The Dispatcher
Walter Laval, fifty-six years of age, in his fifty seventh year was wishing his time away to retirement age. Married young, which foreshortened his education, instead, sired four children and now with nine grandchildren and a great grandchild on the way. His varied career ranged from bank clerk, insurance collector, auto line manager and now ensconced for the last ten years in the haulage trade, now calling itself high falluting logistics. The now National Company wisely invested in state-of-the-art technology, all bought off the shelf, to price, tag, screen and follow the pallets and parcels all the way from customer to destination. Wal’s job was to ensure that all this technology worked and if not find the cause and get the original supplier to fix the problem pronto. After ten years one might say that Wal was truly on top of the job and had time on his hands. Since it was such an important and essential job Wal had an assistant, Penny, who was appointed by those up there to train as back up should Wal decide to leave the company for whatever reason. Unbeknownst to his bosses his main desire was to be left alone and dream of redundancy so that he could retire and spend more time with his family. Wal lived in a quaint period house with a large garden in Leamington Spa and his office was nearby in Daventry.
‘Wal, Southampton are having problems with their scanners.’
‘Thanks Penny, can you handle it?’
‘Think so, probably someone has forgotten to update them this weekend. Lots of updates streamed from Logitec. I told them all but you know how it is. I’ll handle it. More information than cry for help Wal.’
‘OK Penny, let me know how many of the others are in the same boat,’ answered Wal as he scrutinised the screen and chewed his pencil as he got the wording right on his next letter. A press of a key and a ping announced that the letter was being printed. Wal slipped a hand down, without looking, into the second drawer down and picked out a plain white envelope. With a large black Mont Blanc fountain pen, he wrote out the address carefully with one eye on the screen. With practised hand he folded the letter and slipped it into the envelope and sealed it with a flourish. A first-class stamp was peeled off a large sheet and stuck carefully in the right-hand corner and the completed letter tossed into a tray to join thirty others ready for pickup by the postie that called daily at the office at five. A glance at the envelopes would show the envelopes addressed to captains of industry. These were begging letters all attempting to seduce the rich and powerful to throw a few coppers into the can for charity. Except last year Wal managed to extract pledges amounting to over ten million pounds sterling for hundreds of charities in the Midlands.
It all started as usual with the family. The children needed sponsorship for various events they entered and Wal started writing begging letters to local industrialists and seemed to have the knack to get surprising results. He was so successful that many local and national charities would contact Wal to get support for their cause. Since Wal had time on his hands, he wrote letters and researched the rich, powerful and famous. He honed his compelling letters to such an extent that he was quite dismayed when one was turned down. He made sure that the money was raised by children doing something active, the sponsor would get publicity and the charity had to send back a letter of gratitude. He always addressed the letter to the chairman and would add personal comments that he gleaned from his research or from past requests. All he asked from the charities he supported was for a supply of top bond paper, envelopes and first-class stamps. He supplied his own dark blue ink for his Mont Blanc and a printer distributor supplied him with a laser printer and never-ending supply of ink cartridges. From nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, Wal would write letters with an occasional interruption from Penny, for information only. The Managing Director knew of Wal’s activity and was happy to approve as long as the Dispatcher System was up and running all the time and there hadn’t been any failures for over seven years so why upset the applecart.
Wal wrote his letters, dreamt of retirement, accepted updates of fixed problems from Penny and had no further ambitions than to go home at the end of the day and be greeted by some of his Grandchildren that were constant visitors to the house. One day his simple life was split asunder by some major charity nominating him for a Knighthood for his stalwart work for charities over the years. He had already turned down lesser awards in the past but his family were adamant that he should accept this one, the big one. This Wal knew would leave him in a quandary. How could a ‘Sir’ continue at work as a lowly Dispatcher? This wasn’t right and he would have to give up his job and be short of money for the rest of his life. His pension didn’t amount to much and he had another ten years to do before he could retire comfortably.
‘Jim, have you heard the news?’ asked the Personnel Director addressing his Managing Director, ‘Wal our Dispatcher has been nominated for a Knighthood for all the money he has raised for charity.’
‘Good on him and I hope he accepts but where does that leave us Norman?’
‘Well Jim can you imagine going down to the main office and telling Sir Walter to buck up his ideas?’
‘Not really but we can’t promote him nor can we sack him. It’s a dilemma and we’ll have to think this through.’
‘The only thing I can think of Jim is that we employ him as a Consultant, self employed so that he can work from home and be on the end of a line if we have a real big problem.’
‘We haven’t had a problem yet for years but I believe that Wal has the wisdom to highlight the potential problems before they appear and put in a fix. We can’t afford to lose that ability. Penny can handle the day-to-day stuff which is mainly with piddly problems with chargers and wrong ink cartridges.’
‘It’s legendary that he wants to retire and be with his family but he’s too young for that and his pot won’t be up to much. He’s only worked for us for ten years and couldn’t afford to contribute out of his own pocket.’
‘Sound him out Norm and see what he wants. We must come out of this looking generous and not spiteful. We can even couch it that we encouraged him to do something useful in his spare time. Stop him getting bored. Come up with a generous package for the man.’
Walter and his wife accepted the invitation to Buckingham Palace and returned as Sir Walter Laval. His leaving present from the company was a laptop computer, desk and chair so that he could continue his work from home. A generous increase in his salary followed plus an increased contribution by the company towards his pension. An addendum was added to the company profile on the stock exchange listing ‘Sir Walter Laval’ as a main Technical Consultant and Associate Director, which looked rather grand amongst the list of ordinary folk.
