I actually collect these stories. I call them Urban Nightmares, and I’ve stashed a few on my website (in the section I call The Vault). Here’s one of my favourites.
"Thanks for your persistent attempts to send the fax over. You are owed an explanation. Here it is.
There’s a little flex that comes out of the back of my phone. I plug it into a nice BT (British Telecom) socket in the wall. When I bought my fax machine, three years ago, I realised it too would want to use the BT socket in the wall. The man in the fax machine shop said this was no problem, and he was right. Because there’s a flex that comes out of the back of my fax machine, and at the end is a clever little box no bigger than my thumb. I plug this magic box into the socket, and then I plug my phone into this magic box. And everything works beautifully. If a voice comes in, it goes to my phone. If a fax comes in, it goes to my fax.
That was the situation a week ago. Then I snagged the wires at the back of the magic box, so it couldn’t be plugged into the wall properly. Oh well, I thought, I’ll have to get a replacement. I thought this would be easy. After all, millions of fax machines have been sold all over the world, and all the sockets are standard nowadays… how hard can it be?
I get in the car and drive down to Purley Way, nr. Croydon, where all the big superstores are. I take the defunct line splitter thingy in with me, so I can show everyone EXACTLY what I’m talking about.
First stop, Comet. A huge branch of Comet, like a soccer field. Do you have one of these thingies that comes out the back of a fax machine and lets the phone and fax feed off one socket? Blank look. Then, a guess: "If we do have one, it will be over there with the ‘Accessories’ " says the assistant.
I go and rummage around myself (the assistants being busy talking to each other about their overtime payments and what they saw on TV last night). It soon becomes clear they don’t have one. I go back to an assistant near the door and I say, “Er… just out of interest, do you actually sell fax machines here?”. “Yes we do, sir” and he points to a spot a few miles away in the store. “And what do you do if a customer buys one and then this bit [I hold up my defunct line splitter thingy ] needs replacing?”. His reaction was utterly blank, as if I had just asked to name seven famous cellists.
Having established that while Comet could find room to stock 700 functioning, on-display television sets (a rough count) they couldn’t find room for a telecoms line splitter, I asked the cellists expert if he knew of anywhere that would stock such an item. He recommended Tandys: “Well, you can’t go wrong with Tandys, can you?”. But that would entail going into Croydon, which I was keen to avoid. Did he know of anywhere nearer?
He shrugged, and suggested Currys, who also have a gargantuan branch just across the Purley Way.
Get in car. Drive across to Currys. Park. Go into Currys. Currys don’t sell anything to do with phones or faxes. An assistant caught my eye, and I said I guessed they couldn’t help me. He confirmed my guess. “What you need”, he said, “is Tandys. Well, you can’t go wrong with Tandys, can you?”. I said I was trying to avoid going into Croydon if I could help it.
The Currys man said in that case, why not try B&Q? I responded with the inquisitive expression that this nonsensical recommendation heartily deserved. However, this man was the sort of self-assured, matey, I’ve-seen-the-world type whom it seems hard to disbelieve. B&Q? “Oh yes”,’ he went on, “You’d be surprised what they stock there these days”. He even gave me one of those they’ll-see-you-right-squire nods that people are always giving me to my face while they talk complete drivel.
So, like a prat, I believe him. Get in car. Drive half a mile up the bypass to yet another vast, sprawling industrial estate. There it is: a B&Q warehouse the size of something very big. The sort of building where the architect probably had to make allowances for the curvature of the earth.
I go in, clutching my defunct fax splitter whatsit. There is a man whose job is to cheerily meet customers and direct them to the appropriate section of the B&Q universe.
“Afternoon sir. Is that a return? Faulty?”, he asks me, nodding at the duff line splitter.
“Er, no, I’m not returning it, I just…”
“Did you buy it here?”
“Here? No. I’ve never been here before…”
This foxed him. Without even trying, I had poured custard in the carburettor of his brain. Why was I bringing something into his store if I hadn’t bought it there, and which wasn’t faulty anyway? What madness be this? I could see his mind was about to melt out of his ears like so much hot cheese, so I calmed him down and explained.
“I just wanted to see if you sold things like this, because I need a new one”.
“Ah, I see. What is it?”
“Well, it’s a connector that allows a fax and a phone to share a single socket”.
He looked as if I had just revealed unto him the secret of fire.
“Right, well, best thing”, he said, “is to go and see the electricians. Aisle eight”.
He gestures me in the direction of aisle eight. I get there, and of course there’s nobody in sight. I look around the shelves. They DO have a very small section devoted to telelcom stuff, but it’s just simple line extensions and similar telephonic tundra. Nothing to solve my problem.
I pass the same man on the way out. “No luck?” he asks in a matey fashion. “Nope, not this time” I say. “What you need…” he begins, and I get the Tandys speech all over again.
I leave. Getting out of the B&Q car park is rather tricky, since every aperture is clearly marked ‘No exit’, and every lane which seems to lead away from the place is marked ‘No entry’. I once read somewhere that every year about 300 people in Britain simply go missing, without ever being heard of again. For a moment, I wonder if maybe they’re all in this car park somewhere, desperate to get out, still believing Heath is in number 10 and worrying about the introduction of decimal currency (“They’ll use it as an excuse to put the prices up, you know”).
I eventually just ignore the silly signs and drive out of the car park, rather suspecting this might cause the sky to start falling. It doesn’t. I am now faced with the option of last resort. I must go to Tandys. Which means parking in Croydon.
I have no idea which bureauprat controls parking in Croydon. I suspect he’s probably called Norman, has a thin moustache and dons a pair of string-backed gloves every time he goes driving. I should imagine he’s had at least one letter on ‘Points of View’, probably to complain about a costuming error in a recent historical drama. ‘A colonel of the period would have had two cuff buttons, not three as so erroneously depicted…’.
All I know for sure about this man is that he’d have Hitler weeping tears of envy, such is the seamless tyranny of his power, the comprehensive visitation of his will upon the landscape. Croydon is the only place on earth where traffic regulations actually out-number bacteria. You VILL use one of ze official car parks. Oh yes, zat is quite ze certainty. Make no mistake, car-driving scum. You VILL obey ze rules.
So I park in the multi-storey, as so must we all, Sieg Heil!!, even if it’s only for two minutes. And I traipse over to Tandys. Well, you can’t go wrong with Tandy’s, can you?
In Tandys there are two people: a man who looks like he knows a thing or two about electrical components, and a girl who looks like she knows a thing or two about frost-effect nail varnish. This is not a sexist statement, it’s an accurate description. The man is busy, don’t you just know it, so I get the girl. I explain the problem. She makes a guess as to what to do next, and then goes off for a chat with the man. She comes back and offers me a Radioshack Dual Outlet Adaptor and TWO Radio Shack Replacement Modular Cords.
“Why do I need TWO?”.
“One for the fax, and one for the phone”.
“The cord from the phone is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s at home right now, plugged into the wall”. Miss Nail Varnish Expert smiles sheepishly and says “Ah, right”. One of the cords is set aside and not sold to me. She begins punching numbers into the till.
“This dual outlet thingy. Will it automatically divert a phone call to the phone, and a fax to the fax machine?”, I ask.
“It should do” she says.
“Yes, but will it?”.
“Yes. It should do”.
“Whether it should or not isn’t really what I need to know. I need to know if it WILL. Because if it will, then I’ll buy it, and if it won’t, then there’s no point in me buying it because I don’t want it. I only want it if it will do what I just said”.
She goes for another conflab with Mr. Occupied Busy Important Person. and returns with the assurance that it will work. So I buy it, and extract my car from the grip of the multi-storey (50 pence minimum charge), and go home. And I install everything with confidence. Well, you can’t go wrong with Tandys, can you?
Oh yes you CAN. It doesn’t work. None of it. I am no further forward than I was when I set foot in Comet, two and a half hours previously. I can’t help thinking what they must be like, all the people who weren’t good enough to get the jobs currently being done by the people I have dealt with in shops this afternoon.
Well, I’m going to lie down now, and then I’m going to fix myself a nice last meal and then I’m going to shoot myself."
