The continuing story of Malcolm Brown and his transition from art student to arb expert on the local parks department.

WHEN Malcolm was young and didn’t know any better, he hoped someday to land an office job.

It was the natural career progression for any aspiring young council employee – start on the tools and work your way up to management. When the rain was coming down in stair rods on a chilly winter’s day, Malcolm would imagine himself in cosy meetings with tea and biscuits. When the lads were fighting in the back of the van and motivating them to do anything was an uphill task, he would dream of a nice quiet office. 

As the years progressed, the occasional taste of office work came his way, but it wasn’t until he took the job of full-time union convener that he had a proper taste of office life and all the politics that went with it.

It came about one mizzly October morning. Malcolm was trying to navigate through rush hour traffic to a fallen tree on Sandyhill Golf Course when he got the call.

“Hello?” He answered without looking, watching the stationary traffic for signs of movement.

WANT MORE TREE GANG? 

“It’s Jade,” said the union branch secretary. “Have you got a moment?” From the tone of her voice it sounded serious.

Far ahead, Malcolm saw a red light change from amber, to green and back to red without so much as a flinch in the queue. “Sure. I’m stuck in traffic. What can I do for you?”

“Russell Barrett has resigned. We need a new convener. Are you interested?”

Had it been a bright sunny day and he was relaxing in the fork of some tall tree, he might have answered differently. Instead, as the vehicles in front started to inch forward, he said, “Yes. I’ll call you back.”

Malcolm had been a union steward ever since the single status debacle a few years back, when nobody else had wanted the job. He’d managed to stop his department being sidelined in the wages reshuffle and had represented colleagues in various disputes. He found it interesting occasional work but this would be a full-time post.

“Won’t you miss being out in the fresh air?” asked Leon.

Malcolm peered at the rain streaming down the van window.

“Nope.” He could feel the twinge in his back acquired from lifting heavy logs earlier. “I’m getting on in life. It’s time I did something less strenuous.” 

There would be no more early morning starts, rising bleary-eyed to get to the depot for 7 am, for the union office didn’t open till 9 am. The change of pace would do him good, he thought.

Later that afternoon, Malcolm took himself down to the town hall for an informal chat with Jade the branch secretary. 

An earnest and principled chain-smoker, she made him coffee and explained how it all worked.

The branch would vote on his application and, if successful (practically a foregone conclusion), there would follow an intern period where he would shadow Jade and attend a course for conveners. After a second cup of coffee and a smoke outside the side door of the town hall, she took Malcolm on a tour of the various departments.

Jade was political in the broadest sense. “It’s important to be seen and remind the managers that we are here,” she told him as she breezed from office to office. 

In due course, Malcolm was voted in as a full-time convener for his local branch. He was given a pile of books and pamphlets on health and safety, council policy, equality, etc. and a swipe card giving him access to all areas. One day a week would be spent travelling to Birmingham to study and the rest shadowing Jade as she went about her duties. 

And so, after a good night’s sleep and full of excitement, Malcolm set off in a fresh shirt and tie to start his new job with all the fervour of a fresh-faced recruit. 

He couldn’t wait to assist some poor, troubled employee. However, after following Jade about like a lost puppy for a few days, he soon realised the job was less about supporting members than building relationships with managers. 

After her first smoke of the morning and checking through her emails Jade would go on walkabout around the office complex, before the daily round of meetings kicked in.

“I like to have a quiet chat off the record before anything official gets said,” she told him.

“Sometimes you can do a deal and head off any problems.” 

Malcolm soon learned a lot of decisions were made this way and that what went on in the official meetings was usually a formality. 

Also, although Jade would joke with staff she came across, the jokes were always bland and innocuous and never disparaging, unlike those Malcolm was used to on the Tree Gang. Yet though these conversations were always polite, beneath the surface rolled a deep dark sea of internal politics.

Malcolm realised this when he found himself in trouble for passing on information about potential lay-offs. 

“You can’t say anything to the members yet. It’s confidential,” said Jade.
Malcolm frowned. “But surely they’ll want to know if they’ll have a job come Christmas.”

“Of course, but we don’t say anything until the board release it officially, otherwise they won’t share their information with us.”

Even so, it stuck in Malcolm’s throat to say nothing when his former colleagues asked him what was happening. He was used to voicing his knowledge openly. The lads he’d worked with on the tools may have been argumentative and abusive, but at least things got said to clear the air. In the offices the smallest slights were suppressed to fester into malignant, petty hatreds. Fairness was often talked about, but absent in practice and rules were followed to the letter with little leeway. Behaviours were expected to be managed and anything that could be taken as detrimental was jumped on. Malcolm frequently found himself dealing with cases that seemed solvable by a bit of straight talking.

“My manager doesn’t like me, I can tell by her tone,” one member of staff told him. 

“They moved me to the other building and they know I don’t like the other building because I have to walk further to the car park in the dark,” another complained. He wondered how they would have coped with Jack Dry’s furious tirades. 

People found themselves on disciplinary charges for things he wouldn’t have imagined on the Tree Gang. Being short with a manager, saying something mildly mean to a colleague, stealing council time, not clearing their desk before finishing or for failing to log their every conversation. Where vulnerable people, such as the young and the elderly, were involved this was understandable but procedures were very tight and the slightest misdemeanour could be serious.

Some areas of the council were like prisons, where you had to log in and out every time you went for a pee. There were security doors, cameras and signing out books everywhere. It was a far cry from the freedom Malcolm had known in his van.

He said to Jade: “No one speaks their mind. Every word is considered three times before being uttered.”

“That’s just how it is,” she said. “We have to be seen to be acting fairly.”

‘Acting’ was the right word. It was all an act to Malcolm and it didn’t take long for the shine of office life to become tarnished. To escape the tedious political manoeuvring, Malcolm would volunteer to go ‘off site’ to deal with problems in the various schools and council buildings around the city. He avoided the traffic-choked roads by cycling. Thankfully, Hanbridge was serviced with some excellent green and pleasant cycle routes. In fact, Malcolm had worked on most of them.

On one such trip he bumped into his old gang pruning back overhanging trees along one of the old railway lines turned greenway. 

“Ey up, Malc. How’s it going?” said Leon from the upper branches of a sycamore.

Malcolm leant his bike up against the van. “Not bad. I get a lie-in and don’t come home stinking of petrol and grease, with sawdust in my hair.”

“We miss you,” called Spudda, gathering branches for the chipper.

“That Jim Barton is in charge now but he’s useless.”

“He wouldn’t let Spudda drop a load of logs off at home so they had a barney. Spudda called him a wanker to his face,” said Karl.

Malcolm laughed. “And what did Jim say to that?”

“Told Spudda to eff off.”

Remembering similar arguments he’d had with Spudda, Malcolm smiled.

“Where you off to?” asked Leon.

Malcolm sighed. “Disciplinary. Someone accepted a packet of biscuits off a pensioner and forgot to log it as a gift.”

Everyone looked to Spudda, whose accumulation of ‘gifts’ fuelled a flourishing car boot business.

After a month, Malcolm had to admit he wasn’t cut out for office work. He missed the freedom of the van and not having eyes watching him all the time. However, Malcolm’s body seemed to be making the decision to quit for him. The endless dreary meetings were his Achilles heel. He spent hours listening to folk rake over the finer points of council policy, going over the same issues time and time again. All conducted in the soporific atmosphere of some stifling conference room. Having spent most of his life out in the fresh air, Malcolm wasn’t used to it. Try as he might he often found himself drifting off. 

“It doesn’t look good,” Jade told him, puffing away on a cigarette in the sunshine. “You can’t keep falling asleep.” 

Apparently he had sprawled snoring across the table in front of the leader of the council.

“I don’t want to fall asleep. I drink endless cups of coffee, but it’s just too bloody warm in those rooms. Why don’t they open the windows?”

Jade shrugged. “We tried that but someone complained of being cold in the draught.”

“It’s summer! I’m roasting in there.”

No matter what Malcolm did, taking the hardest chair, sitting upright, even stabbing himself in the buttocks with a pencil on one occasion, his eyelids would grow heavy and next thing Jade was shaking him awake.

And so it was that Malcolm abandoned his new job and returned to the bosom of the Tree Gang.

His ambition to join the ranks of office workers binned along with his office tie. On his first day back on the tools an argument broke out between Leon and Karl, obscenities were shouted, accusations flung, Malcolm told them to pack it in and bought them all a round of tea and coffee from the depot vending machine. No written statements, no first or final warnings, no black marks on the records and all forgotten by dinnertime. It was heaven.