I do apologise for my absence over the past ten days or so. I was quite ill for a few days and have latterly been hell-bent on beating a path to the end of this book I'm writing. I have, at last, reached the final chapter. Because the book is, on the face of it, a memoir of the 40-50 jobs I've had over the past 49 years, I'm ending it with my summary dismissal from the Tote (for whom I worked part-time as a betting assistant). My crime? Well, they called it Gross Misconduct. In fact it was a letter, a 22-pager, that I sent to the Chief Exec, suggesting that he and his fellow board members were thieving bastards who deserved a pay cut and the withdrawal of their bonuses. And then I sent copies to the press. They got rid of me 'quicker than Grant took Richmond'.
Because I have dug out this letter, written six years ago, and because I've been going through it with a view to using part of it this concluding chapter, I decided I may as well stick the whole thing on here for anybody who might care to read a 22-page rant written in one sitting after a long day at the races. It still makes me laugh. I hope it affords any readers a wry smile.
An Open Letter to the Tote Board and Management
This is an open letter in which I
make a range of comments aimed at a number of people involved in the management
of the Tote, so please understand that where I address any remark to “you” it
may be taken on an individual or joint basis.
Please understand that I speak as an individual and as a member of the
Tote staff. The idiosyncrasies of my
language and the overall temper of this letter may disturb you, but they merely
reflect my mood. The essence of what I
am saying is a true reflection of what is going on in your organisation. It is hard to express it without allowing
some of the anger to seep out.
I was on the bus coming home from
Pontefract races a day or two ago with a number of other Tote Betting
Assistants when I heard someone refer to the senior executives of our
organisation having helped themselves to a substantial bonus payment on top of
their salaries for the year ending 31 March 2007 .
On Saturday we are to work atYork 12 noon . I took with me a cup of coffee. I’d like you to remember that cup of
coffee. It’ll come up later. The area I was working in, the Courtyard behind
the Paddock Kiosks, was already crowded with punters, all eager to place
bets. I did my best to take their
money. Heaven forefend that the Tote’s
profits be diminished due to my lack of enthusiasm.
I mention Supervisors. Most of them are decent women (or occasionally men) but in most cases they are saddled with responsibilities far beyond their capabilities. AtYork
York
30 July 2007
Because I have dug out this letter, written six years ago, and because I've been going through it with a view to using part of it this concluding chapter, I decided I may as well stick the whole thing on here for anybody who might care to read a 22-page rant written in one sitting after a long day at the races. It still makes me laugh. I hope it affords any readers a wry smile.
An Open Letter to the Tote Board and Management
I found this both interesting and
startling, since my own perception of the Tote is of a ramshackle organisation
staggering along under the burden of a remote, incompetent management and kept
afloat by the stoical efforts of a heroic but disaffected workforce.
Realising that I must have been
mistaken, I got home and immediately turned on my p.c. to have a look at the
Tote’s annual report. It was most
illuminating.
I had no idea, for example, that
our Chief Exec, one Trevor Beaumont, had been voted a bonus payment of
£266,000, being a sum equivalent to 82.5% of his annual salary – to mention
nothing of a “taxable salary supplement of £66,000 in lieu of other pension
benefits”. I do not know who Mr Beaumont
is. I do not know what he does. But I am mightily impressed. He has surely achieved great things to be
worthy of such a reward. I would
calculate that we’re talking about an annual income for last year in the region
of £600,000. I would like to know what
planet in the Tote Universe Mr Beaumont inhabits – and when I next take a
holiday I must try and visit it, because, when I look around me at the rickety
little starship that I have got to know over the past five years as a Betting
Assistant (York) I have to say that I see little evidence of any guiding hand
at all, let alone one that might have steered us to such heights that the man
on the flight deck should be blessed with a hand-out sufficient to keep me in
comfort for the rest of my life.
Since neither Mr Beaumont – nor Mr
Joe Scanlon (annual bonus £104,000) nor Ms Carol Thompson (£93,000) - has ever
to my knowledge made an appearance at a Tote window in the York area during my
five years at the chalk-face, let me offer a few snapshots of a recent weekend
for an average Tote worker.
On Friday we were to take the bus
to Thirsk, leaving York York
I wonder whether you ever think of
your Betting Assistants. I wonder
whether you have the faintest idea what a day’s work consists of. Let me explain the system of payment for
Tote Betting Assistants, because I cannot imagine you have time in your busy
working day to acquaint yourself with its intricacies. We are paid from an hour and a half before
the first race. Never mind the fact that
we have boarded the bus two and a half hours before the first race – and let us
overlook the fact that some people travel a considerable distance to catch said
bus. We cease to be paid the minute we
`cash out`. I believe in my case, last
Friday at Thirsk, I was put down as having finished at 1802h, thus giving me
some thirty-seven minutes’ pay beyond the standard five hours and a half. After we’ve cashed out, we wait – and wait –
and wait, firstly for the Supervisory staff to get all the cash sorted out,
then for the Control staff to wind up their business. As a rule we – and the bus – wait for thirty
to forty minutes, frequently longer.
Finally we drive back to York
I hope you are all paying attention
to this. It may seem mundane and
trivial, but it is a fair reflection of how we live and how we work, the
conditions and hours we endure. And if
you are running an organisation which pays you around £300,000 a year in basic
salary, £266,000 in bonus payments, and a casual £66,000 in case your pension
isn’t sufficient, then I think you might enjoy knowing where your wealth comes
from. It comes from the sweat of people
who work diligently, and willingly, but who resent being treated indifferently
– and worse – only to learn that total strangers are earning in a single year
what we cannot hope to earn in thirty.
Think about it. If I could work
300 days a year as a Tote Betting Assistant it would take me several
decades to earn the equivalent of what you take home in
twelve months. Please note that I say
“take home” - because I do not believe that anyone can earn that amount, any
more than I would earn it if I dipped my hand in the till. However, I digress.
On Saturday we are to work at
There was, however, a problem. I do not know who is responsible for running
the technical side of the Tote operation, but I bet he hasn’t had a bonus this
year. Or has he? I had two machines in my little cabin –
presumably because we would normally have had two members of staff operating
there. The first one I used was
faulty. The cursor simply wouldn’t go
where I sent it on the screen. The
result? Frustrated punters, tickets
printed with the wrong horse, wrong meeting, wrong time. I phone for an engineer, apologise to my
punters, and try to keep banging bets out.
After a modest delay the engineer arrives and looks at the machine. “It’s f****d,” he says. You must excuse his language. He is a humble technician, and Scottish. He tells me that all the new machines are
likewise useless, that they are regularly sent to the workshop where the
verdict is, generally, the same: yes, they are f****d; they have all been
f****d from day one and every technician knows this, even our management, but
we are supposed to repair them, so we send them back out, still faulty, in the
hope that they may work better next time.
It reminds me of the days when we used to kick the telly to clear the
picture. Does it you?
However, I am getting
diverted. I want to tell you about my
second machine. This one had the discouraging
habit of switching itself off and illuminating the infamous `silver box` on the
screen. Now, you may not be familiar
with the `silver box`, but if you ask an engineer – and I’m sorry, you’ll just
have to put up with the language; they know no better – he will tell you what
it is. What it is for us is a damned
nuisance. It means that the system has
frozen, but of course we do not know whether our last bet has registered or
not. Now, faced with a queue the length
of a cricket pitch and with the first race due to go off in five minutes I
always prefer to keep selling bets. I
care about my punters and want them to have a good day. Our orders, however, are to stop work and
phone a Supervisor. The Supervisor will
then call Control and ask whether the bet – always assuming we can remember
what the hell it was – has been registered.
Then he or she will call us back.
If it has registered, meaning that we need to cancel it, no ticket
having been delivered, they will give us a sixteen-digit code which we must key
into the machine which will then allow us to cancel the bet. Meanwhile, the
queue has grown, the race has gone off and the punters are in uproar. This is why some people – I amongst them –
frequently ignore the order and keep selling bets, meaning that at the end of
the day our cash balance is awry and we are castigated. You see, if I didn’t keep banging out bets I
would lie awake at night worrying about those Executive bonuses. I really do care about them.
Throughout the afternoon at York
During the afternoon I took over
700 bets. I kept a whole courtyard of
punters happy and smiling, and was a model of manners and decorum. And that part was easy. Why?
Because I, like most of my highly disaffected colleagues, love working
with the racing public, and enjoy each others’ company. So please do not conclude that I am just a
malcontent having a moan. I am an
excellent ambassador for your organisation who has never had a row with a
punter in five years. I work with a
smile on my face and generally manage to put one on the face of my most dour
punter.
When I cashed out at about 1755 –
and after several of my punters had thanked me for making their afternoon so
enjoyable - I found my cold coffee and realised that, far from having drunk
that, I hadn’t even managed a sip of water from the bottle I keep in my
bag. But of course that was a good job,
since I still had five minutes to go before I reached the six-hour mark which
would have entitled me to a break. Asked
by my Supervisor to explain a £50 shortfall when I cashed in I took some satisfaction
in saying that the machine was “f****d.”
Official.
Sunday – and the road show
continues to … Pontefract. You will be
relieved to hear that this was an unexceptional sort of a day. Left home 1125. Bus at 1135.
Started work at 1245, took 400 bets on a seven-race card and got the bus
home, arriving about 1930. A normal
eight-hour day for five-and-a-half hours’ pay.
But when I say it was unexceptional let me throw in a few of the things
that we have to put up with on such a day.
The coach which took us to Pontefract had to be parked some way off
course. We mentioned to the driver that
last week when we were at Pontefract we seemed to have had to wait an
extraordinarily long time – in the pouring rain - for him to appear at close of
play. Ah, he said, that’s the racecourse
authorities; won’t allow me back in the course area until a full hour after the
last race. Now, trust me, I don’t expect
a Chief Exec to worry himself about such trivia, but I understand from my
previous work in business that senior management and board members these days
are encouraged to think of the big picture; and that is what I am trying paint
here, the big picture. The racecourse
policy in this case, I understand, is resulting in our all getting overtime
every time we go to Pontefract while we await the bus’s arrival. Only a few minutes, but multiply that by
thirty staff and – whoops, there goes
the bonus.
And so a little more trivia. I am the father of three grown-up
children. I have seen life. I have travelled, worked here there and
everywhere, home and abroad, and have been self-employed for many years. I have a degree. I am fifty-eight years of age. And yet at the Tote I am constantly treated
as a child. I arrive at work day after
day, willing and cheerful, and have Supervisors berating me because my clothes
are non-regulation, something that last happened to me in 1967. I reflect on the fact that since I started in
February 2003 I have been issued with one pair of dark trousers, and have
bought two of my own. All are worn out,
and I decline to spend more of my meagre wage on replacements. What more trivial complaint can I make than
that my work-clothes are tattered? But
think of that big picture. See it emerge
in your mind’s eye: a work-force so dispirited that they will write letters of
complaint to a £600,000-a-year man about their ragged trousers. Add to that painting a horde of female
employees, women with fifteen and twenty years’ service, handsome, self-possessed
women who take great pride in their appearance but who now speak about the
humiliation of wearing drab, washed-out, shapeless, three-year-old lime green
blouses while working alongside Manpower girls who are smartly turned out in
white ones.
I mention Supervisors. Most of them are decent women (or occasionally men) but in most cases they are saddled with responsibilities far beyond their capabilities. At
Now, I wouldn’t blame you if you
told me I should be writing this to my manager.
Listening to my worries is in part what you pay her for. You have bigger fish to fry. My response is that I would write to her if I
thought it would elicit a response; but I remember three years ago when I was
upbraided for a minor disciplinary matter.
Did my manager come to me? No, she
sent a Supervisor to give me a telling-off.
The poor woman was terribly embarrassed.
I had worked alongside her in York
A few days ago my manager did
address a group of us at one of the cash-cages at, I think, Pontefract. Was it about policy, about wages, about
conditions, about morale, the things that occupy our minds constantly, the
issues a manager should be concerned about?
No, it was to tell us that we should not complain about not getting work
at Haydock recently, when the Doncaster team were
sent to a meeting we usually cover. No,
she said, it’s nothing to do with me; that was the fault of Doncaster staff who
had greedily accepted the offer when they knew full well it belonged to York Doncaster colleagues
while protecting herself from any blame.
And you imagine I would address my complaints to her? I think not.
Speaking of management – although
goodness knows we have precious little contact with them - I am going to ask
you a question. If you were a manager
and a punter came to you and told you that a Betting Assistant had
short-changed him, what would you do? I
would like to know. I really would. Because I had a friend, a colleague of some
years’ standing, a man I have travelled with and roomed with at away meetings,
a family man of good character and decent bearing, who was asked to go and work
at Epsom on Derby
I would now like you to take a
moment to ask yourself why staff morale is rock-bottom. Any punter – be it from the Royal Enclosure
at Ascot or the cheaps at Aintree (and I
have worked in both) - can point the finger and get any of us sacked, any time
at all. How do you think that makes us
feel?
I do apologise for taking up so
much of your time. I shall wind this up
in a moment. But let me throw in a few
more issues that plague us on a daily basis, on the fringes of this universe
you have steered to such profitability.
Or perhaps I should ask you to do some research. Come to Chester
On reflection, let’s leave Chester Chester Ascot . Ah, Ascot . The pearl of the south. Big hats, cleavage and a super new state of
the art racecourse. Roll up, roll up,
ladies and gents and get your bets on.
But be warned: you may get the wrong horse. Or the wrong meeting. Or the wrong stake. Why?
Because in the Plaza area, where I worked this year – and possibly
elsewhere for all I know – the glass (not perspex) through which we must
conduct our business is so thick and the holes for voice transmission so few
and so small (I seem to remember four, each the diameter of a slim biro) that
we could not hear a word the punters said.
And so I found myself, day one, with an irate customer holding a ticket
for a £100 bet on horse No. 3 at Ascot when he’d
asked for it at Lingfield. And oh dear
me, the race at Lingfield has gone off, the favourite (no. 3) has dotted up at
100-30 – and he’s holding a ticket for a 40-1 shot right here. I spent a six-hour shift with eight other
operators that day, all of us shouting at the top of our voices, in a brand new
state of the art facility. I reported it
to a manager and refused point blank to go back there next day, but of course
some poor innocent was sent in my place.
Happily for him, he is a drama student and was able to pitch his voice
through the glass with little difficulty.
It was his colleagues who suffered.
I presume Health and Safety are dealing with that manager’s report as I
write.
Now, I haven’t got the measure of
you yet, but I can promise you this, that had I mentioned this problem to my
own manager I would have been told that it was a racecourse matter and there
was nothing to be done. Which further
explains why this letter is in your in-tray rather than hers. I am left wondering, however, how the Tote
can agree to operate in a brand new racecourse with palpably inoperable
facilities. What consultation took place
– not between the Tote Board and Ascot , but
between Tote operatives, the people who work the bloody windows, and the
designers or architects who threw the place up?
And talking of consultation, what
took place between the manufacturers and providers of the “new” Tote machines
and the only people who know about the job, namely us operatives, before they
were foisted on us? We’re back to
trivia, I’m afraid, but trust me, I know how businesses work and how
reputations are built. I have written
three histories of hundred-year-old firms.
Attention to detail is the thing.
Even trivial detail. The little
snap-shots build the big picture. Were
you aware that on the old machines, the Extremas, we could bang out a dozen
bets and the tickets would emerge one by one and sit in their little slot until
we were ready to gather them up and hand them to our customer? And that on the new machines if you place
more than one bet the second ticket will shoot up and send the first one flying
out? Jesus Christ! Why am I sitting here at one o’clock in the morning having to
articulate this and write it down?
Because you, my friend, my £600,000-a-year friend, run an organisation
that will commission such third-rate machinery and expect us to deal with it
hour after hour, day after day. And so,
in the frantic spell leading up to the first race at meeting after meeting,
with a fistful of Placepot cards in one hand, and using the other to tap out
the bets, we have to find a third hand to stop the tickets spewing forth all
over the counter from a new machine designed by an idiot. If you had given one operator five minutes to
test the new machines you would have cancelled the order forthwith. But no, someone working in your organisation
at an elevated level and with a budget whose size clearly overshadowed his
intellectual capacity for dealing with it decided to buy them by the thousand
and to hell with the consequences. And
do you know what his annual bonus was?
Would you tell me, if I promise not to tell anyone else?
I have probably said enough for the
moment. I could go on – and because it
is near my bedtime I must briefly mention overnight accommodation. I want to ask you how much you can claim in
the way of expenses when you go and visit Haydock, for example, and stay
overnight. And then I’m going to invite
you, in person, to spend a night with me at the next Haydock two-day meeting –
or how about Aintree? After racing we’ll
find the bus, wait an hour for supervisory and Control staff to show up, then
enjoy the hour-long drive to Southport . There I’ll take you to a grotty little
B&B that charges £28 a night for a cramped double room and a third-rate
breakfast. We’ll drop our gear and go
for a pint of beer, then find a place to eat a meal. But where?
That is a problem, you see, because our overnight allowance is £42. We’ve blown £28 on B&B, had a pint and
still have to buy lunch tomorrow, plus some supper on the way home. Okay, so Southport is a cheap
little dump full of refugees from industrial Lancashire , but will
you take up my challenge of finding a room and three meals for £42? Oh go on; please. We could have such fun. And along the way, we might discuss why so
many people are now refusing to work the Grand National meeting when we are likewise
required to stay at places like Southport at £42 a
night after being abused by drunken Scousers all day.
What I’d like you to take from
this, if you have read this far, and always excusing my regrettable tendency to
let my anger boil over on the page while I consider the way we are treated as
we go about furnishing you with your annual bonus, is an appreciation that you
employ in the northern area alone hundreds and hundreds of decent, intelligent,
accomplished, charming, loyal, hard-working staff who tolerate the conditions
for one reason and one reason only. We
like people. We find the race-goers
engaging, appreciative, and fun. Infuriating,
yes; stupid, yes, occasionally awkward too, always demanding, but by and large
great fun. We talk a lot about the awful
conditions we work under, and we talk about why we do it. It comes down to our liking people, and to
our exceptional skills in dealing with those people. And the general consensus among the men and
women I work with is that the Tote management and Board are abusing and
exploiting us, and that if they carry on as they are we are all going to drift
away to be replaced with fresh-faced students who will come and go season by
season, amiable and pleasant, but utterly unversed in racing culture, unable to
offer advice to a punter, and ultimately caring not a jot for the reputation of
the Tote. We are also of the opinion
that the Board and management know this and do not care. So I offer you the opportunity (a) of denying
it, and (b) of telling your staff what you propose to do about it.
While you ponder that, allow me to
offer, off the top of my head, a list of the kind of people you employ in the
north and whom I number among my friends.
Retired teachers, retired Army officers, retired bank managers, retired
businessmen and women, a stockbroker, former managers from nationalised
industries, an opera singer, artists, actors, writers…. The list goes on. And I offer it simply to let you know that
you are wasting valuable talent here, that you have a fantastic resource under
your noses and you do not even realise it, let alone take the trouble to
nurture it.
I have taken liberties in this
letter, but I am unapologetic. My tone
reflects my mood. I am profoundly angry,
and so are a great many of my colleagues – those who haven’t slung their hooks
or, in the case of a very good friend of mine, been summarily dismissed because
he reached the age of sixty-five in the year that the Government pronounced
that age discrimination was a thing of the past.
I am sending copies of this letter
out to a number of people within the Tote and the racing industry. I look forward to your response and theirs.
Alan Wilkinson
Tote
Betting Assistant
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