“Good morning, sir”
The manager’s tone was effortlessly chirpy, despite the slightly unctuous tenor of his smile. The tenant, by comparison, had lately required several minutes of careful preparation in order to bounce his octaves into a region broadly interpretable as ‘unconcerning’.
As such, his reply…
“Er, yes. I suppose so. Hello.”
…had all the spunk and joie de vivre of your average steps-of-the-guillotine speech.
It had been that sort of a week.
The manager, of course being awfully experienced with exactly this sort of a person, was unflapped.
“Hello again, sir! And how, precisely, can we help you today?” he asked.
“Well,” said the tenant, “to be honest, it’s not easy to say.”
The manager smoothly shifted gears; lips closed together, salesman grin flipped to sympathetic smile.
“Of course, of course, sir. Might I be so bold—and do forgive me—to wager that you are here today on a matter beginning with ‘B’?”
The tenant breathed hard and looked down.
“Yes. Yes, that’s correct.”
“Ah. Well, sir, that shan’t do. It shan’t, it shan’t. And you did the right thing to come to us, oh yes. We do everything we can to minimise bankruptcies—forgive me sir, it’s best to get such matters out in the open—especially today, on Bankruptcy Prevention Day. Might I begin, sir, by asking why you wish to declare bankruptcy?”
“Oh. Well, I don’t, actually.”
“You don’t?”
“No, not at all.”
The manager’s sympathetic smile snapped back to the salesman grin.
“Ah! Then I have misunderstood you entirely, sir. My profound apologies, I must—“
“No, no!” the tenant burst. “You haven’t misunderstood at all. You see I don’t want to…”
“Good!”
“…but I don’t really see how I can’t.”
The manager softened, though the impression given was less ‘warm and fuzzy’, and more ‘damp and flaky’.
“Sir, there’s always options.” He said, moistly.
“There is?”
“Oh yes. Do tell me your circumstances. We would miss your shop awfully if you were to leave the building.”
The tenant took a deep breath and then let it out again.
“Alright. To be honest, I don’t see a future for my business here.” He said.
“A common feeling, a common one, sir.” Said the manager, with a mechanical little nod.
“Right. I get that. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? The heating system seems to be broken, for one.”
“It’ll work itself out, sir.”
“Well, maybe, but the window caulk has started to melt. Then there’s the porridge machine…”
The manager smiled fondly. “The customers love the porridge, don’t they?”
“No, they don’t seem to. Well, the industrial food engineers seem to, but the rest seem to be struggling to tell my products from the porridge. Everything’s drowning in slimy oats.”
“Your porridge will rise above the rest, sir! I believe in your talent.”
“I don’t sell—never mind. The machine runs hot too, you know, it’s making the heating system worse.”
“It does run hot, doesn’t it. But the porridge will cool it off. Porridge cooled heating system.”
“Then, there’s the flaws with my computers.”
“You’re so brave and talented for dealing with that, sir.”
The tenant was becoming visibly agitated; a thick vein bulged in his temple. “That’s as may be,” he said, “but a full third of the buggers explode if there are too many customers in the shop, or its too loud, or if someone says something mean or unfair, or you play a video game on them and lose…I thought there was a compensation scheme for such things.”
“Of course, sir! We’re not monsters here.”
“Ah, good. How much is that?”
“Oh, I’m afraid you don’t qualify, sir. Only 33% of your computers have the flaw, sir. You need at least 34% to be defective in order to qualify for the Poor IT Payment.”
“Right. But I need at least 75% to be operational in order to even begin to operate my business as other shops do.”
“Yes, sir. That’s our understanding.”
“Can I have new computers?”
“No, sir. Your computers are assigned when you arrive.”
The tenant opened his mouth to observe the fairly obvious, and decided against it. Instead, he used his open mouth to say, “Alright, never mind the computers. What about that franchise scheme you were running? I’ve been accepted to a few of those over the years, but the arrangements keep being cancelled, or the contract runs out and I never hear from them again. What’s going on there?”
“Ah,” said the manager, “my understanding is that they were unhappy with your business.”
“How so?”
“Your computers exploded sometimes.”
“Right. Yes. They do that. I can’t much help that. I thought they might be a bit more understanding about it.”
“They are running a business, sir.”
The tenant sighed, though perhaps there was a heavy strain of ‘wheezed’ in there, too.
“If I may observe, you have seemed to have lacked…clarity…on your path, thus far.” Said the manager.
“I suppose so.”
“Yes. It took you a little longer than everyone else to get into the building properly, spent a lot of time in the foyer.”
“The computers kept giving me the wrong code.”
“…And your shop seems to have re-branded a few times.”
The tenant nodded. “Nobody told me some important details before I got into the main building, you see. Was ready to open a vintage book shop, but you had one already.”
“Yes, and then a magazine shop?”
“The market collapsed on that.”
“I see. And then some sort of video cassette cartridge game emporium?”
“Too many issues to list, there.”
“Understood, sir. And most recently, some sort of vendorship of parlour game frivolities.”
“Yes. Well, I know there’s already a lot of those. But I’ve run out of options, really.”
“It’s always better to hit the ground running!”
“Yes, well, I didn’t. I can’t exactly waddle back to the starting line, can I?”
“Might I ask,” said the manager, “why you haven’t declared bankruptcy before now?”
“I quite like the ‘frivolities’, as you called them. And there’s my wife, of course. And my cat. And my family. They’d all be rather upset if I just packed it in and left the building. And I quite like this building too, you know. An old beast, to be sure, but one with a lot of charm and beauty!”
“I’ve always thought so, sir.”
“So you say, but you keep digging into the floors and replacing the load-bearing walls with polyfilla.”
“More economical, sir. You benefit too!”
“Yes, I remember you saying that. Look, my point here is that I really don’t want to leave the building, but it really is becoming increasingly difficult to stay in it.”
“I understand completely, sir.”
“So, can you do anything to help me stay in business?”
The manager flicked to expression ‘C’, which was rather stern, at least compared to the insincere sycophancy of ‘A’ and the cloying mawkishness of ‘B’.
“No, sir. I’m afraid we’re not here to ‘help you stay in business’. That’s entirely your responsibility. We’re just here to make sure you don’t do something foolish, like declare bankruptcy.”
The manager looked almost wistful for a moment.
“But maybe…there is something you can do for me, sir.”
The tenant was surprised. Such ‘favours’ were usually either left unspoken (yet expected) or clearly communicated via harshly worded photocopied edicts.
“Let’s hear it then.” The tenant said.
The manager patted the tenant gently on the hand.
“If you are going to declare bankruptcy, do wait until tomorrow, old boy. It’s Bankruptcy Prevention Day, after all, and it’d look bad on the quarterly reports.”