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WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT

 In 1997 I worked in the administration department of a large construction company. Our office was on the ground floor and at the rear of a 9 storey building. Our boss was called Joan. She was 57 and from West Bromwich. She had a quick temper, the violent fits of which were exacerbated by her close facial resemblance to a chimp. Once I heard her on the office phone asking if her prosthesis would be likely to burst on the long haul flight to New Zealand.
 My job was to scan the old paper archives from the company files and sort and maintain an electronic version of them, as well as scanning and filing any new documents. I only found out about 3 months into my year there that this was utterly pointless. The electronic versions had no legal validity and no one looked at them anyway, anyone that needed to look anything up just checked the paper archives which were kept in a pre-fab terrapin building out back and were looked after by a little old woman from Bristol called Anne. I did this filing job until a month before I left, when I trained 2 other little old women to do it and slept or played Solitaire on another computer whilst they did my work. My time there was really wasted.
 I had to do other jobs as well, like answer the phone and collect faxes. I got trained on the photocopiers too and had to go into the back paper store quite a lot. After I’d been there a fortnight or so, Kelly, a girl from Redditch about the same age as my 23 and one of my fellow clerks, asked me how many boxes of plain white paper there had been in the paper store that morning. It was 5 o’clock and we were getting ready to go home.
 “I don’t know,” I said, “about 8, I think.”
 “There’s only 4 now.”
 “So?”
 “Well, how much did Eddie use on the photocopying today?”
 “Dunno. He usually uses a coupla boxes. Maybe he had a heavy day.”
 “I don’t think so. There’s some going missing somewhere. I’ve seen nothing, but Joan says that she thinks…” Her voice dropped away to a whisper and a grimace as 2 of the cleaning staff came in, a blonde girl who looked 12 and an 18 year old lad with short black hair and round glasses. Kelly tried to indicate the suspicion laid on the young man by a meaningful movement of her eyes. When he and his pitiful looking companion had emptied the bins and moved next door into the printroom, she said, “Joan thinks he’s nicking it.” Kelly was alright, she was overweight but she had a cute face, pretty hands, nice dark brown hair cut into a shoulder length bob.
 “Where’s he hiding it then?” I asked.
 “She doesn’t know.”
 “Why does she think it’s him then?” Kelly shrugged by way of reply. “I don’t think it’s him,” I went on, “It’s probably them in architecture taking extra and not telling her. I mean, I’ve only been here a couple of weeks, but she’s not pleasant to people is she, they don’t like asking her for things. He’s not gonna be nicking paper. Only a twat would nick paper. He’s got more on his mind. That was his brother that got murdered in March.” His brother had been kicked to death by a neighbour 4 months before.
 Me and Kelly finished tidying the office and she gave me a lift home in her pink Volkswagen Beetle.
 Joan showed herself to be a little unstable over the following months. She actually slipped on a delivery ramp about a month later and broke her arm. She was off for ages after that. At the Christmas party about 6 months later she chatted up and danced with Steve’s boyfriend, George, an engineer from the 7th floor. Steve was the mail clerk and each morning he did the marking up so that Joan could put the post in the right pigeon holes. Joan’s husband was also called George and he sat looking pissed off whilst she tried to do some kind of jazz dance that involved grabbing her partner’s shoulders. Actually, someone got a photo of him and Steve looking pissed off together. Steve was in a pastel tie and a grey suit with his bowlish hair combed and straight white teeth shining and his shoulders hunched with a frustrated, self-deprecating look in his eyes. George, the engineer, had left his wife for Steve.
 One time there was a big bunch of flowers on Joan’s desk with a card signed ‘George’. She phoned the 7th floor and was talking to Steve’s George, flirting and trying to get him to admit to sending it. The conversation lasted 5 minute and then she put the phone down and went to the toilet. George, her husband, came round on his lunch break from the garage he worked at, oily boilersuit and everything, to say hello and see if she liked the flowers. When she got back from the toilet she told him off and he left.
 The morning after Kelly had told me about Joan’s suspicions, Joan herself repeated them to me and said she was going to wait and confront the suspect. When 5 o’clock came round she fucked about playing with mail and phones until her criminal and his companion arrived to empty the bins.
 “Is there a lot of paper in those bins?” asked Joan. I had my back to her, pretending to finish off some work on my computer screen. Her accent hurt my ears. I heard Kelly reply, but couldn’t make out the words. “A lot of paper’s been going missing recently, eh Kel?” Joan went on. I felt my ears burn and winced. “I wonder where all this paper’s been going? It seems to disappear when the cleaning’s been done, eh Kel?” I heard footsteps and taps of moved objects. A bin was lifted and dropped with a bang of plastic and rustle of bin liner. The cleaner said something to his partner. Her reply was indistinct and pathetic, as though it was hard for her to talk without crying. “Have you got any ideas?” Joan said. I realised she was asking me. I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t care whether he was nicking paper. Everyone nicks stuff from work, everyone does.
 “No,” I said, without turning round.
 “Well, I would like to know.” She sounded really annoyed and I turned round on my swivel chair. She was flouncing around the office, moving things noisily, checking fax machines and, I realised, not looking in the cleaner’s direction. He was standing still, next to the mail pigeonholes, his full rubbish bags at his feet and his hands on his hips. A roll of empty binbags was neatly tucked into his belt. He had no fear.
 “Are you accusing me?” he asked. His voice was flat, yet loud and confrontational. I couldn’t help watching now. I wanted to tell him to go, it wasn’t worth it. Joan was flustered, she was having a hard time finding things to do around the office and was moving back to her desk. “If you’re going to accuse me, do it to my FACE!” He only shouted the last word. There was a pause. I looked at Kelly. We were both trying not to laugh, but I could tell from her eyes that she didn’t really think it was funny. I didn’t think it was funny, I wanted it to end.
 “If you’re gonna fucking accuse me, do it TO MY FUCKING FACE!” He was shouting now. Joan was now sitting down at her desk. It was in an alcove round the corner from where her accuser stood so she wouldn’t be able to look at him.
 He still had his hands on his hips. He was trying to stare at Joan, but angles dictated that he appeared as though he was just straining to see around the corner. The sun shone on his glasses and I couldn’t see his eyes. Joan picked up the phone and dialled a number. He put a full bin bag back into an emptied bin and left the office, saying something to his blonde companion. Joan put the phone down and I heard her say to Kelly, “He doesn’t swear at me and get away with it. I’ll have a word with Tony Simon about him.” Tony Simon was Joan’s boss. He was bald and wore burgundy loafers with tassels, the waistband of his beige polyester trousers was always pulled up too high.
 I finished what I was pretending to do and Kelly and I left. I had my bicycle with me that evening.
 A week later they found the cleaner in the woods in the Welcombe Hills, not far from where a tyre was chained to the branch of a tree for kids to play on. He’d hanged himself with an orange, nylon rope that looked like it came from a camping shop.
 Joan bought everyone Australia baseball caps from her holiday in New Zealand. She must’ve got them at the airport or something. She got huffy with me because I didn’t say thankyou for mine. She went on a diet once, too, she was drinking some kind of green Chinese tea that was meant to aid weight loss. Once, she came back from the toilets and said, “That tea might not make much difference to my weight, but it certainly makes a difference to the colour of the toilet paper.”