In a World Gone Mad: Monday 25 May 2020...2

The second incident was  more grave—but again I just laughed it off.  At the end of the first night, my boss asked me if I would give one of the chefs a lift home. No problem, I gave him a lift. He was polite, spoke no English and was lovely.

The second night—my last night—at the end of my shift I asked my boss if anybody needed a lift.

‘Yes, please, you can take one of my kitchen staff home, he is a lovely boy, you’ll like him very much.’

‘Okay, no problem.’

The chef, a different one from the night before came out of the kitchen smiling. He was wearing the long white robe and black hat that all the Indian kitchen staff wear when they came off duty. He was about  eighteen to twenty and stunning. He wasn’t good looking—he was  beautiful. He was a porcelain child.

‘Madam come, come, we go.’

‘Okay. Where do you live, sweetheart?

‘This way, Madam come, come, I live up here I show you.’

Now, in fairness to me, the toilets were upstairs and the cloakroom, along with the door to the staff quarters, so I wasn’t completely stupid, I just had no idea what was happening.

But like an absolute idiot, I followed him upstairs. I knew the door to the restaurant was on the ground floor, but I followed him. The night before. the chef took two huge bags of flour or salt home, I thought maybe he wanted me to carry something for him—the way I’d been treated for two nights, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

We got to the first landing where the toilets are, and he  opened the door to the staff quarters. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To my room, sexy mamma. I show you a good time, the Indian way. I have nice drugs to relax us and we’ll have a nice time and you will come back to me many times.’

The penny dropped and I made light of it, ‘Darling, I would eat you alive. I wouldn’t know whether to grab your backside or wipe it.’

I went downstairs, the chef followed me, and the boss was standing by the bar grinning.

’No?’

‘No.’

I tried to muster as much dignity as I could walking to the door, the chef made some comment in their own language and they fell about laughing.

At the time I knew the chef was told to sleep with me. I’m not stupid enough to think that this young colt could want to. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t care. I’d been there for two days and saw that the bosses told their staff to do something and they did it.

It was nothing. I was a little bit humiliated and felt stupid for following him up the first flight of stairs like an idiot. I told Max about it when I got home, and he was furious, but it was no big deal to me. I wasn’t abused. I didn’t feel like a victim and if I was being groomed for something I wasn’t aware of it.

It wasn’t even the reason why I quit, that’s how little significance it held for me. I don’t feel the need to ‘tell my story’ to a group of vigilante witches and if there had been something concrete, I would have gone to the police with it.

The reason I quit was because of sexual discrimination and false advertising.

I was hired as a delivery driver on six pounds and hour with a pound per delivery extra. It was a low wage, but the  petrol allowance builds it to a sensible amount by the end of the night.  The first night I went in and Good boss, sized me up. He said I’d be good for front of house and to help in the restaurant. I had no problem with working between deliveries rather than waiting in my car for a call to come in. The first night I had a crash course in waitressing the way they like it done. I’ve done silver service for events in my dim and distant past and I’m good with people. The food was fabulous, and they pride themselves on the dining experience. It was high quality, high class service. I did everything that night from putting brown paper bags in carrier bags, to filling the raita pots to serving bar and table.  I’d be chatting to the customers and from there I was asked to clean the toilets.  I didn’t mind and thoroughly enjoyed my evening. The only mar to it was bad boss. Good boss was full of praise and complimented me on my customer service. I couldn’t do a thing right for bad boss. He talked to me like his servant and told me that I was too fat for the pass and would have to lose weight so that he could get past me. I was going to take my apron off and leave after that, but good boss talked me down and I needed the money.

I did two deliveries that night. While I was driving, I had the only chance all night to sit down. I worked from four until midnight, with my two pounds from the deliveries and six pounds an hour.

The second night was Friday night. I was on with another waitress and a second delivery driver. He was a man.  He was allowed to sit on the comfy chairs in reception waiting for deliveries to come in. Halfway through the evening, he ordered a huge meal and ate it at one of the tables upstairs. And he was in and out all night making his pound extra.

I was treated like a slave. I worked so hard. The waitress working with me was on nine pounds an hour and exclusive tips. I was on six because I’d been hired as a delivery driver. We worked our arses off.

The man sat doing nothing while the women worked—nah.

I didn’t realise but Bad boss, who was so rude to me all night and yelled and shouted  because I put too much raita in the pots, and I took up too much of the pass, and  because I’d taken a seat for a second on the chairs where the other delivery driver sat all night, was the same man who flirted and talked to me as an equal when I was selling him advertising over the phone. I thought I’d been dealing with Good boss all that time, when It was Bad boss I’d built a relationship with. He showed his true colours in the kitchen.

I rang Good boss when I got home and told him that I wouldn’t be back the following day. He blew smoke up my arse and said I was wasted as delivery driver and he wanted me front of house.  He asked me how much I’d want to stay. I told him ten pounds an hour and he agreed to that. I said that I couldn’t work with his partner and wouldn’t be back. I’d done one delivery that night.

I put the two days down to another experience and walked away without scars or feeling victimised. I was stupid enough to work there and despite being treated like a slave—and that is not exaggerating—I was eager to please and show bad boss that I’m damned hard working and he didn’t have to keep shouting at me.

The next day I started for the Chinese Takeaway. They were so nice. They brought the deliveries out to me in my car, which in the middle of winter was fantastic. I was paid six pounds an hour but between one and three pounds sixty per delivery dependant on distance—and I got a meal at the end of the night. I never made less than eighty pounds a night and they were very kind to me.

The Indian men were not nice people. They are hardened businessmen and their only concern is making money, people don’t matter to them. I think they had me marked for being groomed to attend their parties to entertain and act as a hostess, with their other girls presumably. But I don’t know that, I can only assume. I’m fat and old and ugly but I have a good manner with people. I think it was that rather than any sexual exploitation that they wanted to harness me for. I think the chef taking me upstairs was to assess how amenable  I’d be to their operation. It was that night that the other waitress told me that they ran prostitutes from upstairs.

I hope Ellie rebuilds her life. She’s young and if she’s strong of mind she can get over this with time and love and not have it dictate the rest of her life. I don’t know, but I assume she’s an addict—isn’t that the lever they use with these rings? Get the poor kids addicted and then hold that over them to do what they want? Maybe I’m wrong and that isn’t the case with her. Her scars will fade, they will never heal but with time they do fade, and she can get on with her life. If she spends the rest of her life in the gutter—they’ve beaten her. The town is behind her, they will be for up to three weeks until their attention is diverted to the next, ooh shiny, thing to get their teeth into.

Ellie has given the community two problems.

I hope the council are going to clean up the graffiti springing up like poison ivy before it spreads any further. Justice for Ellie is scrawled on every wall, bridge, and in every bus stop.  It’s a disgrace.

And the armchair vigilantes are out in force. Social Media is littered with threats of violence and what people are going to do when they get hold of the Indians and the reporter who took their side.

The five takeaways have a twenty-four-hour police guard outside them in teams of two because they’ve all had their windows smashed and threats of violence shouted to the people hiding inside.  

The town is incensed that the filthy Indians are doing this to our clean English Girls. Does this hated and threatening behaviour extend to all the Indian people in our town, or just those who run restaurants? And what about the other two Indian restaurants in town that haven’t been implicated? Are they filthy paki’s, too? And the Indian doctors in town, are they dirty beasts—they were NHS heroes last week when they were saving lives. And their children who are born and bred British citizens, where do they come in the name calling and threats of violence?

People are speaking out—there will be prosecutions. Even the good, righteous and indignant are bigoted idiots with the power of a keyboard at their fingertips— and some will have a petrol can in their sheds.

Bad people are bad people and good people are good—I think that sums it up.