One more from the archives with tales of dark arts and skullduggery all in the name of the big bank.
Any money lender lives with the knowledge that some of it will not get paid back.
So it was that the role of the Default Manager was an essential counter-balance to our efforts to ramp up the sales of personal credit through our motor dealer accounts to earn our annual bonuses to replace shiny M&S suits and scuffed Clark’s shoes.
Invariably, Default Managers tended to be six-foot plus, built like a house, ex-police and in possession of a pathological distaste for the villain; Grumpy Al was all of these and more.
Grumpy was employed to chase the worst non-payers, relying on help from the sales guys whose accounts had underwritten the business in the first place. Not that I had much to worry about given the amount of business my lot produced in the early days.
Admittedly, some get into difficulties through bad luck or changed circumstances. Others though succumb to pushy sales people and dreams of shiny metal they simply cannot afford. In the small minority of cases there are also the outright criminal element.
As a sales force we were expected to assist where we could and often outside the boundaries – geographically and legally – to recover monies due.
Having been married and divorced more often than Elizabeth Taylor and well past sixty, Grumpy simply did not need all this chicanery with low life villains. As for hard luck stories he had enough of his own.
Wearing the look of a man with the worries of the world, it was wise to get on his right side. Whilst he was sympathetic and highly professional with the genuine hardship cases, he simply had no time for “wrong ‘uns”.
As a sales team, we spent many evenings and the odd Saturday morning – default figures could impact your bonus – in the office chasing arrears with visits to estates across Bradford and beyond. Some of us witnessed for the first time another side of life.
On the eighth floor of a decaying tower block on an inner-city estate with a swirling howling gale, no training manual could have properly prepared me. I looked down to where I may land as the door opened and a junior version of King Kong stood in front of me.
I nearly paid the arrears off myself but I think the potent stench from my trousers convinced the guy to throw a bit of cash my way if I promised not to come back for the rest too quickly. He was one of the good guys!
Repossessions of cars with Grumpy were great fun largely because they never ever seemed to go to plan.
Technically, because of the type of loan we provided via the dealers, we had no actual title rights to the vehicles so could not repossess something that was not ours. Sometimes the law can be an ass though.
If we were certain that someone had obtained a car by fraudulent means then we were determined to get this back and minimise our losses knowing full well that the villain concerned would hardly be likely to engage a QC.
Bank employees taking the moral high ground…whatever next?
One such winter’s morning I was helping Grumpy who was simmering quietly. We found ourselves shivering outside a house, unable to generate any life from upstairs, even though we knew our man was tucked up inside in the warmth.
Grumpy was not to be beaten and started hurling pebbles at the window.
I suspect the inhabitant could not believe an employee of a major bank could be peppering his bedroom window. Eventually, he gave in – who needs a training manual – and opened a window allowing a small smoke cloud to escape as a pebble fizzed past his nose.
Eventually, we were allowed in to explain our presence and we why had woken him before Trisha; we soon left though with numerous excuses, no money and a suspicious aroma clinging to our M&S finest.
Grumpy knew when he was being lied to and took out his mobile phone. Given the size of the early versions, I thought that he was about to launch it at the bedroom window in one final mad act, taking out the whole bedroom like a Nokia grenade.
However, he calmly punched in the number of a local recovery firm that we used for the “wrong ‘uns”.
When I enquired why we were calling the lads out he simply smiled, thrust his hand in his pocket and flushed out a set of car keys belonging to our target. Surely that was theft M’Lud?
Legally we had not got a leg to stand on but his guy had obtained a car by fraud through a complicit salesman with no intention to pay us diddly-squat. Plus the lazy twat was back in bed now and we were freezing.
So when the recovery truck turned up, Grumpy again peppered his window with a few more pebbles. As the curtains twitched, the car was slowly being hauled up onto the trailer as the ashen-faced halfwit viewed on helplessly.
Grumpy dangled his keys triumphantly as our man knew he had met his match. Not for the first time I heard Grumpy say “and do have a nice day!” It was like riding with Clint Eastwood across the badlands of Bradford and beyond.
There were many other hilarious escapades recovering cars.
Grumpy actually got me to help him bring in a Lada from an estate between Bradford and Halifax only by virtue of me losing the draw made in the office. When a shit car was involved it was pot-luck; the other lads smirked and returned to their newspapers.
On another freezing day we arrived on site to again be ignored. The arrangement had been that the car would be left open with the keys in the dashboard as nobody in their right mind would actually want to steal a Lada.
Unfortunately both doors were locked and Grumpy was getting colder by the minute with the look of a man ready to explode.
Taking matters into his own hands he decided to smash the rear door window believing that the keys were locked inside only for this skinny, cocky lad to walk out of the house, down the path and casually fling the keys to us before disappearing back into his state-assisted warmth.
At this point we both could have killed him, not least because I now had to drive this pile of Russian crap back to the office in sub-zero temperatures with no working heater and a top speed of 27mph.
When I got back they had to cut my double-breasted faux cashmere coat from me like a surgeon.
There were better days though. As a reward for my suffering, Grumpy took me along to repossess a Porsche in the centre of Leeds. I took the long route back to the office – via Scarborough – sales targets…what targets?
We repossessed an Opel Mantra and stored it in our yard behind the office for the weekend only for the crooks to steal it back, drop it off in a pub car park and torch it. It was only a game after all!
Hauled off from a cricket match by the police, I was asked to confirm that this was our car to which I could only reply “well it was!”
The business was all about volume and the risks were clear although we were hardly cavalier with our underwriting and the majority of car salesmen were actually decent guys; but it only took one bad apple to cost us a lot of money.
As a final mention of Grumpy I relay the tale of one surreal afternoon.
“Ever been on Lumb Lane?” he asked with a knowing grin, referring to the red light district of Bradford at that time.
I hadn’t – not that he looked as if he believed me – so he took me on the short journey to Lumb Lane just in time for the afternoon closing of the pubs.
This was in the days before all-day drinking and puking, brought in by Tony Blair to make us feel more continental and civilised, had been introduced. Surreal it certainly was.
Out of nowhere, scantily clad women appeared as if beamed down as cars appeared out of nowhere, driven by middle-aged, doubtlessly married punters, seeking a mid-afternoon knee trembler.
It was the pimps that fascinated me the most because they were all seven foot afro-Caribbean types the like of which I associated with scaring Geoffrey Boycott witless. In a flash, couplings were made and cars vanished to all parts as life returned to “normal”.
I leant an awful lot from Grumpy, especially about sides of life I never wanted to see again.
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