Cranes Today

Cranes Today

I can't remember what possessed me to take a job at a magazine called
Cranes Today. I must have been particularly threadbare at the time. A
friend of mine set it up for me, no interview required. He'd done his
time there and promised the boss that he would find a replacement if he
got early parole.

"Piece of piss," he told me. "It's a market research position, all you
have to do is call up subscribers to Cranes Today and ask if they
received their copy and a couple of other things. It's all written
down. Honest, it's a breeze. Oh, but you have to do it in French." This
last was delivered with less confidence.

Ah ha! Easy peasy. Discuss cranes with the type of French person who
buys a magazine about Cranes IN FRENCH. "Actually they're not French,"
said my friend, ducking out of the way. "Belgian. See ya!" Well, I
never spoke to him again.

But I dutifully rolled up on my first day; copy of the magazine under
one arm and a bilingual dictionary under the other (must look up the
word for crane on arrival). My first impression was not well,
impressive. Why would anyone want to take an office in a perfectly
attractive Regency building on the Brighton seafront and turn it into a
penthouse portacabin? Rows of students with telegraphic earmuffs lined
the walls, all speaking different languages. A veritable Babel (or
babble).

The sweaty-faced boss sat puffing away on a B&;H in his own portaloo
cubicle, ostensibly reading Cranes Today but um, with a smile on his
face and a bulge in his pants? I don't think so.

A smiley spotty girl who'd I'd seen around campus showed me the ropes.
"Here's your seat. Here's your script. A pound a call. OK?"

So it turned out, after tapping a few of my fellow aerial heads for
more information, we were to call subscribers and find out if they were
happy with their fascinating magazine about large pieces of machinery
and whether they would like to renew their subscription. "But how do
they know we've actually called them?" I whispered, stealing a glance
at the pervy puffer and already hatching a plan to use his time to
catch up with old friends, none of whom lived in Belgium. "See those
people over there?" My neighbour confided. "They call them too, to make
sure you've called."

My time at Cranes today was short lived. By ten o'clock I had been
asked to "zing zomezing zexy" to a gent in Ghent, who from his address
appeared to be the mayor. By eleven, I'd had a wailing housewife in
Werben, who claimed that her husband, a loyal subscriber to Cranes
Today, had popped his mortal coil not twenty-four hours previous, and
by midday had been hauled into the boss's den for a slapping after
yelling "Bollocks" too loud in mid-office (I had managed to sneak in a
quick call to my friend Wendy between deep breather of Brussels and
balshy of Bruges ).

Lunchtime, and I was losing the will to live. I thought about it long
and hard over a cheese and pickle sandwich and then called the boss,
posing as a very sympathetic paramedic.