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The pastoral idyll came to an end with the Herring (and Edmonds) family in good spirits. Spending an entire weekend in the same place as your whole family can lead to arguments or mass murders, but we came out of it only having had some solid discussions and with no serious fights (or any fight at all). Where’s the fun in family harmony?
The drive home went much better than the drive in, with no serious hold ups. We stopped for lunch along the way and I queued for a coffee. I was third in the queue and the man at the front was paying for his stuff with a twenty pound note. He was due change of around £14. I wasn’t paying full attention, because, you know, who would? But it seemed to me that having proffered £20 and having had that rung up on the till he then realised he had a ten pound note and paid with that. Certainly there was some change of currency and I can’t imagine he decided to swap a twenty for another twenty. The young woman behind the counter, gave him his four and a bit pound change and commented that it said £14 on the till because she’d rung in the £20. The man looked at the change in his hand and then at the total on the till and looked confused. Like the staff member was trying to trick him. He took two steps away, but then stopped and walked back to the counter. “Excuse me,” he said, “But I think I did give you twenty pounds.” Now I can’t swear that he didn’t. But nothing else really makes sense. And all this had happened in the space of a few seconds. Could he have forgotten what he’d done? That’s what made me wonder if I had not observed the incident correctly. And also, it seems for the woman who had served the coffee. She was, I would guess, a student doing temp work (oh I forgot that I also worked at a service station for a weekend and that might just have been one of my first seven jobs) and she was polite and nice and didn’t want to accuse this man of lying. And even though she must have known what had just happened, because it had just happened, this strange action caused her enough doubt to not tell him to sling his hook. “No, do you remember, you changed the money you gave me? Did you give me another twenty?"
“I am sure I gave you twenty,” the man said. I am not sure that he was just trying it on, maybe thinking that his receipt gave him evidence of being short-changed, because it would have said he was owed £14. I think he was maybe just tired or a bit dim. Or he hadn’t really been paying attention either.
But he was insistent. The woman behind the counter was uncertain as what to do. But she knew that if she gave him £10 it would come out of her wages if the till was short. And she must have known that he was wrong in her heart. She said she’d have to call for the manager so they could do a count of the till and see if it was £10 up. My heart sank. This would take some time.
The woman in front of me wasn’t piping up and I assumed she’d had a good view of the transaction, so maybe I was wrong. Maybe we were all just denying the evidence of our own eyes because a concern had been raised and none of us wanted to look stupid. But I’d already been waiting a while and I didn’t want to wait any longer so I told the guy that I was almost certain that he’d given a tenner. “You changed the note halfway through.” I might have said that even if I hadn’t seen anything just to save myself some time. But I was almost sure I was telling the truth. And my near certainty seemed to affect his own sureness. And even though the woman had called her manager, the man relented and decided to not bother after all. The member of staff was nice enough to request his number so that if she got to the end of the day ten pounds ahead she would call him and arrange to get it back to him. And I believed that she would do that too. She was very trustworthy and doing her best to resolve the situation. I doubt she will do more than five days work for Costa in her life, but she was a credit to them. Or maybe she just really wanted this weird amnesiac bald old man’s phone number. Who knows?
It was the only bit of drama in my day. And I feel I was the hero who resolved it. But don’t call he a hero, even though I am one. I think anyone would have done the same as me. Apart from the woman in front of me apparently. Who once the man had gone said, “There’s always one isn’t there. He was just trying it on."
She knew he was lying, but was too scared to speak up. And that is why I am a hero.
