I used to take the time to hold a weekly meeting on Fridays and then take the guys out for a beer. They usually only had one or two all night so it wasn’t that expensive. They were going to need that beer this week though because the meeting was going to be rough.
We listened to call after call of unhelpful comments, rude behaviour and a general lack of customer service. I asked them what they thought and nobody thought anything was wrong. They shrugged when I reminded them about their training. It hadn’t been that long ago but you’d have thought that it happened at the fall of the wall.
I thought, ‘God it’s like trying to teach a tiger how to wipe its arse’. I looked around the room at their blank expressions and wondered how they didn’t see what was wrong. I told Monika that she could go if she wanted to and asked Paweł if he wanted to stay. He wasn’t in a rush to return to his wife and I was glad. I would probably need him because the angrier I got at the nonchalance, the less understandable my English became.
“Do you guys know what a rim job is?” I barked.
By the looks I guessed not. I looked at Paweł who was smirking. I just widened my eyes and he translated it for me. The room laughed. Am glad they found that funny because what I was about to tell them wasn’t funny at all.
“If you get off a call and you can’t taste the clients shit in your mouth then you weren’t nice enough.” The laughing had stopped and they straightened up. “This is customer services, you service the customers. On Monday I need you guys to start putting your necks into it.”
I think the last part largely went over their heads but they got the message. I wasn’t interested in going for drinks and felt that they needed time alone. I handed a few hundred to Paweł and wished them all a nice weekend. Hopefully something would sink in over the weekend and Monday morning would be a lot more satisfactory.
I went back to my office and wrote up the numbers. Targets seemed random and I think that any true numbers wouldn’t emerge at least for a year and then we could compare like for like. Using the UK as a benchmark wasn’t realistic or maybe I just wasn’t doing a good job. I left the office depressed by work but happy at the thought of a weekend alone with my women.
I had planned to whisk her off to a hotel just for the hotel sex. Well, maybe to rekindle some of the Courtly Lodge atmosphere as well or even just to get out of Warsaw. It was a nice modern city but without you realising, something built up inside and you needed a few days away. To be surrounded by more green. I think Elly felt the same and we got a taxi to a little spa just outside Warsaw.
A weekend of massages, jacuzzi’s and general relaxation. It promised to be blissful.
Elly got upset as soon as we got there and worried about whether she could get massaged or how many of the services she could use. I said we’d check it out with the receptionist the next morning but tonight was for us. She was extremely tense and frigid though. In the end she fell asleep at 8 o’clock and I was left with nothing to do.
I then had an idea.
I would make something for her.
I looked around for inspiration but saw none. I could make a mix tape but I wasn’t thirteen and it wasn’t the 1980’s. I could do a mix CD or mix mp3. Is that what the kids had to do today? An mp3 compilation or a playlist on youtube or grooveshark?
I felt old. What did old people do?
I could write her a poem.
Even better, write her a poem then translate it into Polish.
That would cheer her up.
The only problem was that I didn’t speak Polish. Google translate, you mother bitch, to the rescue. I love our time, we really do live in the blessed age.
So I tried to remember what I’d learnt in school. I remembered Mrs. West an angry old drunk who always remained seated, never writing on the blackboard or later whiteboard all the years she taught me.
I remembered Shakespeare, sonnets and iambic pentameter. I wondered if I could do rhyming couplets or this thing called a haiku. I knew whatever it was in English didn’t matter so much because once in the translator it would sound strange. I started out simple.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I am 13
So here is a mix CD for you!
I popped it into the translator then opened a second page and translated it back to make sure I wouldn’t end up with some garbled nonsense. Luckily it gave me back the same simple verses that I had just written.
Time to get down to some romancing.
You are my day and night,
My everything I want in life.
Together we make each other better,
These days, weeks, months are treasures.
I don't know the future,
But tell me your past.
I want to learn the beginning to our story, Remember all the members of the cast.
If we died tomorrow,
They wouldn't remember our names.
Our love living on,
That would be our fame.
I thought about adding more about our legacy created but who knows when I might need to cheer her up again. I didn’t see the point in using up all my good stuff in one poem. If am honest though I didn’t really work at it, I just let it flow out.
I poured myself a whiskey and got some paper. I had spotted some flowers in the hotel garden that I’d pinch and use to create a border around the hotel stationary. I planned to write the poem out in Polish and present it to her in the morning. If I had a printer I would have used it. My handwriting looks like a spider crawled through an inkwell then tangoed across a page.
My target was romantic not perfect.
I had to leave room to grow otherwise where would we be in six months?
Disappointmentsville.
Google translate spat this out for me to scrawl into cipher: Jesteś moim dniem i nocą,
My wszystko chcę w życiu.
Wspólnie tworzymy siebie lepiej,
Te dni, tygodnie, miesiące są skarby.
Nie wiem na przyszłość,
Ale powiedz mi swoją przeszłość.
Chcę dowiedzieć się początek naszej historii, Zapamiętaj wszystkich członków obsady.
Jeżeli umarliśmy jutro
Nie chcieli pamiętać nasze imiona.
Nasza miłość żyć dalej,
To byłaby nasza sława.
I got to work writing it up and when I was done and done with my whisky I tried to translate it back. A few things changed but it generally stayed the same.
I thought about memorizing the lines but there were too many sounds in my mouth and the whisky wasn’t helping my tongue wrap around the words.
In the morning I snuck out and picked the violet flowers I’d spied the night before. I plucked the petals and wet the paper around the edge, applied the petals and put it under my laptop to dry. By the time Elly woke up it was getting close to the end of breakfast so we both rushed down.
There wasn’t much of the meat left but Elly was happy to see pancakes and I loaded up on fruit hoping that I’d need the energy later. She asked what I did last night, she never apologised, not for falling asleep on me, not for anything, ever!
I told her that I tried learning some Polish which made her laugh.
“So tell me something.” She said between bites.
I got really shy and hide behind my fruit.
“Maybe you can teach me later.” I said.
“No you must tell me something now.” She demanded playfully.
“I wrote you a poem.”
“In Polish? For me?” She seemed touched just by the thought of it.
The waitress came back from the kitchen with a plate of sausages so I made my move, even taking a couple for Elly then refilling my coffee and juice and Elly’s tea and juice. There is no better place to make a pig of yourself than at a free breakfast.
Elly didn’t eat her sausages and I struggled them down with the last of my orange juice. Elly couldn’t wait for her surprise so she was rushing me and I really felt that I shouldn’t have eaten so much.
I was doing little burps as she sped ahead of me, the sausage wafting back at me as I tried to keep pace. We reached our room and I slid in the key, a proper metal one, not an American movie plastic card thing. She jumped on the bed and I lifted the laptop up and passed her the poem.
As she wondered around the room absorbing it, I collapsed onto the bed and unbuttoned my pants to allow the girth the freedom it needed. I was releasing a sausage smelling groan when she finished reading it and jumped aboard the Smelly James bouncy castle.
I held in my vomit but as she pressed her lips strongly against my mouth I felt myself asking, why now?
I rolled her over and excused myself to the bathroom for a little gargling.
“I don’t mind the sausage.” She said undressing at the bathroom door.
It turned out that we never got around to asking the receptionist what she could or couldn’t do.