Going Down

Tell you about the last day my job, your honour? Well, I suppose you’d say I resigned with attitude. Yeah, you might call it dismissed, but I like to look on the positive side, y’know? ‘Always look on the bright side of life’? Eric Idle that was. Anyhow, I was working as a lift attendant at Bracegirdle’s, the department store? Been there ‘bout 18 months. It was a rubbish job. I’d gone past the ‘it has its ups and downs’ jokes long ago. I was really pissed off – oh, sorry, I mean fed up. And the thing that made me so fed up was the people. They were so toffee nosed.

So the day I handed my notice in was just like any other. I was humming ‘I will survive’ by Gloria Gaynor along with the lift musak and wondering how I could spend 40 million quid if I won the rollover, which I wouldn’t anyway ‘cos I don’t do the lottery. I was thinkin’ ‘bout these toffee noses and how I would be able to put them in their place, like. The musak changed to Nick Lowe, ‘You’ve got to be cruel to be kind’ and I was there with this lord something or other about to torture him into agreeing that people from our estate were every bit as good as his kind. And then these two rich bitches got in. The older one had a camel coat, buttoned up to her throat. It didn’t suit her. Wrong colour for her complexion and wrong shape for her figure.

‘Well, you can’t expect anything else from these types, can you, Bridie? Rape and murder is just par for the course for them,’ said the older one.
‘Yes, Lucinda, but that poor little girl! They’re just animals!’ Bridie replied. She was wearin’ a charcoal skirt, knee length with a gold buckled belt. Her triple buttoned black astrakhan coat was open and under it she had a charcoal twinset that matched the skirt. Almost. Charcoal is so difficult! She looked quite sexy in a way.
‘Poor baby nothing. It would only have grown up into another of the animals. Probably better off dead. I think some of these people shouldn’t be allowed to have families. They ought to sterilise them,’ said Lucinda.

I knew what they were discussing. It had been in the paper that mornin’ about the murder in the next street to where I live. It was a nasty business, but the people in the neighbourhood were really supportin’ one another, tryin’ to get through it, y’know? It’s summat we do well, lookin’ after our own. And they are my own. They’re my people. So, I was seethin’. Can’t let it show though. Got to be polite and pleasant to them even if they do tell one another sort of to my face that I don’t count for nothin’. Animals?! The musak had changed to ‘Gypsies, tramps and thieves’ by Cher. It didn’t help, I can tell ya. I got it into my head then and there that if they were gonna get in my lift on the way down I’d have to teach ‘em a lesson. But what? It really gets on my tits when these people come into my lift and behave as if I wasn’t there talking ‘bout my people. The musak was playin’ ‘Just you wait’ from My Fair Lady.

The women got out on the top floor. We don’t call out the floors normally at Bracegirdle’s. Management says our ‘clientele’ – snob word for the customers – know what they want without being disturbed by the lift boys. What they mean is that we talk coarse and it’d be bad for business for us to be heard. I closed the gate and left the floor to go down.

I was on my way back up about half an hour later when I knew what I would do. The musak was playin’ ‘My way’, the Frank Sinatra version, not the Sex Pistols. I think I prefer Paul Anka’s version but you never hear that even though he wrote the English version of it. There’s no justice. I got to the fifth floor and there they were. Bridie was wearin’ the new coat she’d just bought. It was a Vivienne Westwood three quarter length black coat. Eleven hundred quid. Her old one was in a carrier.

‘It looks really nice on you, Bridie, my dear.’ Lucinda was gushing. It was a lie. The coat was entirely wrong. She needed a straighter line to suit her figure and the colour was just too … black. She’d have looked great in light blue.
‘Oh, you are sweet, Lucinda.’ Sweet my arse. She was a toffee nosed, fascist bitch from hell, but I wouldn’t be saying anything like that to her. Bridie looked tasty though. The music played the Beatles ‘I’ll get you in the end’ as the lift began its descent.

‘Floor four,’ I said. ‘Ladies’ underwear.’ They both looked at me. They looked like overdressed gormless tarts. Just like the birds down the pub but with posh clothes. They both looked at me as if they’d just trodden in poodle poop. Lift boys didn’t talk!

Another floor went by. ‘Floor three, women’s underwear’, said I.
‘Bridie, what on earth has got into this young man?’
Bridie didn’t respond. I got in there first.
‘Floor two, women’s underwear’.
They looked at one another. ‘Underwear’s on the ground floor, isn’t it?’ Bridie asked Lucinda.
‘It’s on every floor’, I said. My God – I’d spoken without being spoken to! Such poor etiquette.
‘What do you mean?’ asked the older woman.
‘Well, missus,’ says I – and I punched the stop button. The lift was stranded between the first and ground floors. ‘It’s like this,’ I said. ‘If most shoppers here and most shop assistants here are women then you’ve got ladies’ underwear on all the floors, ain’t ya? You just need to know where to look!’

With that I suddenly took Bridie’s skirt and lifted it. Elle Macpherson culottes in white. It wasn’t a sex attack or nothin’ – just a game. Just to bring them both down from their fuckin’ pedestal a bit. Humiliate ‘em both

They got the lift down to the ground floor pretty quickly when they heard the screamin’.

When the police took me away I remember the lift musak was playin’ ‘I’m a loser’ by the Beatles.