One new trick I had learned while operating as
a publishing executive was to always have a small dictaphone, or tape recorder,
with you. From the very second that you
entered an area, where you would be working, you had your eyes open. If you saw a van, or truck, with someone’s
details emblazoned on the side, you would not just record the name, telephone
number and trade of the person, or company, but the colour and make of the
van. Later when you telephoned them, you
would explain that you saw one of their vehicles that morning and it made the
call seem more personal rather than you picking a random telephone number from
a page. So it was that I returned on the
Monday to Birmingham, for my final week of training as an audiologist in my
little executive run around, with my tape recorder.
I had no specific use in mind for the tape recorder,
but just brought it along. We knew that
at the end of the week we would have both practical and written exams. I knew that I was doing very well on the
course, not only could I read and write but, I could count to ten without using
my fingers. I’m not saying anything detrimental
about the other three students on the course but they were the type of fellows
who really do need to be warned not to iron a shirt while wearing it. Had I kept my wits about me I might have
started to connect the niggling little gremlins I was encountering along the
way, such as the not so executive company car, the not so competitive salary,
even the hotel we were staying at was breaking the trade description act by
calling itself a hotel.
As expected, well; at least as far as I had expected,
I was top of the class in all of the exams.
We were all called in. individually, to be debriefed by someone who was head
of some department or other. I know I often
make jokes about how clever I am or how jaw-droppingly gorgeous I used to be,
but it is quite a burden to have to carry.
Rather than return home and once again tell Irene that I was top of the
class, which is to be expected from one of the cleverest fellows in the universe,
I decided that the fellow debriefing me, the head of some department, could
tell her himself. So I put my tape
recorder in the inside breast pocket of my jacket, switched on to record of
course, and went in for my interview.
It was nice to return home and when asked how I
got on, to pull out the tape recorder and press play. For the nit pickers among you no, there was
no need to rewind it as I had already done that. Many times in fact, as I listened to the
tape a couple of times, in the executive company car, on the way home. It’s nice hearing people tell you how good
they think you are. Not only did this
fellow say how good he thought I was and how they had expected me to ace all their
exams, but he added that If I performed, as they hoped I would, out in the
field, that after twelve months experience in the field that they were willing
to offer me, there and then, the position of training manager for the whole
company. I didn’t really want to go home
and say all that to Irene, as my present position didn’t really indicate any
level of success at all, so it was nice to have this fellow say it all for me.
What was even nicer was the fact that the tape
recorder, which I had placed in my left, jacket, breast, pocket, was next to my
heart and in the background you could hear my heartbeat. To be sitting in a formal interview taping
the person that was debriefing you was quite a stimulating experience, but to
listen to the steady controlled beat of my heart, indicating that I was relaxed,
told me that I was indeed one cold calculating mother fecker. Tony, down in Ipswich, was pleased to hear
about my success and told me that there was decent money to be made in hearing
aids, seems that hearing aids and spectacles worked quite well together, and
you can take that whatever way you want, but if you look about, you will see
that most opticians offer the services of an audiologist and if you Google ‘Scrivens’
you will see that they have moved their focus away from hearing aids and are
now concentrating on optics but still offering audiology.
I was to begin my first week of training in the
field with a fellow who was operating in Wigan.
This was a senior audiologist who had been brought in to the area to specifically
train me. Rather than meet fresh, first
thing on the Monday morning, he suggested that I come over to the small hotel
he was staying in and we could meet and have a beer. I don’t think I have ever been known to turn
down the offer of beer so Irene and I drove over to Wigan on the Sunday evening
and had a few drinks with him. He seemed
to think that he was a very important fellow and rather than meet, chat and
begin to establish a friendship, this chap seemed to want to show me that our relationship
was teacher and trainee.
Luckily for me I was well used to idiots who suffered
from Napoleonic complex, from my time in the air force, and of course with me
now being a highly qualified medial man, after my intensive two week training
course, I could identify such complex psychological phenomenon at a range of up
to thirty paces. What I wasn’t so competent
at was realising just how dangerous these idiots could be, for first thing Monday
morning I was contacted by head office in Birmingham who were concerned that I was
quite possibly driving a company vehicle the previously evening and could have
been over the drink driving limit. I’m
sure the fellow, the senior audiologist, who had reported me, and who I was to
spend the whole following working week with, had given his actions some serious
thought.
He would have been proving his loyalty to the company
and his seniority to me, he was a senior man, he knew his stuff. What he didn’t know was that I was a great believer
in the old adage about what goes around comes around, so that in twelve months’
time, when I became training manager, his employment status might come under
discussion. But I ask you, what sort of
an idiot would do such a thing, well done Ken Clare, I can hear you shouting out
Joe, look at me I can march, Pearson and yes you are correct. You probably think that I was beginning to
believe that Civvie Street was full of back stabbing underachieving idiots, but
I’m not that stupid. I know that when
you believe that you find you are surrounded with idiots there’s a good chance that
there is only one idiot there and that idiot is yourself. So now I began to wonder if everyone else was
right and in fact it was me that was wrong.
It’s not an idea that I dismissed out of hand and it did cause me some
concern.
It was an interesting week but you can be sure
that I let the fellow know exactly what I thought of him. Initially I watched from a close distance but
as the week passed by I began to do more of the work so that at the end of the
week I was completing the whole process from the testing to the fitting. The money was very good indeed and you really
did control your earnings, the sixty pounds per week competitive salary
suddenly became pocket money. Every Monday
morning you would be given twelve clients for the week. Your job was to book an appointment with each
of the twelve and then go test their hearing, take a mould of their inner ear
and have an appropriate hearing aid made for them. There was a range of hearing aids you could
offer them from the very basic lump of plastic that sat over the ear, although appearing
cumbersome it was light years ahead of the old hearing aids that used to be
clipped to the front of the persons clothing with a wire connected to a mini
speaker that was jammed in the ear.
The top of the range devices were the ‘hidden’
or ‘invisible’ hearing aids that fitted right inside the ear, the very top of
the range device was gold plated and of course earned the best commission. So depending on what you sold the client determined
how much you earned. I suppose the minimum
commission was about one hundred and fifty pounds for one hearing aid while the
gold plated inner ear jobs could net you three hundred and fifty pounds commission. And don’t forget, most people have two
ears. I was glad that the first week of
on the job training was over, it was a bit of a disappointment having done most
of the work l that I would still only be given sixty pounds for the weeks work,
but from the glass being half empty or full perspective I only had one more
week to go and that was with a fellow in Liverpool. I mean what could possibly go wrong?
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