Toilet Rolls

Richard, in the dim and distant past, used to work for Midland Bank before it became nasty scary HSBC.

He joined at the tender and somewhat naive age of 18 at his home town branch of Lowestoft, which was nice, because most of the ladies he worked with were about 22 years of age and generally single.

Richard was able to impress his mates on a Friday night at the local club (which was called Chequers) by being able to talk to so many good looking girls... he never got anywhere with the girls, though!

After a couple of months in the branch Richard was given the highly responsible job of looking after the branch stationery orders; he had to order pens and forms and air freshener.  In fact, everything the branch needed to function properly... and that included the toilet rolls.

The stationery order was submitted once a month to head office and deliveries were made a week or so after the order was made.  Of course Richard's order had to be checked by the manager but he never did; he just signed the piece of paper Richard put in front of him.

This particular month Richard noticed that he's just opened the last box of toilet rolls so he ordered 72 loo rolls using the usual order form, thinking that those supplies would last a couple of months, depending on how nervous people got in the branch.

A week or so later he got a call from Stationery Department asking if he could be in the branch at 7.00am on the day of the stationery delivery as the articulated lorry had to pull up outside.

'Sure,' says Richard, not thinking too much more about it.

The next day he got to the branch at 7.00am and there was a very large lorry parked outside.  'Must be going on somewhere else,' he thought to himself.

'Here you go mate,' says the driver handing him the two usual medium size boxes.

'Thanks,' replied Richard and turned to go into the branch.

'Hang on, mate,' the driver shouted.  'You need to give me a hand with this lot...'

Oh My God.  The rest of the trailer was packed with toilet rolls.

'B...b...but I didn't order that,' stammered Richard.

'Yes you did,' replied the lorry driver cheerfully.  'Come on, give us an 'and.'

So the pair of them unloaded 72 boxes of 72 toilet rolls into the main banking hall at Lowestoft branch - which was now full of cardboard.

The driver started to climb back into his lorry.

'Oy,' shouted Richard, 'Aren't you going to help me carry this lot upstairs?'

'Can't,' shouted the lorry driver as he started his engine with a roar.  'I've got to get back to the depot... we didn't have room for anything else on the wagon!'

Richard looked at his watch: 7.38am.  40 minutes to get 72 boxes up 3 flights of stairs to the stationery room which was right at the top of the building.

He then put in what he still regards as his best ever 40 minutes of hard graft.  But at the end of it every box of toilet rolls was packed safely away at the top of the building... and no-one ever mentioned how packed with boxes the stationery room was!

As an aside there's a strange end to the story.  Richard was promoted to a new branch a couple of months later and didn't return for another 5 years, this time as a manager.

One day he needed to get a new loo roll for the toilet.  He went into the stationery cupboard and was astonished to find that he was opening the last box of the mammoth order he had made all those years before.

he must have saved the branch a fortune!