A Life More Ordinary

With little to do but lick my wounds following recent events (Alone Again (Naturally)) I plodded through the next few months working as many shifts as possible. People might knock working at McDonalds, but I quite enjoyed my time working there, with the exception of the failed romantic liaisons and a couple of other incidents that I’ll come to shortly. I had little to challenge me elsewhere in my life and while I continued to write any submissions were more often than not ignored.
The work at McDonalds wasn’t particularly taxing and working with people mostly of my own age was enjoyable. I got on well with the majority of my colleagues and really enjoyed my time working with Iain Williams and Kieran Wright in particular, who was one of the funniest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend time with. However, while most of my colleagues and superiors were good people, there were also those who I didn’t see eye to eye with.

One manager in particular was really hard work (I’m being diplomatic here). Matthew Bulley was, as his name might suggest, somebody who revelled in the discomfort of others and was happy to belittle and embarrass anyone whenever the opportunity arose. He was stocky, with blonde hair and possessed a very high opinion of himself and little humility. We regularly clashed and I found his way of ‘motivating’ people more than a little unsavoury.

A few months into my time at the restaurant, Matthew either earned a transfer, a promotion or took a different job entirely. I forget his reason for moving on, but it presented me with a glorious opportunity to seek revenge on behalf of all those he had bullied. It was a bit of a ‘tradition’ to play practical jokes on those leaving and I went full in on my…I wouldn’t say nemesis, we were never enemies but we certainly weren’t friends. Perhaps bane of my existence would be more apposite.
His last shift duly arrived and we went through the usual repertoire. Lettuce and sauce in the jacket pockets, possibly in the shoes too. Minor inconveniences throughout the day. But as the clock ticked ever closer to the end of his final shift, I felt short changed. Nothing that we’d done quite summed up the feelings that he had provoked in those he had intimidated over his time at the restaurant. During this particular shift, I was working in the kitchen and suddenly hit upon an idea when preparing to empty the huge drip trays that caught all of the fat produced when cooking the burgers.

Matthew loved his car, it was his pride and joy. I couldn’t tell you what make it was and in the grand scheme of things, it’s kind of irrelevant. We ensured that he was tied up with a meaningless task or two and carried two of these huge drip trays past the back office, through the corridors and out of the back door to the car park, where Matthew’s car sat resplendent in the early evening sunshine. We emptied the drip trays over the car, making sure that we covered all of the door handles and the windscreen wipers and…well, essentially every bit of his beloved motor. There were a couple of old burgers lurking in the bottom of the trays, and they were strategically placed on his windscreen so that he would have to lean over the greasy mess to remove them. Once our task was done, we scurried back to the kitchen, finished cleaning up and ended our shift, making a hasty exit before our deeds were uncovered.

I have it on good authority that after six attempts to put his car through the car wash at a petrol station in Broadbridge Heath, his car still wasn’t clean and he was asked to leave the garage due to the mess that he had made. Infantile? Yes. Satisfying? Immensely.

Aside from settling scores and righting wrongs, the occasional opportunity to enjoy a little intimacy came along, but I avoided anything that looked like it might develop into something more serious. I was looking for neither love nor Linda as Hue and Cry famously sang some six years previously.
Bu while I wasn’t unhappy, I certainly wasn’t enjoying life and as the summer of 1994 rolled around, with Wet Wet Wet’s Love is all Around dominating the charts and my beloved Argyle (under the management of Peter Shilton) having lost out to Burnley in the playoffs in a feisty 3-1 home defeat at the end of the season, I made the decision to move back to Plymouth, where Dad and Brenda had a room waiting for me. A transfer had been arranged with work and with mere days remaining of my time in Sussex, I went along to a friend’s party to say my goodbyes. It was time for another fresh start.

Fate, however, had other ideas.