Part Three – A Dirty Game
13 – Meeting Across The River
Like some recently discovered long lost relative, it finally dawned on the Barclays hierarchy that our tiny little offshoot was indeed part of the Barclays brand and could actually generate some real value both internally and externally. Our attraction, in its most obvious and in some ways most perplexing form, was that by and large we worked with and lent money to the many of the same customers. Crazily, this was often without much of a joined up approach unless said customer was about to go tits up. Then and only then we might get a call warning us off but just as likely we might even be encouraged in those early days almost as a lender of last resort by our own colleagues in a desperate last attempt to prop up an ailing case. This was total madness as ultimately it was money lent by Barclays Bank plc.
And so it is fair to say that in those early days a lead passed from a bank colleague was treated like the offer of a kiss from a leper but as always there were some good and some not so good colleagues in this respect. Pretty soon you worked out who you could work with and trust and who viewed you akin to something nasty they had trodden in. In my early days in South Yorkshire, I remember being granted an audience with the grandly termed Branch Director of the Barclays office in Barnsley, a town smaller, poorer and more desolate than my home town Bradford. Quite honestly I would have been better received by the Queen such was the pompous, arrogant and dismissive approach taken by this walking ego. Those who wistfully crave the return of the old style bank manager should tread carefully.
Thankfully, over the years the relationship between parent and wild child – as I am sure we were viewed – did actually improve immensely and I was lucky to benefit from working alongside some highly supportive, hugely professional and very talented bank managers and support staff. Indeed, as much as the banks are currently pilloried, broadly speaking the staff on the ground are highly committed and work long and very hard. I remained grateful that bit never caught on personally as did the cricket club.
It was the better ones that worked out very quickly that we actually had a lot to offer, largely in two main areas. Firstly, unlike most other “group” companies we did not exist purely on internally spoon-fed business and, in those days, I would guess some 30-40% of our business came from customers not holding their main banking with Barclays. Because ours was a transactional product customers could fund assets with anyone they wished. In my final years my non-Barclays customer base amounted to in excess of 60% of my portfolio and there were many reasons that could be behind this. If your patch could be sustained from mainly bank leads then you were very lucky and almost an order taker – in the hunter/farmer scenario you became pretty much a farmer which I found far less challenging.
We also provided “added value” to the bank – a concept often used, although never, ever understood – in that we were essentially a sales operation which was a bit like slipping Girls Aloud into the front row of a choir. In those days selling was simply not what bank managers did but we had the ability to knock doors down often because we simply had the nerve to do it. Therefore, simply because we possessed the ability to pick up a phone and challenge a fellow professional to meet and do business with us we had some kind of temporary aura. However, we were also light years away from the bank guys in terms of technical ability as our training remained from the Wing It School of the Fag Packet for many, many years. So there were mutual benefits to be accrued to enhance our respective personal development balance sheets – not that our move to Minerva House, less than 100 yards away from South Parade, was about to see us enhance either our reputation or our souls for some time.
Co-location had been mooted for some time and, in truth, it was a relief to escape the almost bunker-like atmosphere of South Parade, which had gained an increasingly funereal feel post the eventual capture of the Silver Fox, following a long, game and valiant chase. There would be no more traditionally slow starts to the year. I can only liken our predicament to that of a bunch of men rescued from jungle-like oblivion, battered by the scars of warring with Big Dick, and suffering akin to a heady mix of sun-stroke – largely Moortown induced in one case – and delirium. Suddenly we had been thrown into the blinking light and asked to behave like rational, intelligent, human beings. It was not going to happen overnight but our behaviour in those early days was fit only for a special needs school.
In truth, maintaining the jungle theme we had been led from our prison on South Parade only to be housed around the corner in the equivalent of a Portacabin known to us as The Cage. Clearly fearing the worst, our bank colleagues had decided to place us in a form of social quarantine with only a small viewing window for curious colleagues to peer at us safely from outside. And so, within the confines of the open plan offices of Minerva House, we began our confinement in The Cage, sealed off from our new colleagues. Rather bizarrely though, they also chose to locate a talented new team in the emerging leveraged finance market just outside our cage. None of us knew what this was in those days and I’m sure not many do still least of all most of the doomed HBoS who favoured an aggressive usage of this product in the so-called boom years.
It was to make for a fractious relationship to say the least and, ironically, two of the three new colleagues we met in those early days, ended up in key positions that were of immense strategic importance to me personally towards the end of my time with Barclays. One could use the term “pissed on my chips” to describe how those early days may have affected me in later life. After all how was I to know that the young, rotund chap who bore a striking resemblance to Oliver Hardy would turn out to be the all powerful Head of Yorkshire region in later years? Ladbrokes would not have even taken the bet. If I had done, then maybe I would not have whistled the Laurel & Hardy theme tune with such relish each and every time he came into The Cage.
It helped that a few years later he turned out for the Barclays five a side soccer team in the weirdly named Leeds Law League played over the winter months, often on freezing nights on the outdoor courts at South Leeds Sports Stadium. The league’s purpose seemed to be simply an excuse for the professional community to kick the shit out of each other after another long, dreary day at the office. Only idiots agree to be the goalkeeper – or the fat kid who can’t get picked unless he goes in goal – hence our “choice” of man to stand there and get peppered from all angles whenever the similarly rotund but much more competent Ashley was unavailable. Still, it broke down a few barriers even if he cost us game after game and his insistence on wearing knitted ear muffs meant he could not hear all the abuse intended for him as another shot slid under his enormous frame wallowing like a beached whale in the penalty area.
As for his colleague, she not only went on to win a prestigious local business award but was clearly earmarked for bigger things. Her early visits to The Cage whilst trying to elegantly step over misguided paper balls simultaneously ignoring attempts at replicating the noises from a zoo were somewhat testing. The purpose of each visit seemed only to discover – again – that we had consumed the milk she bought but stored in our fridge which tested her patience just a little. If we brought anything of value to Minerva House it was our fridge which was our only possession. And so it was that our two future rising star colleagues had to endure us far more than they would ever have chosen to simply because their milk was in our fridge. Needless to say we never bought a pint of the stuff in our short, truncated stay and with all the other antics going on I think it’s fair to say that, not surprisingly, we were never quite viewed in the same professional light.
There was certainly still a prevailing wind of professional snobbery towards us despite all the talk of working together and had anybody witnessed the early goings on during our confinement then having us all sectioned would not have been out of the question. As for the regular daily paper ball fights I’m not sure how these started, but back in the South Parade days we began to assault each other with paper bullets. It was like being back at primary school only more fun. To try and explain this behaviour without the benefit of a degree in psychology is difficult; my theory is that it was a mix of male-bonding, testosterone, competitive spirit and a small dose of available anarchy. One poor guy copped a great deal of flak just because he was a relatively new recruit. He did not last that long but that was more to do with an inability to sell rather than duck paper bullets.
There was a real sense of childish fun as yet another bullet flew into the back of a colleague’s head, just as he attempted to convince a potential customer of the benefits of working with a professional outfit such as Barclays Asset Finance. We ramped up the stakes and added spit, sellotape and even secreted Blu-Tak into the tightly wound bullets. I was tempted to start wearing my cricket helmet. Hell I might even keep it on longer than on a Saturday afternoon.
Obviously, our colleagues outside the door had a few reasons to be mildly irritated by our arrival. Their main gripe was that they had been located in an open plan style situated by the main exit doors, so not only were they in the worst spot possible but they also had to act as occasional door staff and contend with freezing draughts. Relations were further strained when on entering The Cage our colleagues had to wade across the bullet-littered floor and, anticipating a visit one day, all four of us constructed false eyes from yellow post it notes and met our visitors with heads swaying in unison from side to side singing “happy, happy, happy, happy talk” I swear if you had had a bad day in Minerva House it was curable with a look into The Cage.
Naturally somebody would suffer in the end and, in this case, it was the son of one of my best mates, Robbo the Gasman. I had met Gasman in the centre circle of a muddy football field one Sunday morning and we became great mates once we had finished kicking seven bells out of each other. I had known his son Adam, then aged 16, since he was about two years old and in those days he regularly showed his affection by gleefully and consistently performing the trick of farting on my head each time I forgot that was the reason he had asked for a shoulder ride. I should have dropped him on his head there and then as he turned out to be a skillful and professional bleeder of my personal wealth in later years. Gasman had asked me if I could arrange some “work experience” although both his mum and dad tried to point out that what I did for a living would be scant preparation for real life.
Macca had very kindly sorted it for Adam to get a taste of office work, although I suspect he probably thought he could use a caddy for the afternoon round. Having had his first taste of work courtesy of a building site, Adam was certainly looking forward to this a tad more. Now as much as I am proud of the way Adam has matured into a hard-working and devoted father of two beautiful girls, as I said back in those days he was a lazy little sponger who seemed to have only one purpose in life – fleecing me. To offer some insight into the young Adam’s modus operandi, when he was at university, he used money I gave him specifically for new text books to purchase a Sony Widescreen. He went on to flunk the degree. And so it was that he spent a week in The Cage – only mornings actually – having to continually duck to cries of “incoming”, with lunchtimes at my expense and afternoons back home, feet up… small wonder he took a while to get a grasp of the real world of work and I am sure his mum still blames me for his degree flunk.
Like all good things though the honeymoon would soon be coming to an end as Macca had finally found the same escape tunnel that PK had opted for. Towards the end, it’s fair to say that Macca found the whole job a wee bit too much and it was changing too rapidly – sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes not – for a guy whose preferred way of doing business had been consigned to the bin. Macca had given a working life to Barclays and, as with many of us, he had enjoyed a highly mutually and productive relationship. Yet, when it’s time to go you don’t need a fat lady singing or anything like that you just know instinctively and it was time to see a bit more of those fairways and his lovely wife, June; strictly in that order, of course.
Dark clouds were circling around The Cage and happy days were coming to an end with the return of an old colleague who had spent the intervening years climbing the managerial ladder. Happy had recently assumed “control” of Leeds, having had various stints in several Head Office roles being groomed, apparently, for a future in leadership – albeit that he hid it well. Now it is wholly accurate to say that Happy, in all the time I knew him, had a thorough distaste of getting his hands “dirty” and would often require someone else to do any “grubby” work. His overuse of that word was almost a throwback to a pre-war comic strip. And so it was that he had decided to place us under the control of an up and coming wannabe based at our Sheffield office. “Cufflinks”, as we knew him then, was doubtless an excellent salesman and had made quite an impression “down south” i.e. in the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. Fatally though, and not for the first or last time, the appointment of a successful salesperson to the position of management was a disaster and ultimately short-lived.
Joking aside, we were essentially a good team and results were strong, regardless of all the testosterone-fuelled antics. We knew how to sell and bring in the corn even if we could be described as a touch unconventional. Still, there was no doubt that we needed reining in a touch and our first introduction to Cufflinks set the tone for an eventful few weeks. He paid us a visit accompanied by a recent recruit, a fresh-faced lad named Alex whose career path over the next few years was to be comparatively stratospheric compared with the rest of us…actually my local window cleaner’s career could be called progressive compared to mine so maybe that’s not saying much. The way he treated Alex with a constant clicking of fingers and the way he swaggered into our den suggested that we were hardly comfortable bed-fellows.
Cufflinks rubbed us all up the wrong way and soon it was clear that Happy would have to get his surgical gloves on and get rid of him before we dangled him out of the Eighth floor window of Minerva House. The fact that he took over Macca’s desk was bad enough – it was hard enough for us to get used to see somebody sat there all day with the computer on – but it was the approach towards a bunch of experienced guys that was soon to result in a hasty retreat back down the M1. Perhaps the defining moment came when Cufflinks announced he would be having a white board installed behind his desk so that he could track KPIs – key performance indicators – although having not explained what KPI meant we spent the rest of the day guessing.
When a workman arrived to install the new whiteboard Cufflinks was out so “we” sensed an opportunity for a bit of fun. Naturally he asked us which wall we wanted it fixing to so we told him and, grinning from ear to ear, he obliged and fixed it onto a side wall looking out over a great view of Leeds city centre and in the opposite direction to us all thereby rendering the new whiteboard totally useless. I swear the guy who fixed the board could barely hold his drill for laughing and when Cufflinks returned he took one look at the location of his new toy followed by a quick look at our smiling, defiant faces and it was definitely time to hit the M1. The Special School inmates needed a new Head…again…this was definitely a turn around situation. However, our joy was short lived as the solution as such was that Happy would now straddle both offices, nobody else being willing to accept the challenge presented and so we had several days a week of Happy and his own special style of “leadership”. In a military sense this would have been “over the trenches chaps, be right behind you…in a while!”
14 – Seaside Bar Song
Reminiscent of the great love-fest that was the Sixties, it seemed that those on high were constantly trying to find and share the love ensuring that we all benefited from a modern version of team bonding. Now I’m sure bonding has it place but it’s a very tricky thing, almost impossible to achieve when as a relatively small sales force you are thinly spread from well beyond Hadrian’s Wall to the white cliffs of Dover. Even on a more local level the way we operated meant that it could be months before we either met as individuals or as a loosely termed “team”. I say this because we never really operated as a team even before the introduction of what they gloriously called Location Independent Working around about 2001 which to you and me meant working from home…especially when the cricket was on.
Largely because of our geographical spread and the very individual role of a salesperson the notions of team-working, team-building and, as a consequence, team-bonding, were simply hollow words from the halfwits at head office. Occasionally we were subjected to mundane attempts to get us all together generally against our better judgement as we always had something better to do than to meet up in some remote outpost, the rationale being a convenient excuse for middle management to get a night away from the wife and kids and get pissed at the company’s expense; if their wives were glad to get rid of them for a night then why should we suffer them? However, there was a better way to meet and to get to know new colleagues from across the business – sport.
The giver of all things good: camaraderie, achievement, health and sheer bloody good fun…Barclays Sports Club offered a promised land of sporting opportunity for the highly-skilled right down to those that simply sensed an opportunity for time away from the office and a good few beers. Indeed it was almost a throwback to a bygone era when employers paid for seaside trips for their workforce and a gay old time was had. As I said…almost.
Winning the Barclays Bank Lambert Cup Final in 1998, on a sun-baked day in Ealing, ranks as possibly the highest achievement in my career…cricket, that is. I have no idea who Mr Lambert was or what part he played in the great history of one of Britain’s oldest banking institutions, but if all he ever did was think up a great wheeze like a cricket tour and a few beers on the company’s tab then thanks to him for the best few weeks of my life. Long before these traditions were dismissed in pursuit of return on capital employed and shareholder value, Barclays had a strong and flourishing sports and social scene with national competitions in a variety of sports and, fortunately, cricket was one of these. So popular these competitions became there were even a few seasoned old guys who never actually played at all but would even register for the tiddly-winks team if they could blag a few days away. It was all about team-building after all.
My first experience of the Lambert Cup was 1997 when BMBF entered a team organised from Basingstoke in the spirit of our new working relationship – lined up against our colleagues from the main bank competing in the round robin matches staged in Eastbourne and Hastings. Fortunately, somebody had heard down there that I played cricket at some level and so it was that I was invited to join the team, although I knew hardly anybody at all. It might have helped had I visited head office more often than I did…which was hardly ever. Nevertheless, being invited to play sport breaks down barriers far quicker than being force-fed a set of pointless, inane “activities” that we suffered on the contrived team building days. Sadly ,we were a complete rag tag bunch and spent most of a rainy week by the sea either being thrashed by much better sides or hanging around shopping centres like middle-aged hoodies, until night descended and we could all go and get completely leathered.
As we assembled on the first morning of play, you could just tell this was not a team ready to put life and limb on the line in pursuit of glory. Most of them seemed happy to have escaped Basingstoke and spend a day without a set of headphones and a torrent of vending machine coffee. One guy I did know of sorts was a chirpy chappie called Paulesh who was always a good crack on the phone – I cannot remember what he did down at HQ but who cared – and I had heard plenty from Paulesh about his passion for cricket.
Now Paulesh’s gear was that new it still had it’s wrapping on – I should have noticed the Woolworths price tags – but he was quick to let us all know that he had been netting with Hampshire all winter so we cut him some slack, watched him twirl his fingers and wondered if we had the tournament’s new mystery spinner in our midst. That is until his first attempt at spin on the morning of our first game against the much fancied London & South East region bounced three times and left batsman, umpires and most of us completely mystified. I could hear Geoffrey Boycott commentating on this with a “Nay lad, me mum cud bowl better than thee!” Several balls later he had begun to inflict mental disintegration upon the batsman who suddenly cried out: “I can’t hit that pile of shit!” True enough he could not, as the next ball looped over his head and bowled him. Some said that he was a Middlesex second team player but I could only conclude they went to the same nets as Hampshire.
Fortunately, it rained quite a bit that week so our pummelling’s were shortened by the elements which is always a blessing in cricket where pummelling’s can be merciless, long drawn out affairs under a searing sun. Rain and a quick thrashing never hurt anybody…so they say. Later in the week we played the mighty Yorkshire region that, had it not comprised a collection of dedicated alcoholics should have been odds-on favourite to smash all comers. Knowing quite a few of the lads from the local leagues helped alleviate the pain of playing in a team of no hopers and I spent a lot of time in their dressing room – mainly because they had abundant supplies of pornographic magazines. The BMBF experience in the Lambert Cup competition was not one I wanted to repeat again and so it seemed nor did Paulesh because we found him behind the pavilion burning his gear.
Unbelievably, the following year I was “tapped up” for the only time in my life in a cricketing sense by “Panto”, a manager with the Bradford office, with an invite to play for the Yorkshire region in the forthcoming tournament. Not only would this improve my cricket but these lads would definitely teach me how to drink. All my birthdays had come at once, it seemed. Now Panto – who got his nickname simply because when he ran after the ball he resembled the back end of a pantomime horse – was actually a highly rated up and coming manager of the new breed at Barclays. Seemingly born and bred at Barclays he had risen through the ranks and was well respected and very talented. He was also one of the new breed that realised the value of working with their group company colleagues. Somehow, after several more successful years he decided to leave for a competitor and something seemed wrong that we could afford to lose such talent having invested so much in his development. As usual the powers that be either hardly noticed or simply could not care less.
The Yorkshire region team ended up every year playing their fixtures on the South Coast, planning of pure bloody genius and cunning, particularly as just down the road York also hosted a group of Lambert Cup regional play-offs. It was all down to the scheming of our skipper/tour organiser/butt of everybody’s jokes “Cod Head”. Cod had calculated correctly that nobody was ever likely to get called back to the office in Yorkshire from Eastbourne and even if they did they would not be able to drive for at least two days till they sobered up. And, as we had a day off in the week of four matches then team bonding was more important than shareholder value.
Another masterstroke was to arrange our day off on the Friday, allegedly for the long drive back but really because of the Seventies disco on the Eastbourne Pier on the Thursday, which meant that most of us did not get to bed till the early hours. Some never made it back at all but marriages are at stake here…what goes on tour stays on tour. How Cod never got on to the Executive Board of the MCC Tours Committee is a mystery to all of us, as his planning and execution of the tour – from the actual cricket to the choice of night club venues – was faultless. Andy Flower take note, Cod is out there somewhere.
The cricket was actually very competitive notwithstanding the fact that it was highly probable that somebody would have thrown-up during the 10am warm ups and have to be placed sat down in the showers to freshen up. We played our matches on two grounds: the old Hastings ground which was a lovely, traditional, tree-lined cricket ground and the massive Eastbourne arena where Sussex played a lot of second team games. I am not sure I had ever set foot on a ground this big and reckoned that it was about four times the size of my beloved home club of Bolton Villas CC. I swiftly calculated that if I had to throw the ball in from the boundary edge I would need about three goes, the golfing equivalent of a driver, mid-iron and pitching wedge. If Panto had to chase it to the edge then there was a good chance they would run seven and he would collapse of a heart attack.
The Yorkshire team contained some seriously good players and frankly I was in awe of one or two of these guys who I knew of from the leagues back home and whose company I had not been in before. Leader of the pack was Proudy who pushed paper for a living in Harrogate whilst making a good secondary living on the cricket grounds of Yorkshire as a “pro”. “Proudy” was one of the few who came close to making a career out of cricket and the margins between those who do and don’t make it are slim. Simply put he was pure quality with a bat in hand and, at the age of thirty-five, I was opening the batting with him. This was where the notion of bonding really came into play as I may have held a more senior job, but there was no doubting who the boss with a bat in their hands was.
Burts, like Proudy, is also no longer with the bank having forged a career in accountancy, but this was also his first tour having only recently joined Barclays. That day he simply smashed the opposition to all parts, with some outrageous hitting before bowling some fairly rapid stuff as well. I think the only shot he did not play that day was his comical over the head sweep shot which he reserved for another time when we all had to play a shot from the annual draw. I not only learnt an awful lot about people I had never met before but my cricket improved no end. As Burts and I were the tour virgins, on our way back to the hotel, we had to walk the last mile or so having been dumped from the team coach in two very clingy summer dresses. Given that our route took us through student land we got slaughtered, although worryingly we also got a few wolf whistles as well.
Just in case, given the entire recent furore about bankers’ bonuses, you may be thinking we stayed in five-star luxury at shareholders’ expense, let me tell you – we stayed in a one star hovel. Mr Wong’s guesthouse was a dump when we arrived and definitely no better when we left the following Friday. There was no such thing as a night porter and if you were late in or if your roommate had the key and was otherwise engaged you had no choice but to ring the bell and wake up Mr and Mrs Wong. Mr Wong, never a happy chappie, tended to be consistent when this happened: “You wucking wunken warclays’ wanking wonkers.” Still, he did have a bit to contend with especially one night when two stark naked colleagues who shall remain nameless barged down the door of a fellow colleague’s room, convinced he was entertaining a woman. Three naked Barclays employees, one dishevelled room and a broken door would not be a good picture for the national press.
My two stints at Mr Wong’s were in the marvellous company of a colleague from the Bradford office who I converted to facial creams and flossing long before the week was out. As he still works for Barclays, I have to be protective of his professional reputation so I will only say that he was great to room with, even if most mornings I caught him hammering away under the duvet, assisted by the sight of a youthful Kelly Brook learning to read the autocue on breakfast TV. He was extremely patient with me and even saw the funny side when I placed a real cod in his bed – it was the only way we could think of Cod actually getting into bed with anybody – the shriek when he felt the cold, wet fish made me fall out of the bed laughing uncontrollably and I nearly missed the game the following day with a bruised head caused by being slapped with a wet fish.
Eastbourne at night comes mysteriously alive, with a variety of drinking holes so diverse you just have to try them all…and so we did. Monday night came and after a hard day on a cricket field where better to end up than a nightclub on student night? Mind you, it took some negotiating to get in with Cod and his fellow tour management team – all six foot plus and not one of them in possession of a full head of hair – at first claiming we were mature students and then, in desperation, professional athletes guaranteed to spend a fortune. It was only the first night of the tour and I curled up in a ball and promptly fell asleep despite the blaring music and the temptations of student night miles from home. I knew this would be a long week.
No matter how far gone I was I could always find Mr Wong’s. Likewise I developed an addiction to Burger King Zinger burgers and had to have my fix before I hit the sack with luck finding the right one and not frightening my roommate to death who was most likely resting in anticipation of his early start with Kelly. And so, for two weeks of my life Panto got me absolutely smashed each night. I then would wander off early as an exercise in damage limitation taking advantage of one of his visits to the loo to escape yet another tequila slammer and he would come collect me a few hours later, slumped in the corner of the Eastbourne Burger King, face awash with ketchup and still clutching my coke.
The first official day of my first tour after my initiation to tour drinking, I was stood in an open field, sun blazing down and a few people mingling around. Oh my God! I was batting, it was 11am and we were playing the worst side of the group. There were many new experiences in my two weeks on tour with the Yorkshire region and this day was no exception. The scorebook read:
S Wilson How Out Fell Over Drunk Bowler T Trundler 0
We then racked up 300+ although I never saw a run as I slept like a baby before having to field mercilessly for a much shorter time than I had slept. Panto got a ton and that showed up the discrepancy in our tolerance of alcohol. I knew trouble lie ahead as he had marked me down as his drinking buddy for the week. The reward for a successful week on the South Coast– apart from cirrhosis of the liver – was a semi-final that we won easily in York and then the final at Barclay’s magnificent sports complex in Ealing – a place steeped in history and used by various professional outfits.
I cannot remember much about the final, apart from that there was “history” between the two sides and the opposition’s star player resembled a fat Russell Brand and was just as irritating. It was he that I caught out at deep mid-off with the ball travelling faster than I had ever seen in my life. I swear if I had to do that now it would simply pin me between the eyes and death would be instantaneous. Next I opened the batting and he opened their bowling with a mix of spin that had me groping about as blindly as many a bra clasp had done in my teenage years. Somehow, I scratched thirty-odd, keeping the legendary Proudy company only for Panto to come in and finish off the opposition and the Lambert Cup was ours. I still have the shirt from the final and nothing will make me part with it.
I only ever went on one more tour, as in 1997 the Bank effectively ended our unofficial extra week’s holiday for reasons never made clear. What was so wrong about paying for sixteen lads to tour the south coast when it added so much to the joy of working for the bank? At least we always came back happy and bonded far more so than any team-building exercise could have achieved. These were quite simply marvellous, unforgettable days in wonderful company and we were lucky boys. I sense, however, that Mr Wong was pretty happy too to never see us ever again. Finally, as a footnote somewhere there is a book that contains notes from all the tours and its discovery one day will rock the world more than any discovery before.
15 – Trouble In Paradise
With Cufflinks’ tenure of The Cage short-lived and Macca soon to be set free, forever to roam the fairways, the inmates were soon to be subjected to the incomparable gloom and doom that was Happy in situ. In addition, unbelievably, we were once again on the move, this time out of our confined space and around the corner, as far away as possible from the rest of the bank staff who had been ring fenced with sound proofing and armed with CS Gas canisters. The Cage was subsequently swept, sanitised and apportioned off into office suites meaning no more suffering for our close neighbours of the last year or so. Although Happy and I had known each other loosely speaking for some fifteen years, you could hardly describe us as kindred spirits. In fairness he had a clearly defined career path whilst I was still as equally obsessive about making nets and the midweek twenty-over slog fixture. Work-life balance some called it…I blamed Clarky.
The following year was to be a defining one for me personally as I experienced the very worst of modern day man “management” exacerbated by an impotent, invisible, apathetic and totally inept Human Resources (HR) department. Not for one minute would I ever claim to be wholly innocent here and at times I have been a pain in the arse to successive managers over the years but – joking aside – I was consistent in one thing – that of my passion for doing the job in the right way as I saw it and never forgetting that the customer was paramount. In contrast, Happy, like many climbing the ladder, was a political animal and foremost in his approach to life was that of maintaining his status at all costs, avoiding any possible form of conflict or controversy if he could. I
There were early signs of tension between us in the initial team meetings, which, it soon became clear, were not arenas for adult discussion and debate but simply for the deliverance of the latest messages from on high to be observed without question. I realise that having described some of the antics in The Cage I may struggle to convince you that we were actually a bunch of intelligent and articulate young men, but the fact was that all of us were graduates and resented to a man being treated like primary school children even if we sometimes behaved like them. It became clear that Happy could not cope with us challenging any of the messages he was bringing back; given that he hardly had an original thought in his head he simply could not cope.
I will admit to being one of the most vociferous and I have to admit I had developed a very early dislike of Happy and struggled to contain this. You should at all times separate the personal from the professional but…well he just got up my nose and the feeling was definitely mutual. On reflection, if you are going to get engaged in any scrap at work, especially with somebody in a senior position, then it’s always best to do it from a position of absolute strength and, crucially, I had made a big mistake at the commencement of Happy’s tenure in actually volunteering to help him out, which would now come back to bite me big style. Never again would I place my belief in any manager and for some of them if they told me it was raining I would always check outside first. Whatever Macca was he was always honest.
That could never be said of most of the new breed of managers; to be kind at best let’s say that economical with the truth would be a fair description and downright liars would not be too far wrong in some cases. I am sure Barclays did not invent the art of managerial arse-covering, but it often felt like they took it to new levels. Whilst I had developed my own sales territory into a very productive and consistent patch there were certain geographical areas where we were weak and so I had agreed to take on the job of redeveloping some of them and took on the associated targets. The fact that there was a mismatch between the targets attached and the business we were generating at the time never bothered me as I was confident that given time I could turn them around.
The setting of targets was always an arbitrary process anyway; indeed later on Happy came up with the idea of getting us all around the table and bidding for our targets thus avoiding the potential confrontation and debate by setting these personally on an individual basis and at the same time him doing any additional work. What was the business paying him to do if he could not even assess and set simple business targets? I did not turn up at these meetings feeling it a waste of time and so accepted whatever target was determined by the horse trading in the room. You reap what you sow?
Midway through the year, with the numbers coming from the new territories still slow (could I claim a “traditionally slow start”?), I met with Happy for my half year review. It was generally accepted to take about eighteen months to get a patch up and running from scratch and it was clear that this was not going to be a barrel of laughs – it never was – but what came next was simply unbelievable as Happy launched into a tirade of abuse, claiming that he wanted me out of the business. When I countered almost toe to toe that I was going nowhere – after all a decade and a half of consistently good performances followed by a modest six months hardly indicated a poor performer – he resorted, stupidly, to silly threats. Put simply, he would “manage me out” he spluttered, although how he would do that escaped me as he was hardly capable of managing his way out of a paper bag. It was a weak albeit serious attempt at bullying and he had picked the wrong man.
Furthermore, in addition to the claims around my performance on the new patch which were, in isolation, hard to take having agreed between us only six months ago that this would take time, there was a remarkable counter punch and further claim that I had been harassing a colleague at Basingstoke with sexual innuendo. I will admit to being shaken by this idiocy and to a short-lived desire to punch his lights out, but my sheer dislike of the man and utter disgust at his approach really steeled me; by close of business I had emailed the entire episode to HR, copying in his line manager. Hell was about to break loose, but I was ready and waiting, largely due to my girlfriend at the time conveniently working in a public sector HR role. As was soon to become clear, she was light years ahead of the HR imbeciles in Basingstoke.
The harassment claim bothered me more than the performance issue by a country mile; I have always had stacks of great female friends and have never had an issue with any female colleague in the work arena. It was pitiful, cheap, cowardly and low; it was classic modern “management” so common in both public and private sectors in recent decades. It soon became apparent, after a hastily arranged meeting with the Regional Director in Nottingham, that the powers that be wanted this sweeping under the carpet as soon as possible and, strangely, no allegations materialised into charges. Despite the deeply unpleasant nature of the allegations there was nowhere for me to go with this as the people who should have been bothered didn’t want to get their hands dirty either. Ranks were closed – although something must have been said and done in private – because Happy kept his distance for a very long time after that – which was a plus.
As it turned out, the allegations were never substantiated and quickly withdrawn – after all, calls were always recorded, so had there been any truth in them at all, it would have been very easy to produce whatever evidence was required and I would have been out on my ear. A short while later I met the girl responsible for making the claims. She was very upset, telling me she had felt pressured into it and she left the business shortly afterwards. I was very grateful to my girlfriend because my initial reaction when all this started was simply to chin Happy there and then but her wise counsel was certainly highly valuable. Over the years several colleagues suffered from his cowardly and divisive “management style” and I remain unequivocal that people like him cost the business hugely.
What is galling is that he was allowed to get away with it, with senior management effectively closing ranks and looking the other way. You simply cannot run a high performing organisation with self-centred, vindictive, careerists at the controls. Guys like Happy are lifers within the cradle of a large organisation like Barclays and many others. They create empires at whatever cost and protect them as if their life depended on it. In many senses they operate no better than tin pot tyrants running a third world country. And the sad reality is that they are almost untouchable.
16 – Better Days
Back in 1989, one of the main attractions of making the original move from MCC to BMBF was a complete change of scenery in terms of marketplace and customers. Whilst the motor trade was great fun, I’d not really learnt that much save to keep my wits about me and to be able to name each and every Page 3 girl. And as our customers were consumers – the man in the street – well there is only so much you can take of Average Joe trying to explain to you why they cannot/will not/should not pay your finance agreement for the car that they sold last week so no longer have anyway even if it was our money to get it in the first place. Surely the corporate marketplace must be a step up in professionalism and relationship lending?
Of course there were also problem customers in the corporate arena and every now and then a collapse on a scale that would shake the business to the core. I have my name against one of the biggest – a car rental business that fell to a combination of circumstances akin to a perfect storm and whose demise was doubtless accelerated by the Credit Crunch of 2008-9. Whenever something like this happened the proverbial shit hit the fan big style and similarly we got hit on the ground by a plethora of reactionary new “improved” policies designed only it seemed to make the lives of our customers even more entangled in our processes. It was always retrospective and it seemed to me – from harsh experience – that management were clueless as to the day to day operations at ground level. We suffered from a constant stream of badly thought out policies with little engagement with the guys on the ground as to how we could make things better, improve our efficiency for the decent customers and make it much harder for the odd villain. In truth, the villains were few and far between and bad debt problems generally arose with businesses simply getting into trouble through the normal business cycles.
Without a shadow of a doubt my customers were the main reason why I did the job for so long and why, despite everything, I continued to get excited about working with and learning so much from them and the diverse businesses they operated. The sheer abundance and variety of the characters, customers and industries I worked with meant that there was something new to learn most days. Until that is, we effectively ground to a halt, partly due to circumstances beyond our control and partly of our own making. To use a flying analogy we hit serious, major turbulence but, frankly, we piloted the plane into the raging storm in the first place. When those that piloted the business from afar went into panic mode it meant that as the face of the business we had to go out there and get kicked from pillar to post from people we had, in some cases, traded with for twenty years and where we had enjoyed mutually beneficial working relationships based essentially on trust.
Fortunately, if there was little to admire within our own senior management there was plenty out in the marketplace and I was lucky to meet some inspiring people. One man who left an enormous legacy was the late Jonathan Silver who was the driving force and inspiration behind the redevelopment of the Salts Mill complex, now a World Heritage site and a fitting tribute to both him and its founding father, Sir Titus Salt. A million square feet of innovation, manufacturing, retailing, living and office space that bursts with vitality unimaginable from the derelict site he acquired several decades ago it now stands as a proud testament to his vision. If you have never been I would highly recommend a visit and when you are there go to the excellent bookshop and seek out a copy of “Salt and Silver”, which is a very good account of the birth and rebirth of this great site.
Just as Sir Titus Salt had created thousands of jobs with the original building, so too did Jonathan Silver assist with the early development of the world leading satellite set-top box manufacturer and now global business that is Pace Microtechnology plc who, in partnership, redeveloped several floors of the mill to house their new manufacturing operations. Again, I was lucky to have a fascinating escorted tour of the floors that were being reclaimed, which were like something lost in time. There were numerous textile looms, many older than I was, neglected and covered in dust and cobwebs, about to be sold to India – the final nail in the coffin of large-scale domestic textile manufacturing and the oncoming assault of Matalan, Primark et al. Out with the old and in with the new, though as Salts Mill would see significant new jobs in manufacturing satellite receiver boxes and associated equipment before those jobs also, in large part, went East in later years.
I remained fascinated by manufacturing businesses more than most throughout my career and find it numbing that successive governments, left or right or even as now middling through the centre, have had such an unsupportive and dismissive attitude to manufacturing. We appear to have this belief that the service sector is far more important than lowly manufacturing but real jobs are created by wealth creators and, as we have seen in recent years, much of the service sector, especially within the City, is smoke and mirrors. When Cameron talks of his Big Society this is nothing more complicated than allowing ordinary people the right to a meaningful job affording them a purpose in life and the chance to achieve respect from family and friends alike.
There is an often used expression “where there’s muck there’s brass” and no better demonstrated than at one of my favourite business relationships, P Waddington & Sons Ltd, Bradford. Waddies as I knew them are meat renderers; they take animal carcasses from the local abattoir and, in effect, recycle the carcasses to produce a variety of products for onward use in products as varied as foodstuffs to cosmetics. Many years ago the factory was well known in Bradford for producing some, shall we say, questionable odours since cured by a multi-million pound state of the art facility. However, my very first meeting with Keith Waddington, father of Mark, my contact for many years since, caused me to produce my own odours with the Barclays training manual failing me once again. There was simply no chapter in there to prepare you for Keith. I had already visited the factory several times and had got used to Mark’s trick of asking if he could borrow my pen – normally a nice Barclays Parker version – to sign the documents I had brought.
Even though Mark was a rugby player sporting facial evidence of being on the wrong side of a few scrums, he is a sharp cookie. Unfortunately, I was a little slow on the uptake and by the time he had rubbed his unwashed mitts all over my new pen, stuck it in his ear by mistake – as if – and then sucked on it while trying to squeeze some more margin out of the deal once again he had a new pen. The day in question we had been asked along to consider underwriting a new facility so I obviously needed some financial information from Keith, whilst Mark sat alongside him fiddling with my latest, and his soon to be latest, new pen. I asked Keith if he could provide me with the latest set of accounts and management accounts, a perfectly reasonable request, in my opinion. The training manual never prepared me for his response:
“Accounts? What do you need accounts for? I’ve been lending Barclays money for longer than you’ve been alive you little scroat! Now go piss off if you don’t want my business or you’ll end up in the fryer!” It was a priceless experience and I have to say that Keith, over the many years I have been dealing with him, has been a total gentleman in all our dealings. To mistake his forthright and blunt nature as anything else would be a mistake, but he did make me nearly wet my cheap M&S suit that day!
I think what I admired most about the business people I met, the thing that set them apart from the pretenders I had to contend with internally, was that most of them created something from nothing and often were not shy of risking their own money to do so. Working for a large organisation like Barclays, and many other similar organisations, does not involve the personal risk that true entrepreneurs take on. In many ways we are protected from this and, as a consequence, when we get on our high horse and start preaching to the same customers about how to run these businesses, then it’s a bit rich to say the least. The likes of Salt and Silver and many others are the true wealth creators, not bankers who merely feed off these. Invisible earnings – the great myth of the last decade – are what they are and unless real jobs are created and sustained then we are all stuffed.
17 – Independence Day
Once again the office was on the move and it was tempting to think that we kept the decorating, stationery, telephony, removal and furniture industries alive purely on our own? Initially there was a move to cramped, temporary offices across the road before a move into palatial new offices in Park Row,Leeds. For me, and Happy, opportunity knocked simultaneously with the offer to pilot a new concept: location independent working (LIW) complete with laptop and freedom to roam. As they say, give some people an inch and they will take a mile…this was manna from heaven.
To most LIW meant working from home but calling it LIW got the bank off the hook for any claims towards domestic heating bills – no matter, most of us just got used to working in balaclavas and fingerless gloves by candlelight – besides, no more Happy – great news for both of us in truth – and I suspect great news for everybody else. This was the first and only time I remember him really going out on a limb to get me something, but if it got me out of his sight it must have been worth it. Call it a classic win-win.
The fact that I did not know one end of a laptop from the other and still don’t was conveniently ignored by all. I had also claimed to be a pioneer in a similar vein some ten years earlier with MACS (Mercantile Automated Credit System), the system we handed to the motor trade, thus enabling them to slowly cream us off even more. In fact, my sole contribution to the MACS scheme was to take the boxes of IT stuff out to the dealers, dump them there and occasionally play computer games with the lads. Nevertheless, Happy saw potential here for me to be one of four guys chosen to pilot LIW nationally.
The concept of LIW is not for everybody, indeed I had colleagues who struggled completely with the whole idea when it was eventually rolled out nationally with the help of glowing reviews from one of its pilots. When they did work from home, they wore a suit, observed office hours and locked themselves away all day. Observing office hours meant I could always get to the field once the morning dew had vanished, give the outfield a quick mow and roll Saturday’s track trying to sway the conditions in favour of the batter over the nasty fast bowlers by assisting in producing a “shirt – front”.
As we struggle with traffic congestion, the school run and work-lief balance in the future this is here to stay. However, if offered the opportunity one should think carefully. My top ten tips, therefore, for working from home are as follows:
- Ensure home office has SKY Sports
- Refuse any suggestion of a webcam
- Ensure office large enough for a sofa or a bed by the side of your desk enabling roll-on, roll-off
- Avoid marriage, kids, pets and similar distractions
- Restructure day around Oz Aerobics but remember to wipe cornflakes from chin
- Become a true European and observe daily siestas – they are scientifically proven to be good for you
- Be comforted that you are now an eco-warrior saving on washing, shaving and fuel
- Get used to only human contact being mates your ringing up for latest test match score
- Remember that weekends are different
- Don’t forget the wicket needs rolling and cutting
LIW was a career-saver for me and it suited me beyond belief because, apart from the obvious reasons, it was compatible with my need for independence and almost total control over my working day. In all seriousness you are much more productive because there are no distractions at all, save for the fall of a wicket or a dodgy decision on the referral system that requires total concentration.
As a commuter I had sat in the traffic en route to Leeds for some ten years, compounded by some idiotic waste of European money in later years doubtless at the behest of some nameless, local government halfwit. This was in the form of the creation of those useless 2+2 lanes, complete with a cycle lane for the thousands we all know cycle to work in our benign climate! That Leeds City Council spent half a million quid’s worth of Euros simply to double the size of one lane of queuing traffic whilst clearing the other for some bearded, unemployable councillor to pedal his bike down was conclusive proof to me that we should a) leave the EU and b) sack all local councillors.
The justification for this madness was that these had been successful in Australia. What the publicly-funded morons failed to point out was that 2+2 lanes were successful over there on six-lane highways, not two lanes of hyper congested local roads in England– the most congested island in the world. Besides, creative Aussies had got very good at a daytime use for their rubber, inflatable Sheilas by placing them in the passenger seat. Imagine that, a woman in the passenger seat and completely silent…those Aussies take some beating. So LIW saved me at least two hours a day stuck in the lavishly-financed queuing system, time I used to good effect. Spiritually as well it always felt good to listen to the traffic reports on Johnnie Walker’s Drive Time whilst deciding what to cook for dinner as the M25 lot slugged it out. Yes, LIW was definitely for me.
Now that I had full roaming capacity in the form of my new, transportable, best friend slung over my shoulder, it was much easier to really develop relationships with the bank guys and my sole responsibility in those days was the Bradford office. The office had been a major part of the bank’s presence in Yorkshire for generations, arguably overshadowing nearby Leeds in terms of its business scale, which was largely derived from the textile industry. As the economic might of that industry dwindled, so too did the importance of the Bradford office in terms of its earning potential when compared with its neighbour.
At that time there were no demarcation lines between what became known as Larger and Medium business in later life – we simply adhered to geographical areas – before we began a trend of slavishly following the bank model whether it fitted ours or not. There were good reasons for us sticking to a geographical footprint as we remained a sales led organisation but most changes inflicted on us were a direct result of the bank’s changing structure. As ever it generally went full circle and the next new idea was simply a rehash with the customer being the last consideration.
What was far from rocket science was that by being able to locate ourselves in bank premises in the midst of a team – managers and the all too often underestimated and undervalued support teams alike – we were now very firmly seen as part of that team and increasingly valued as such. If we began to add value, we got it back in spades. Barriers, previously constructed on myths and nonsense, were suddenly eroded and lifelong friendships began to be fostered. And so it was that I first began to work with Panto, The Hoff, Sue T, Ash, Helen, Christine and a buxom nut-job called JCY with whom I had some of the funniest times of all at 10 Market Street, Bradford.
Panto was very quick to see the value of LIW as well. On one very famous day – in test cricket that is – I was able to play a part in ensuring that he had his very own ball by ball commentary describing an infamous moment in cricketing history. At the time, I was working from my kitchen table having no room for a dedicated office when I got a call from Panto, enquiring as to England’s progress chasing down a very “sporting” declaration by the then South African captain, the later discredited Hansie Cronje. As England wins away in South Africa were very rare, the fact that we were edging closer and closer to one and that two Yorkshire lads – Darren Gough and Chris Silverwood – were emerging as unlikely batting heroes, ensured that Panto kept me on the line for the next forty-five minutes with a ball by ball commentary – listened to by almost all the guys in the office. If there was any doubt before, I was now accepted into the team although SKY Sports never came calling with a dream commentary job.
The man who really helped me in those early days though, was the Area Director, who still had his own oak-lined office, complete with hidden whisky and board room table. His equivalent today sits in an open plan office, constantly having to take certain calls on the move. Mr C, as I still call him today involved as he is with local league cricket, was totally supportive of my inclusion, ensuring I had a permanent spot with a bank of desks created at one end of the office. The downside was this loud, feisty, whirlwind of a woman, JCY as we all know her, also landed at the same time and what a noisy, ferocious landing that was. Life would never be the same again. There were days when it must have been quieter sat on the main runway at Heathrow.
What became known as the group company desks were located conveniently next to the free-vend coffee machine and even more conveniently a short hop to the loo. Although these were supposed to be “hot desks”, I was in most days especially in winter and needed a dedicated hard wire for the lap-top light years before Broadband so I effectively had my own desk, of sorts. Unfortunately for me, JCY, who at that time worked for the Woolwich subsidiary was also in most of the time and what a bloody racket she made. I don’t know if she had more customers than anybody else, or whether she simply got her family to call her all day long, but the phone was never silent and the noise was unbelievable. With hindsight, I think JCY simply browbeat customers into working with her. In particular, she overpowered most men in the office by sheer force of personality – or maybe they were just scared to death of her?
In one of those strange quirks of fate this mad, mad woman who remains one of my best friends, grew up around the cricket field that competed with Barclays for my daily concentration powers, limited as they were. Indeed, she had actually moved into a house in the corner of the field to be close to her parents, although sadly, her mum passed away a few years ago. Soon my peaceful days on the mower or roller would be interrupted by the latest pioneer of LIW gone AWOL, howling out as she walked across to see her dad “get those white legs covered up!” This could not be good for shareholder value on the face of it, but JCY was a highly productive asset to the bank and when she eventually called it a day after some thirty-five years of breast beating she had no cause to look back.
Living at the back of the office I was also very lucky to develop a great friendship with a lovely lady called Christine who, by some strange quirk of fate, was equally as buxom as JCY albeit a foot shorter in height. Days between Christine and JCY could quite literally get a man used to too much of a good thing, but as much as JCY played the stern aunty role Christine preferred to revel in the constant tales of woe derived from my eternally disastrous love life – and indeed began to be my very own in-house counsellor. Not that I ever heeded any of her well-structured and enlightened advice from her perch on the corner of my desk,
There was one other massive plus about being located at the back of the office as it was adjacent to the entrance that was used by the magnificent and legendary girls form the mystical Machine Room. Nobody ever explained to me what went on in that room, one floor below us, but it was clear it was staffed almost exclusively by beautiful, young girls. Indeed, each and every time the door opened to beckon the entrance of one of these girls carrying trays of paper which may as well have been grapes and wine to the in-house emperors, there was almost a blast of light and an onset of heavenly music, as a backdrop to the swagger down the office of the latest offering of youth and beauty.
One such girl I swear was worth an admission fee and must have taken longer in the morning to get ready for work than the duration of my average working day. She must have worked there for barely a year but I could almost sense when she would be coming through the door: smoke billowing out under the door, the flash of light and the burst from the Three Tenors as that perfect, slender body, kissed by endless blonde curly hair and structured as flawlessly as anything I had seen, slowly floated across the office. Many, many times Christine had to prepare me for my dotage by slowly closing my jaw and wiping my chin. She was the most glorious creature and probably got sacked for damage done to the working day.
Although I ended up looking after the Leeds and Harrogate offices for varying tenures my unbroken relationship with the people in the Bradford office sustained me throughout most of the final decade and especially so when it was clear we were committed neither to customers nor the marketplace in general. Remaining largely based from home, the Wednesday morning banter in Bradford was something special to look forward to and no matter how the characters changed it still felt good to be a part of it. There were some marvellous characters working for the bank during that period and it was rarely ever dull.
18 – Magic
For the last ten years or so of my Barclays life, No 10 Market Street, Bradford, was like a second home. There were and remain some marvellous characters, although not in anything like the numbers in years gone by. It seems that those on high systematically got rid of anybody who had a streak of individuality or fearlessness, and in the process the bank lost some highly experienced and knowledgeable staff, most of whom were snapped up rapidly by competitor banks. At the start of the decade Mr C was about to retire and his second in command in every aspect bar title was a guy called Gerry. Gerry looked after the larger connections long before these were regionalised and placed under the control of the Leeds office, which is where Gerry ended up.
Gerry was very, very good, well respected by a demanding set of customers who represented the cream of the portfolio and generous with his advice and time towards me. Beneath Gerry there was a very experienced team of managers, largely male-dominated it has to be said, and a clear progression route available for the support staff – wonderfully labelled by one of them at the time as “shit shovellers” – for anybody that wanted to develop their career. The originator of that job description – the same young man hopelessly in love with Kelly Brook – actually did get to progress and remains with the bank, as did some others, although many left to progress with other organisations. Of the senior managers there were many characters and to this day most of them still meet up to recall olden days and get ”refreshed” in the process of observing tradition. One man you would not seek a drinking contest with was “Norm”, a double in so many ways to that bar-fly character in the US sitcom Cheers.
Now Norm loved his liquid lunches and, as the managers had enclosed offices in those days, he would often come back for a kip in the afternoon but would be at the office until very late at night, which I mistakenly took as dedication to the cause of sobering up. However, just as Norm in Cheers was fearful of the never seen wife Vera, so too was our very own Norm, preferring the solitude and sanctity of the office rather than rushing home to the missus. Of course KBI – Key Business Introducers – functions were a Godsend to Norm and he appointed himself as Bradford’s KBI Ambassador which was great for the rest of the team, as nights out with a bunch of accountants or solicitors hardly set the juices flowing. Norm would be in his element though – free food and booze and another night away from the wife – heaven.
Norm was also a frequent imbiber at Baildon Cricket Club where for a period the son of the Finance Director of one of my smaller customers – well okay we did bugger all business – played for their junior team. In unison Norm, Nigel and another soon to be ex-Barclays manager, Bob, would roll up claiming to be in support of Nigel’s son, Ollie’s pursuit of an England batting spot at the expense of my own Bolton Villas junior team but if all else failed at least the bar was open. Nigel claimed that it was his sporting genes that Ollie had acquired which probably explains why the lad never ever scored any runs but it was always great to see the three of them and only recently Bob and Nigel turned up to watch an Under 15 game I was coaching one Sunday morning. Norm’s absence could only be explained by the bar being shut.
One such Wednesday night whatever credibility I may have possessed with Nigel in his capacity as Finance Director at a printing business near Knaresborough dissipated forever. I had been out with a colleague for a rare Barclays funded lunch in Leeds made all the better by the fact that whatever she was talking about was offset by the fact that she was a curvaceous, highly entertaining and very attractive Canadian lady. Of course I had managed to amuse her although not with sartorial wit but by dropping my shirt cuffs in my pasta sauce halfway through lunch. Not to worry as the afternoon was booked up with a visit to my beautician for my monthly facial before a hop across to Baildon Moor and a hook up with the lads to watch the junior game. Whether it was the sun or just the fact he is blind as a bat Nigel was squinting at me somewhat strangely.
“What’s that hanging from your ear Steve?” he said. I had no idea what he was talking about until I began to scratch around and the horror of it dawned on me. Lucy my beautiful beautician had left her imprint by way of part of the seaweed mask still attached to my face. My diminutive, balding, bearded and now ex-customer Nigel just looked incredulous as I failed to rescue the moment by suggesting he really should try Lucy’s Swedish Hot Stone massage. I cannot actually remember who won the game only that Norm simply huffed, puffed and vanished to the bar for another pint.
One of Norm’s best mates was Browny, who I had been told was really a Credit Manager sent across to join the team and stiffen the skill set. Browny is a diminutive man with a hangdog look and a mad eye stare that gets worse by the pint but any thoughts that this guy might be dull swiftly vanished after an hour in his company. The only thing that seemed to get him down was when his beloved football team,Bradford City, lost, so you could say he had been clinically depressed for a large part of his life. Add that to working for a bank and his wife must have had a lot to cope with. It was he who convinced me that my career path would not develop into a transfer across to the main bank to do a similar role as was becoming mooted. On a day out we met some of the dullest, most ungrateful, penny-pinching customers I had ever come across and I suddenly saw the origins of the hangdog look were not entirely all down to the ineptitude of successive Bradford City teams. From thereon I decided relationship banking was not for me and that the grass I was tending was definitely greener.
Of the old guard there were many other similar characters, all seemingly having been with Barclays since birth. One of the more pompous of this breed was typical of my early experiences in South Yorkshire, for as communications improved those that had ruled the roost at smaller, often rural branches, were now condensed into larger teams. These were now typically operating out of the bigger cities like Bradford which, believe it or not, is actually a biggish city – despite the best efforts of its local council to turn it into a ghetto.
Plus Fours was a ruddy-faced, rotund character, with a booming voice and known to like a beer or two at lunchtime. It seems like another lifetime when you could nip to the pub for a couple of pints then come back to the desk for a sleepy afternoon and perhaps it’s as well that it is now a thing of the past. One particular afternoon Plus Fours had, allegedly, returned after one too many, only to catch a view of a very attractive female member of staff bending over a filing cabinet. Up he strode, almost thrusting himself on her booming “now bloody file that!” He survived as these were more tolerant times but the days of a beer at lunchtime were fast disappearing.
My real role model in those early days in Bradford though was Redders who I hope will not mind me saying that he was doomed as soon as the view of the role of the traditional bank manager started to change. Redders was a people person and neither a technician nor a salesman – he just dealt with customers and from the reaction I saw from them he did this very well. I don’t think he would ever admit to having supreme credit skills and when the role started to become much more sales driven he was toast because that’s not what he did. The fact that customers of mine were still talking glowingly of Redders years after he left spoke volumes, but the minute Redders took on the new role of Business Development Manager he was heading for the Exit door.
Business development takes years in mainstream banking because the art of prising highly valued customers away from other banks takes a very long time to master. Unfortunately, the clowns on high seem to believe this happens overnight. Redders successfully blagged a few more years out of the role but come The Night of the Long Knives and he was defenceless – I lost a trusted colleague and a great guy to work with. The dawning of a new era preceded by the Night of the Long Knives and the swift early retirements enforced on a raft of experienced managers came with it the adoption of a model that was universally disliked by customers, with the removal of almost all individual autonomy and a heavy emphasis on sell, sell, sell.
It was the death knell and the end for the old guard and how ironic that this removal of local, personal autonomy preceded the greed driven crash of the last decade? If you were the wrong side of 50 then it was likely the bank had had enough of you and, in truth, many were happy to grab generous packages and head for the golf course – especially Plus Fours who could now spend all day poncing around, instead of just most afternoons although there would be no more Barclays brollies.
It was out with the old and down with the old office walls as well. The days of open plan, brightly coloured offices were here and they looked more like a primary school than a bank, with coloured charts covering the walls to show everybody just how badly you were doing. On the plus side, opportunity knocked for some of the brighter and more ambitious guys such as Panto, The Hoff, Sue T and Dani T. Sadly, only Dani remains to this day so you might question what went wrong with the brave new world.
The Hoff was far too much of a maverick to last long, so the fact the he did progress as rapidly as he did before going and taking a much followed path to a Swedish bank followed by numerous others, says all you would need to know about how good he was at the day job. A giant of a bloke it was rumoured he had played rugby on the basis that he has a big, bent-up nose but I had a theory that his wife had caught him stealing her anti-blemish cream and bopped him one. The Hoff was permanently on holiday, with dual residency in Tenerife and when he wasn’t on holiday the tan never faded – the man positively glowed in the dark.
Certainly, he was a left-field pick for the new Team Leader role at Bradford as there were more obvious candidates. And just as he was starting to make a name for himself, the bank was also experimenting with casual dress in the workplace. Now this was an absolute disaster. Bank managers are not noted for there haute couture or shopping at Armani, Gucci or Hugo Boss. Most get their clothes bought for them by the wife via the local jumble sale, making that smooth transition from having their mother buy them whilst at home into married life. And so it was that the new cutting edge approach, encouraging relaxed dressing, saw guys come to work dressed in their gardening gear. It was an assault of baggy, scuffed corduroys and patterned acrylic sweaters like the hapless Colin Firth character in the Bridget Jones movie. Browny started to resemble Compo from Last of the Summer Wine whilst Plus Fours was all Pringle sweaters, even Panto tried – and failed.
So when it was announced that the latest Mr Big Shot from Head Office was visiting Bradford and that it would still be casual dress, I had to be there. Now, given that the guy who was visiting was called Camp, it seemed fitting that on the day in question the office Team Leader turned up dressed as if he were at a holiday camp. To the amazement of the whole team, The Hoff had turned up to host the meeting resplendent in polo shirt, shorts and flip flops leaving the visitor from the Smoke clearly lost for words as he conducted the meeting oblivious. The only thing he was short of was a cocktail. And yet The Hoff was good and soon got promoted to head up South Yorkshire before becoming disillusioned, as many others were, and becoming part of a massive drain of talent.
Each time I meet the Old Guard it’s tempting to reflect on the beginning of the decade and see the very early localised signs of the madness, which would become a global contagion at the end of the decade with the worldwide banking crisis. Was it change for change’s sake? Certainly, on a very micro level, what I saw in the Bradford office made little sense and this was doubtless being replicated across the country and in other banks. The replacement of highly experienced and valued staff with a new breed of so called “super sales people” has been an unmitigated disaster. In many cases the bank brought in new managers with no experience of banking at all and not many lasted the course. The Old Guard were not perfect but they understood business life and had the well earned respect of customers. Nowadays, if a customer keeps a bank manager longer than a couple of years they are doing well.
The talent pool is also drying up and in my last few years all the newcomers were recruited from competitor banks with not much evidence of the traditional progression through the ranks. Once again, the bank seems not to value the knowledge at the grass roots level of the business. Banking is not about selling because if you have a brand behind you as strong as Barclays you should not need to sell. It’s always been about trust and building relationships, but the stresses driven by the higher echelons for instant results have eroded these values. Consequently, new boys on the block like Santander and Handlesbanken have been able to come into the UK and, with minimal investment in training and development, staff up UK operations largely on the back of talented but disillusioned staff who previously worked for the Big Four. Madness it most certainly has been.
Rohan Eli says
This has been a very good read. I really do think the author took up the wrong career path and should now bee a well known name in either publishing or even politics. That is if the truth would be allowed to be told to the people…..
Keep em coming…