Scary Donnie
Change of pace this week, true tale, no puns. Bit long though to be fair.

I was in my second year at Art College in Dundee in the late eighties. It’s not fair to say Dundee is a shithole – I’ve seen much nicer shitholes in my time. I had daydreamed my way through jobs in various bars but the constant parade of pissed up rugger bugger student doctors and town planners pulling braying grab-your-arse student nurses got on my nerves after a while. The last bar I worked in as a student was an old church converted into a seedy dive that catered for a mismatched clientele of local neds and pasty Goths. I left after a particularly foul manatee grabbed my hand as I handed her change across the bar and shoved it right down her grim oubliette of a cleavage whist slurring an ominous invite into the ‘ladies’. By this point her rat faced little scrote of boyfriend was already darting across the room like some polyester clad, lard seeking missile. He was still screaming his threats of various stabbings and slashing that would befall my extended family as he was forcibly ejected. The only reason I stayed so long was I had a nice fiddle working on the draught lager – for every other Pound-a-Pint I pulled a golden nugget went straight in my ‘tips’ pocket. So I was on double time every shift. Shortly after I left that particular glittering career opportunity the place was burnt out by a disgruntled biker gang - quite possibly the only worthwhile urban renewal project seen in Dundee.

So it was while leafing through the local paper I came upon an ad for ‘telesales canvassers’ for a company selling UPVC windows and doors. I gave them a call. I was offered a job on the spot; presumably my unique selling points were I could speak whilst operating a telephone.

I turned up for my first night feeling quite optimistic. I needn’t have bothered. The building was a draughty old sandstone affair with the sort of fusty institutional odour common in old Carnegie libraries and pre-war hospitals dotted around Scotland. I was greeted by Jackie ‘the manageress’. If you were to take every childlike stereotype of a witch and feed it into some sophisticated identikit software it would spit out a bile flecked uncanny likeness of Jackie – coarse frizzy hair, rake thin, hook nosed and heavily wrinkled from heroic levels of smoking. When she spoke her thin lips pursed up like a dogs rectum from years of weapons grade cynicism and Regal King Sized to reveal some frankly terrifying teeth. Without the cheap black trouser suit to support her scrawny frame, I suspect she may well have had trouble remaining upright.

This was not a high-tech call centre, not by any stretch. A large dreary room with five or six clusters four mismatched tatty desks, each with a dog eared telephone directory and a grimy yellow phone. There was actually a fucked fluorescent light that buzzed and stammered in one corner like some clichéd interrogation room. Jackie extended a bony arm and disinterestedly invited me to sit ‘wherever the hell I liked’. A quick scan around the room of pallid grey faces let my gaze fell upon the only cluster of desks with just one occupant. I breezed over and took up the desk across from Donald. This was not a good idea. I later found everyone else simply referred to him as ‘Scary Donnie’. Donnie was probably around 50 or more with quite alarming eyebrows and Brylcreemed hair. I later came to suspect Donnie’s hair was in fact just very, very greasy. He had elected to wear a shit brown suit and pus coloured shirt combo with one of those curious knitted ties only ever worn by distracted academics, the oddness amplified by the fact everyone else was in jeans and trainers. I quickly noted Donnie was the only one in the room wearing a telephone headset. I smiled and made some nervous gesture pointing to my own head to indicate his headset and said ‘nice’ or something equally vacuous. Scary Donnie looked right through me then slowly turned to leaf through his phone book. Everything in the room seemed to go into slow motion as I stared at the plaster. Donnie had a pristine square of fresh sticking plaster stuck over the hole where his left ear would have been. The hole I had just gesticulated towards grinning like and idiot and ‘admired’. Fuck.

Donnie didn’t talk very much aside from his monotone drone on the calls. I soon settled into the routine and kept my spot across from Scary Donnie – I think I was too scared to move elsewhere. It was easy if not dull money. I was so bored I often had to fight sleep during the dreaded 8 to 9 o’clock stint. The place was staffed by a motley crew of misfits and no hopers, there wasn’t much chance for witty banter, or much hope of it even if there had been. I took to offering to do pretty much anything aside from making the calls in an attempt to relieve the monotony. One evening the all important fax machine the field sales reps relied upon ran out of paper. It was the old days of thermal paper and I was only too happy to take the mission of getting another from the storeroom upstairs. I trudged up the stairs and found the store. Usual stuff really – cartons of cheap A4 copy paper and stacks of those massive blue rolls of rough paper towels found in office toilets. On my way back out I spotted a large square door frame about three feet above the floor. Closer inspection revealed maybe 30 coats of nicotine yellow paint and some screw holes where there had once been a handle. I found a metal shelf bracket and managed to pry the door open after some grunting and scraping. Inside were some dusty wooden stairs that dog-legged up into the gloom. Being simultaneously nosey and bored is a sirens call that simply cannot be ignored. I hauled myself up and clambered up the stairs only to be confronted with another door. It was stiff but a quick boot opened upon a truly odd scene. It was clearly an old barber’s shop that had been abandoned. The room was the same size and layout as the ‘call centre’ below but this was on the attic level – there were large bay windows at intervals all around the room. There was broken glass and bits of wood strewn all over the floor and the sort of old school barbers chairs that are bolted to the floor still in place. I mooched around for a while marvelling at abandoned scissors, combs and old pictures of gents hairstyles that went out of fashion long before my time and ads for long forgotten pomades and oils. The place had been simply abandoned and locked up by the look of it. I spotted an old leather strop hanging from a wooden dresser; I had never actually seen one in real life. The mirror above the dresser was spotted with rust and the tabletop, thick with dust, was littered with the tools of some long gone barber. I tugged at one of the drawers. It opened grudgingly. And there it was – a piece of dried up bacon. I was just about to pick it up when the vomit welled up in the back of my throat. It was a severed. Fucking. Ear. I turned to run and was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of Donnie. He was standing in the doorway with his head tilted slightly to one side. It was the only time I had ever seen him smile. A slack, sickly wet lipped smile. Donnie made a horrible guttural noise then came at me with the razor. When he grabbed me I had that truly sickening realisation that comes when suddenly faced with someone with much more physical power. He got me in a headlock and raised the razor towards my ear. I could see his wild eyed reflection on the rusty blade.

The last thing I remember is laughter as I was spluttering and screaming. Jackie’s bony claw was on my shoulder “Spimf! SPIMF! For fucks sake, wake up will you” I looked round at the rest of the gleeful faces in that God awful call centre. All calls had stopped - even Donnie had a huge gormless smile plastered across his big creepy big face from ear to, erm... Once i had a cup of coffee and was truly back in the land of the living i saw the funny side too, but for a while it truly had been a complete call centre nightmare.

Didn't stop the skinny bitch docking my already pitiful wages though. Miserable witch.
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 12:57, 3 replies)

Make a comic strip next time.

(SSSSS, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 13:01, closed)

Good lord Mr Spimf
That was some cracking story telling.

Clicked.
( unsey a frizzy haired fruit since, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 13:07, closed)

nicely told
clicky
(Cancer Joy was short lived, Fri 4 Sep 2009, 13:49, closed)