36 Odd Customers

Our delivery business was continuing to grow slowly, we were now also doing deliveries for a butcher and we were approached by another branch of Coles in central Gosford to work for them too. Then a discount store close to Coles Gosford asked us if we could do their deliveries. It meant that we were doing much greater mileage between the stores and were pretty busy but I am not sure that the extra work was really profitable. Some of the deliveries we did for the discount store were large and heavy and had to be delivered to very awkward places. Into our little car we managed to squeeze television sets and bookcases, garden furniture and even once a sofa bed. A trolley would have been a great help but there was not enough room in the car for the goods and the trolley.


One morning we got a call at about 9.30 am from the discount store to ask us to deliver a bookcase to a lady in Ettalong so we went in early to get it done before anyone wanted their groceries delivered. Ettalong is quite a long trip, it is a pretty old suburb and the streets are long and straight and the houses all have back lanes. The plots are relatively large and so a many of them have been divided in half and the garages at the back converted into small dwellings. We were given a street name and a number but were told to go around to the back entrance in the lane. We did this and we found the place quite easily but when we pushed open the gate it was like a rubbish tip. We could not see a way to get to the house so we called and called but to no avail. We thought that the people in the front house might have some idea of what we should do so we drove around there, but they were not very helpful saying that they did not know their neighbour and never talked to her. They suggested that we should put the delivery just inside the gate and leave it there. We drove back intending to do just that but when we got there I thought that I would just try shouting a bit more. Then I thought maybe I should try and make my way through the long grass and the rubbish and get closer to the back door. I got near to the house, a woman came charging out and shouted at me. "What are you doing on my property?" I got a bit of a fright but I told her that I had come to deliver her bookcase and she said "Why didn't you just call from the gate" I told her I had but she said I couldn't have as she would have heard me if I had. I said that maybe I did not call loud enough and that we had both been calling for quite a while, and that we had even been round to the front to see if we could get in from there. That made her really mad, "I don't want anything to do with those people, I don't want them on my property, they can't be trusted.” I managed to calm her down enough to ask her were she wanted us to put her bookcase and she insisted that she wanted it at the back gate in the back lane and would not let us take it in for her. It was far too heavy for one person to handle alone but she said that she would open the box and take it in piece by piece. It was one of those ready to assemble kit type, so Jonny opened up the box for her and again offered to help her take it inside but she would not hear of it. Then she started to tell us all her problems, all her moans and complaints and we just could not get away. Poor old girl, I think she needed help but we were quite sure that she would not appreciate help from anyone. She would have felt that if someone came to see her they would have been interfering with her way of life and after all if she was happy like that who were we to try to make her change.

Another day we had to make a delivery of groceries to a lady with a foreign accent, Polish or Slav, I think. We were a little late getting there and she was very nasty to me. It was a day when we were very busy and I did not think it was really that late. I just told her so and said we had done our best but she was very upset and unkind. After that I saw her a couple of times in Coles and each time she was complaining about something. On one occasion she asked for a packet of cigarettes, when she was told the price she became very abusive to the girls and said, "I want to see the manager" and would not listen to anyone else. I felt sorry for him as tried to explain to her that he did not set the price of cigarettes and that there was nothing he could do about it. Every time I saw her she was involved in a heated argument with some shop assistant or other. I just kept as far away as I could and hoped that she was so upset with me that she would not ask for a delivery again. She was a short plump woman between 60 and 65 I would say, with hair dyed a rather bright orange. Eventually what I had feared most came to pass and there was an order to be delivered to her. It was on a Thursday when the pensions had been paid so we were pretty busy but as she lived close to the shopping centre we decided to do hers first so that she would not complain again. We got there very quickly, she was not even home yet so we did what we usually did when our customers were not home, we put the order near her door in the shade and left our card with it.

A little while later my phone rang and I answered "Marina, here" I recognised her accent straight away, she said, "I want to speak to someone else,” I told her it was my personal phone and there was no one else. She tore me off a strip for leaving her groceries so far from her door. We had put them in the shade about six feet from her front door. She said, "I am not allowed to carry all those parcels, because I am pregnant". I realised when she said that that she really was a little touched and had trouble not laughing out loud. I told her that I had done my best and if she had any complaints she had better ring the manager of Coles. Very cowardly, I know, but I thought maybe Geoff could handle it better than I could. When I went back to Coles I thought I had better tell the girls that she had a complaint so they would know who it was on the other end if she did ring. They knew exactly who I was talking about and told me a few more stories of her odd behaviour. She never did ring to complain about us and we did quite a few more deliveries to her after that and she was always very friendly and chatty.