British Expats - Got a bit of a story to tell..........

That night Robbie and I talked shop and sorted a few things out, I was stunned that he had only sold 6 trucks that year and thought to myself was it the lack of his sales skills or the fact that the market down here was so small that’s all he could sell, he did assure me that there was a lot of business to be gained and I believed him, why wouldn’t I after all he lived here I didn’t! So that was it the deal had been done, all I needed to do was to confirm everything with Rhys and go back to the UK, hopefully things would turn out the way I wanted them too and we’d spend the rest of our lives happy as a happy thing in Rangiora.
Monday morning came and Robbie asked if it would be ok if he dropped us off at the airport a bit earlier, I said fine but asked why, he explained that he didn’t want to get stuck in the rush hour traffic. We left his house and turned on to state highway 1, at the point we joined it had just turned in to a dual carriage way, from Picton it is a single lane, to me this was good but bad as it proved two things, the first the SI is a unpopulated place the second is NZ can’t really afford decent infrastructure, but at the end of the day this is what makes the place so special.
Anyway we flew back to Auckland and waited for our gear, as we do yet another piece of luggage had been damaged this time the pram. Now if you have two small kids I would strongly recommend buying a pram called “Phil & Ted” basically these are a double buggy but a fantastic design, instead of having the kids side by side there are designed to have them sitting in
tandem which as every mum knows is ideal when shopping!

Here's a picture!

http://scoot.net/gallery/bbs/IMG_00011.JPG

Anyway go on to the web site or even Google search, we spent just under a grand for a complete set and it was fantastic, we sold it on trade me when we left for $900. So the pram had been caught on the conveyer and it had ripped, I was fuming and went straight to Air NZ and had a strongly worded conversation with one of the ladies at the desk, the outcome was a voucher for baby city that basically entitled us to a new one, result!
So we where back in our house in Howick, well it was not going to be our house soon!
I had to talk to John about the job back in the UK and finalise some things, well not finalise things but see what he wanted me to do and when he wanted me to start. That night I phoned John, I told him that the flights had been booked and paid for which by this time they had, I’d waited for the flight centre to have one of there many sale’s and went in the Sunday before and booked and paid for them, in total it was costing us $4,500 for 4 of us one way, the bonus was that our Millie had entitled us to have the seats just after the bulk head which meant loads of leg room. Anyway I talked to John and he said there were no problems; all I needed to do was contact his son Steven and the sales manager Kevin. Now contacting Kevin was not a problem you see Kevin was the person who had actually taken me on from leaving the forces, he use to me the sales manager for Toyota and we had become good mates. I left and joined John and after a year had got Kevin the job as sales manager which was a totally unselfish as I’d been put in the line for the job, but I knew Kevin desperately wanted to get out of his current employer and as he was a mate I sacrificed promotion, saying that I was very happy with what I was doing. So yes he owed us a favour and I knew he would sort me out with a good package. Steven on the other hand was quite frankly an idiot, he was the typical bloke who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth or placed firmly up his arse, he was a knob. He was a small bloke in both height and physic, a weed of a man he could probably get away with buying children’s clothing, the best thing was he had a skin problem, I know that’s not nice to say but with the way he treated people this bloke deserved all he got. He use to twitch when he talked and his skin would flake off, guess what his nick name was, yep “flaky” he was a class one prick. He hated the way John and me got on and the way I got on with the rest of the people within the company, he could never get on with people because he was and still is not a nice person, if he didn’t have his Dad’s money he would be a very sad bloke. I remember one Christmas we went round his house, not because we wanted too but the fact the we were expected to, if we didn’t he would make our lives hell at work, I noticed that he had loads of Christmas cards on the mantle piece and had a quick look, the sado had taken the Christmas cards that suppliers sent to work and pretended that they were from people, they weren’t they were from companies who supply us with hydraulic hoses and tyres!
Anyway I tried to contact Kevin to find out what sort of money I’d been on, I rang him at home and left a message; I also rang Steven and left a message on his mobile. A few days latter they had not rang me back so I left another message and again waited a few more days, again no reply. I didn’t thing anything of it just thought they were busy.
That Monday I had an email from Kevin waiting for me when I switched my computer on, basically yes I had my job back which was good, the only problem was that they had dropped my money by 6,000 quid a year and I was now going to be starting back with them as a trainee, f##k that. There was no way I was going to do that, I felt as if I had been truly led up the garden path and felt let down, angry and upset. I knew who it was and I knew why, it was Steven and he had finally got one over on me, he didn’t care about messing with peoples lives to him it was a laugh, a game, in his world he had won.
I went straight home from reading that, I had to talk to Sharon what were we going to do now, the one reason for going back was that I had a job to go back to, that had changed I didn’t. You see I’d already replied and told them to stuff off, I was not going back to work for them not on them terms I knew I was worth more than that and knew that they were getting me or trying to get me cheep.
The thing is we had booked everything, sold up and had 10 days left, crap.