was about ten o’clock and after about six pints and four chasers of whisky that Matt thought it was the right time to tell Daryl what he had heard.
“You know Daryl” he started, “the Council is selling your programme to other Councils, making a mint.” Daryl blinked through his drunkenness.
“You what?”
“Yer, they’re selling your programme to other Councils, I’ve got a mate in Enfield, just been laid off cus’ his Council just bought your programme.”
“You gotta be joking.”
“No mate, they have laid us off and now they are making money. And the bankers like those lot over there are still loaded.” Matt pointed at the group in the corner, Matt wasn’t quite as drunk as Daryl. Daryl stared at the group of suited men singing a rugby song in the corner of the pub. Rage built up inside Daryl rather unexpectedly, he wasn’t one for violence usually but the red mist was descending upon him after the day he had just had and this latest news. Daryl stood up and unsteadily walked over to the group of men. They stopped singing mid song and one of them got up.
“What do you want?” He said gruffly.
“Do you know what you lot are?” Started Daryl. The suited man smiled and looked at his buddies.
“No, what are we.” replied the man, clenching his fist ready for a fight, something he relished. Daryl stood up as straight as he could and pointed at him.
“You’re a bunch of fu..” At that point the man landed the first punch in Daryl’s face, Daryl swayed and then collapsed to the floor, that was when two of the other blokes got up and started kicking him on the floor. Matt sat on his chair on the other side of the pub and smiles at the scene.
When the ambulance arrived both Matt and the suited men had gone, Daryl was pronounced dead half an hour afterwards when the paramedics couldn’t revive him. The blood clot and internal damage was more than his body could take.