Richard and Barry

Jeesh, just back after a shift at Blockbusters. I cannot comprehend what has just happened.

It seems the credit crunch is coming home to roost. What with people buying dodgy knock offs from Chinese immigrants in pubs and downloading stuff off the Internet, they're much less likely to visit Blockbusters to acquire their evening's entertainment.

My line manager, Ian Beal look-a-like, Richard, said "Barry, I think we're going to have to make some redundancies."

I couldn't beleive my ears, there was no way I was going to let Richard make Barry Newsdesk redundant, not again, not so soon. I had a bit of a conflab regarding certain colleagues. Here's how it ran:

Richard: "Sometimes it's last in, first out."
Barry: "Right, but do you know about Leigh?"
Richard: "No, what about Leigh?"
Barry: "Well, I think he might be on the take."
Richard: "What do you mean on the take?"
Barry: "I'm pretty sure he's stealing from Blockbusters."
Richard: "Stealing?"
Barry: "Yeah, he just uses Blockbusters as a a personal ATM."
Richard: "No way."
Barry: "Yes, he's always nipping off into the store room too,"
Richard: "Doing what?"
Barry: "I can't be sure, but it smells like cannabis."
Richard: "Do yo have any proof?"
Barry: "Not exactly, but you should keep an eye on him."

Well, I wasn't expecting what came next, Richard turned around and told me that I would be his "eyes and ears" in Blockbusters, that the things I'd said amounted to pretty strong allegations and that he "expected results", and if he didn't get "results" he'd be implementing some seriously strategic "policy changes".

To be honest, I think a lot of this was down to simple dramatics and I don't expect Richard to actually implement long term changes for me at Blockbusters.

I hated snitching on Leigh, I think we've become quite close, but it's a dog eat dog world, it's all about the survival of the fittest. I do think Leigh is on the take, and I'm kinda glad Richard mentioned all this to me.

I like to think of the recession like gardening, sometimes you need to do a bit of pruning to make the roses grow!