Boss Wars part V: The Battle of the Stool

So we’ve been playing silly buggers with stools, TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) and I. Or you could say I’ve been glimpsing more of TBE’s cockeyed psyche. Via seating.

You see, when the Out of Favour (OOF) shop reopened there was nowhere to sit; TBE had taken the staff seat away.

‘So what?’, you might say, ‘You should be working instead of sitting on your arse’, which is fine (harsh, but fine), except I’m alone for the whole day with no break. Having no seat means standing up for eight hours straight. My feet don’t need that, they’re ugly enough.

Photo: PaintedFeet01, Pixabay

Recklessly flying in the face of all previous evidence of TBE’s attitude to towards employees: ('they're fine in theory, but do they have to be so much like actual thinking people???'), I thought it was simply an oversight and waited for a new seat to arrive.

Oh silly me. After a week I bought my own stool.

It was a whole £12.99; bargain! But now I had a problem: the OOF shop is the Bermuda Triangle of middle England retail. Leave anything in there and it disappears as soon as you can say, ‘TBE does my head in,’ (a magnificent example being, of course, the fridge). So, I carried my stool home each night and carried it to work each morning.

Except one day I forgot and left it in the shop.

And, of course, when I next came in to work, the stool had gone. It had been replaced by – nothing. No stool. No seat. Nowhere to sit. Back to square one.

Photo: Erikawittleib, Pixabay

Absolutely bloody furious that TBE had taken the stool I’d bought, I took £12.99 from the till and stormed down the road to buy another one, muttering dementedly to myself, “shove your sodding stool phobia up yer arse, I have justice and bad joints on my side. I will purchase and be damned!  I’m going to make the shop pay for it! I’ve spent £12.99 of the shop’s cash! Ha! Take that!”

Three hours later I found my stool hidden behind the toilet door.

Oh come on, who hides a working stool behind a toilet door?! But never mind, it was all fine: the shop had its own stool and I no longer had to carry my stool back home each night and to work each morning. I could just have it at home. Sorted, right?

Umm, well, no. Of course not.

When I next came in to work, the second stool had gone. Totally gone. Not behind the toilet door, not anywhere. And it had been replaced by – well, surprise surprise - nothing. No stool. No seat. Nowhere to sit. Back to back to square one.

Photo: skeeze, Pixabay

I wasn’t angry; I was too astonished, and I decided it was obviously a coded invitation to spend my days reading my book instead of doing shop stuff, which was lovely.

Later, I found a refund receipt: TBE had returned the stool and taken back the £12.99. How about that? I wasn’t even worth a £12.99 stool.

Thank goodness my book was very interesting. And very big.

Photo: Pexels, Pixabay

TBE did eventually provide the OOF shop with a stool, but it’s clearly under sufferance, because each morning I have to dig it out from under a TBE clothes mountain, and drag it from the dark corner where it’s been banished so it can take its rightful place behind the till. And I can finally sit down.

This daily operation makes me feel like a trouble-maker.

But at least my feet love me.