Dale Lynch made this morning commute to work with a smile on his face. Today wasn’t just any day at the store. He would be running the electronics store, while the manager, David Duke, was away on a course. As assistant manager, Dale would be in charge for the first time. He pulled into the shopping centre car-park. He grabbed his briefcase, containing the morning newspaper, and his packed lunch, and strode purposefully towards the store.

As he neared the store he noticed a white transit van double-parked on the pavement outside. Workers in hi-vis yellow vests and hard hats were busily going about their work, bustling in and out of the store. Their vests said Routine Maintenance in large letters. Dale lifted his briefcase out in front of him, and headed inside. 

The shop floor was crammed with the maintenance workers, while his staff, the sales team, tried to get their jobs done around them. The place was like a building site. Great, he thought, while I’m trying to run a tight ship, I’ll have Bob the Builder all around my store. My store? He smiled at the thought. Well, yes, for today it was his store. Hopefully one day, he would take over the shop. 

Around opening time, when the shop would be ready to serve its first customers of the day, Dale clapped his hands together, this was his big moment, the start of his time in charge. The five people that worked in the store were young and uninterested. As far as Dale could see, they had no ambition for the business, no drive. It was a shame. They couldn’t see that, if they worked hard, they could achieve the great things he had accomplished in his time at the shop. He hoped to take over when David retired, and if any of the current staff played the game, and put the graft in, they could step up and replace him as assistant.

As he started his pep-talk to the staff, the repair workers set about their tasks, drilling and hammering. The noise was such a racket. Dale couldn’t have this, not this morning, not on his watch. He spun and marched over to a group of the workers.

‘Excuse me, can you give me five minutes? This is important. This lot need to learn a thing or too.’

The workers shrugged and downed tools, reaching for their thermos-flasks and poured themselves cups of tea.

Dale turned back to his team.

‘Right, where was I?’ He began.

Five minutes later, when he had imparted his words of wisdom into his reluctant staff members, he clapped his hands and told his workers to get back to work. He called out to the builders.

‘And you lot can get cracking too.’

The builders folded away their newspapers, finished their tea and got back to it.

‘If anyone wants me, I’ll be in the manager’s office.’ Dale said to nobody in particular.

The maintenance work was rather more intrusive than Dale had first thought. All morning the shop seemed to be full of workers, doing all kinds of work, carrying all kinds of equipment. One woman was carrying a spirit-level that was longer than her arm. A man with a tape measure was measuring everything in sight. And the noise, even from the office, his head hurt with the noise of drilling, sawing. 

Just after three o’clock that afternoon, there was a knock on the manager’s office door. One of the builders, entered. He gave Dale a warm grin.

‘Right, that’s us done for the day.’ He said, wiping his hands on a cloth.

Dale made a dramatic performance of checking the time on his watch.

‘Already? Hardly worth bothering coming in at all, if you ask me.’ Dale said. 

The builder just shrugged, still smiling. 

‘Go on, clear off.’ 

‘Good night, squire.’ The man said, tipping his hard hat.

Dale made a note to mention to the manager that the builders had clocked off early. Maybe they could get a reduction in whatever they were paying the building firm. 

A while later Tina, one of his newer members of staff, came running into the office. Dale waved an angry hand in protest.

‘Woah, you can’t just walk in to my office. You must knock. I expect better from my staff.’ He said.

‘But-’

‘Get out, and try it again.’ He yelled.

She shuffled back out of the office and knocked gently. 

‘Yes, who is it?’ Dale called. 

She rushed back in.

‘I think you need to see this.’ Tina said. 

Dale stared at the empty store room in complete shock. The large room that had been crammed full of electrical goods to be put out on the shelves as the display goods sold, was now totally empty. As of this morning, there had been hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment of stock in the store-room. There had been top of the range computing equipment, laptops, tablets and the latest mobile phones. And now it was completely empty.

‘We’ve been robbed.’ Said Tina. 

An hour later, back in the office, Dale called the store manager.

‘I’ve got bad news. We’ve been robbed. They’ve totally cleared out the stockroom. I’ve reported it to the police.’ Dale said.

‘Really? We’ll have to have a full report for head office and the insurance will be all over us.’ David replied. 

‘I think it could be the maintenance workers that were in today.’ Dale suggested. 

‘What workers?’ David asked. 

‘The routine maintenance workers. All these people in hi-vis vests.’

‘Who were they?’

‘I don’t know, just maintenance workers.’ Dale said. 

‘We had no maintenance work due today. What did their paperwork say?’ David said.

‘I didn’t check.’ Dale admitted, feeling sick.

‘What? Why ever not? Unauthorised people were in the store and you didn’t think to check?’

‘They were wearing hi-vis vests.’ Dale explained.

‘Are you actually saying that you let complete strangers wander around the store unsupervised because they were dressed like workers, in bright yellow vests and hard-hats?’

Dale did not reply, but his silence said that was exactly what he was saying.

By Chris Platt