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Published: September 27th 2008
Every Little Helps
Extraordinary. Looks like a Tsunami but it's only a Sea Mist on the attack.Tesco’s long running advertising slogan, ‘Every Little Counts’ is generally regarded within the realms of the marketing industry as one of the most successful and clever examples of succinct, to the point advertising of a particular brand around. Think about it. ‘Every Little “what” Counts’ ?. Every little bit of money saved ? Every little piece of cheese sold ? Every little additional alternative brand made available to the consumer ? or even Every country conquered. The list is endless and as the store continues to expand worldwide and push on in its bid for global supremacy (in 2006 share profits topped 2 billion when the company moved to fourth in the list of world's biggest retailers) the list of things to which those three small words could possibly refer just grows bigger and bigger.
As my time on the F & G 'bench' was about to end and my new employment with FE set to commence on Sunday evening the phrase meant nothing more to me than a simple case of ‘Every possible little bit of extra sleep counts' and so with that thought firmly at the front of my
Every Little Helps.
Anti smoking ad' No. 726 mind I found myself climbing into bed at the never before heard of time of 9:30pm.
FE's El Segundo offices, situated in close proximity to LAX and five minutes from Manhattan Beach are just twenty odd miles away from home yet far enough to ensure a painstaking commute of anything up to an hour, the journey involving a five mile crawl to downtown, the crossing of two huge arched bridges that span across and give spectacular views of the Port of Long Beach, the US's second busiest seaport and a frustrating nose to tail crawl up the 405 freeway. My interview the previous Wednesday had prepared me for the nauseating journey but not for rising at 6.45am. Nor for that matter had twenty five years of 'get up when you wake up' County Council flexi time.
Sitting behind a wheel is where my impatience invariably rears its ugly head and I quickly realized if I am to retain any modicum of sanity that it is going to take a lot of hard work and self restraint as well as an acceptance of the realization that there is going to be no easy way out. Like it or not
for the next twelve months at least I am going to spend between forty five minutes and an hour twice a day five days a week doing nothing but sitting in my car getting frustrated and other than buying a helicopter there is little or nothing I can do about it. I’d tried the lane switching tactic on several occasions in my first few weeks of driving out here but when, for the umpteenth time I noticed the little old lady with her head and chest pressed against the steering wheel crawl past me twenty minutes after I'd recklessly swerved in front of her before leaving her as a tiny dot in my rear view mirror I finally accepted it to be a futile not to mention dangerous excercise. I can finally see why old Aesop made such a name for himself, his famed fable of the tortoise and the hare being a good point well made.
As well as the 6.45am rise the weekend prior to starting with FE had had something to do with my having an early night on Sunday. Friday, the occasion of my last day at F & G’s Seal Beach office was marked
with a farewell lunch attended by the majority the staff at a local all you can eat Indian Restaurant, the only difference to the norm being that the farewell had nothing to do with the guy who was leaving, me, but Stannia, one of the several Asian girls who was off to work in the Houston Office. I doubt whether many of the staff knew, or more to the point even cared that I was heading for pastures new but that was fine by me, I'd had enough leaving do's in the last couple of years to last me a lifetime and with the company footing the bill I was more than happy to go along incognito simply to gorge myself on the free gratis Jappati's, Naan's and Aloo Sag. Later that evening having done our utmost to work off the effects of two plates of curried goods delicacies at The Belmont Athletic Club Phil and I ventured Downtown, somewhere we hadn’t been since the AC/DC tribute band in my first few weeks here and around midnight he suggested we took a look in The Blue Café.
The Blue Café is located one block away from the hustle and
bustle of Pine Street, Downtown's main four block strip of bars and nightclubs and is situated opposite an opening of flat scrub land that has now been transformed into a parking lot and that was, until recently, a square of typical dirty brick downtown buildings. The open plan nature of the land opposite the bar’s frontage exaggerates it's welcoming vibe as you approach and gives one the impression of being drawn zombie like to an oasis of blue neon light and life amidst the jungle of high rise urbanity. As we neared we could see scores of people were sat outside within a barriered garden area sampling cocktails and beers and as we went to go through the only opening in the fence we were stopped in our tracks simultaneously by a girl with a Desperate Dan jaw and an equally large bouncer who requested a ten dollar per head cover.
“Oh we’re only over from England on vacation" we reasoned, unsure as to whether the place would be worth the admission fee "we only want to take a look”. She simply smiled and let us through.
Immediately inside the door of what appeared at first glance to
be a sparsely populated dark room we noticed a slightly elevated stage simply decorated with nothing but several microphone stands waiting readily in anticipation for whoever or whatever it was that was due to appear, quite what we had no idea. We ordered a drink and as is wise in such situations stood with our backs firmly pressed to the bar to assess our new surroundings and within two minutes had our answer. As a back beat of repetitive hip hop rhythm started to thump out of the p.a the lights dimmed and the stage was slowly and cumbersomely invaded by five large African American men dressed in oversized tee shirts and baggy jeans that hung just below the knee. They clambered onto the stage with all the grace of a small herd of grazing elephants without so much as a musical instrument between them and, as the whoops and applause of the enthusiastic crowd that had suddenly gathered from seemingly out of nowhere at the front of the stage started to fade, began making shapes akin to neantherdal man on his way back from an unsuccessful three day mammoth hunt accompanied by an indecipherable chorus of rapping, bro’ing and
Every Little Helps
Boyz'n the Hood. We somehow stumbled upon a hip hop rap contest. muthaf***ing all to the rhythm of nothing but the backing tape. These really were boys from the hood.
Within thirty seconds of their arrival on stage it had dawned on us that we, as white Caucasian males were in the vast minority of the punters gathered around the stage and that we had accidentally stumbled into the midst of an organised hip hop and rap competition open to LA's finest. I couldn’t prove the fact but I’d be surprised if half of Long Beach’s gangsta community weren’t somewhere within the four walls of the Blue Café that evening, no wonder the girl on the gate smiled at us as though we were lambs to the slaughter but nonetheless we stayed to watch as group after group of ghetto poet laureates took turns to entertain us.
The following afternoon I pushed the seats of the Jeep down, loaded the roll up mattress, continental quillt and three pillows into the back and headed off alone for the sixty five mile or so drive east to San Bernadino. I was off to attend the Wunderland Festival, a six staged electronic music festival, some would say legalised rave that ran from 5pm
until 4am and whose star turns were both members of US dance DJ's Deep Dish who I’d seen and been impressed by in Rio two years earlier. I'd purchased a VIP ticket, at a hundred bucks fifty five dollars more than the normal admission but which came with the guarantee of free grub, free bar and priveliged viewing positions and with beer costing seven dollars a glass realised I'd bought into a bargain. I arrived around three and after locating the venue, a huge exhibition centre on the outskirts of town rejoined the freeway and carried on beyond San Bernardino up into the surrounding hills which provided the rarity of some wonderfully fresh air, solitude, some spectacular views and a glimpse, courtesy of the tiny settlement of Devore of real life (very) small town America not freely available in the huge sprawling urban metropolis that is LA.
Devore is the last piece of humanity before entering the wilderness of the San Bernadino National Park and a delightful hamlet consisting of a handful of large timber houses complete with kiddies swings and horses grazing on the lawns, a chapel and bizarrely two petrol stations situated on opposite sides of the
Every Little Helps
Maybe he was rappin' 'bout her and maybe she didn't like it. village crossroads. Talk about a turf war waiting to happen. A large sign outside one of the two read 'Ice Cold Beer' which, never mind the experts opinion of Tesco's or anyone elses catchphrase, was a concise and clever enough piece of advertising to win my custom and I pulled in and purchased a couple of tins before asking a young man sat on his bicycle who had the look of a boy who could play a mean lick on the banjo directions back to the freeway. He responded with an open mouthed look that told me he hadn't seen or heard a stranger, certainly not someone who spoke in a foreign tongue like mine in a very long time before pulling himself together and pointing me in my the right direction.
The gig itself was excellent; six stages, fireworks, stilt people, fairground rides, fountains in the lagoon and attended by forty thousand mostly bizarrely, often scantily dressed party goers. The four hours sleep in the back of the Jeep was not so good and when I woke and peered from beneath my quillt through the peep hole wiped into the condensation soaked windows at 9am on Sunday morning
with a knee that had locked in the just below fully extended position due to the Jeep being about eight inches too short I found myself to be the only occupant of a huge deserted car park. Devore, the mountains and the gig had all provided wonderful photographic opportunities and I must have took in excess of a hundred snaps only to find when I returned home that the card had malfunctioned, just as it had in Brazil three years earlier meaning the loss of all my pictures. I was gutted. I took the card to Ritz camera on 2nd Street who were unable to recover a thing and it is now currently with a company in New York who are attempting to save it. The chances don't look good.
The first week at FE was, to term a phrase 'as dull as dishwater'. With Angus, my F & G predecessor and the guy 'poached' away from their employ by an offer he simply couldn't refuse occupied with running up his own ass thus rendering him too busy to give me anything meaningful to do I was effectively left to my own devices for the first two days. The
office environment, as far removed as it could possibly be from Faithful & Gould’s ‘hear a pin drop’ atmosphere consisted of a large open planned floor with an almost equal mix of south of Watford Gap ex pats and Yanks which buzzed to the sound of telephones, chatter and laughter throughout the day. As with most things out here the world of construction and the terminology used is as different to in the UK as chalk is to cheese and as a result my new role was proving nothing as straighforward as it could or should have been.
Despite everyone being welcoming and polite on initial introduction I still felt very much the outsider for the whole of the first week, much as I had back at F & G in June and that fact allied to a lack of some proper work to get my teeth into meant I sought consolation by literally getting my teeth into something else, something what many would consider one of the perks of working for a major retailer. Each afternoon various foodstuffs ranging from cookies to cakes to fruit to curries to maltesers fresh from the testing kitchens are put out in
Every Little Helps
Walk/Ride for Breast Cancer. the dining area for anyone to help themselves to and I was more than willing to oblige. When I first arrived over here Phil told me everyone without fail puts on twenty pounds in the first three months which resulted in a concerted effort from me to prove him wrong. I had succeeded but after five days at the HQ of FE my weight had risen by four pounds.
On Wednesday afternoon I was sat minding my own business longing for five o'clock to arrive when a voice straight out of the Eton playing fields boomed out from behind me.
"Hello, I don't think we've met. I'm Tim, how do you do?"
I turned to see a big man in his late forties (I now know he's actually fifty) holding out his hand in greeting with what can only be described in the circumstances as a 'jolly big welcoming smile' plastered across his face. I remembered his face from an address he'd given to the staff the previous afternoon about how the company was progressing and about his upcoming weekend assault on the summit of Mount Whitney and at the time assumed him just to be one
of the departmental managers but Lisa 2 who had also been poached from F & G later pointed him out and informed me he was the Chief Executive of Tesco USA. Still, such was his demeanor I felt not the slightest hint of nerves as I held out my hand in response.
"Ahhh, you're a scouser are you ?" he responded to my reply in a tone that reminded me of Blackadder's Darling, quickly moving the plumb to the other side of his mouth. "We've got the boss coming out next week, he's one of your lot. What are you ? Blue or Red ?".
My answer that I was actually yellow was enough not only to bring a look of shock and bemusement to his face but also to surprise him to the extent that it brought our brief conversation to a premature conclusion. To be CEO of a branch of the world's fourth biggest retailer means you must have something about you and a bit of research told me that not only was he was named as the UK's most powerful marketer in 'Marketing' magazine's 2005 power list but was also son in law of former
ECCB Chairman Lord Maclaurin, was second in Tesco's hierarchy of earners and stood to collect a bonus worth at least half his in excess of £4 million basic annual payments if FE's US branch out was successful.
Finally Friday arrived which saw another night at the Blue Cafe. West Indian Girl, a dreamy six piece with two beautiful singers whose music evoked pictures of dancing children with flowers in their hair and who had taken their name, apparently, from a well known brand of sixties acid were performing and the girl with the jaw on the door, remembering us and obviously relieved she hadn't sent us to our premature deaths at the hands of Puff Daddy and his pals the previous week again ushered us past with a smile allowing us entry FOC. The evening proved a pleasant respite from the ear shattering decibels of Motorhead and Ted Nugent and ended with us sitting outside in the early hours in the fenced off area whereby Phil promptly drifted into his customary early morning sleep and had his walking stick taken hostage by some girls who insisted the ransom required to earn it's return was to strip to the waist!
Poor lad.
Week two on the work front was a complete contrast to the first. For a start off Lisa 2 and I arranged to car share at the bbq hosted by her and big Dan on Saturday which effectively cut the journey time down to just over half an hour. The majority of US freeways have a lane called the Pool Lane which is reserved solely for the use of cars containing more than just a driver, the penalty for erring into its confines as a single occupier a whopping 341 Dollars and as such it remains free flowing virtually at all times. One of the minor snags is that unlike myself, being an employee and not a hired hand, Lisa cannot just pack up and leave when she wishes and Tuesday saw me held back at the office until 6.30pm whilst she was detained in a meeting. But every cloud has a silver lining and I was informed any extra hours I work in the week can be taken in lieu at a later date and to complete the improvement I was finally beginning to understand how things work and to become busy helping to make the
days fly by.
On Thursday afternoon at three o'clock the staff were requested to congregate in the dining area for an address from, as Tim had put it the previous week "the boss", the scouser, the bluenose who was over from the UK for a fleeting visit. If I thought Tim was a successful businessman then this guy's story tops the lot. Sir Terry Leahy, a fifty one year old Liverpudlian who is CEO of Tesco Worldwide had begun his working life stacking shelves before starting his rise to the top. He was also an unpaid advisor to Everton FC
at the request of pal Bill Kenwright and, as reported in The Guardian in May received almost ten million pounds in salary and shares last year. TEN MILLION POUNDS.
I liked him straight away. To look at he reminded me of a young Woody Allen with a bit of Elvis Costello thrown in for good measure and he spoke like a mature John Lennon and it wasn't hard to see the way he held his audience captive in his the palm of hand how he'd become as successful as he had. After half an hour or so during
which time several examples of typical scouse humour came out leaving some of the Americans scratching their heads in puzzlement as to why the rest of us were actually laughing the floor was opened for questions and after another half an hour of business related questions from staff all answered with aplomb Tim, who was obviously growing tired of carrying the microphone around the room was looking to wind things up. He asked if anyone had any more questions.
Anyone who knows me knows I don't like to speak in public. In fact I hate it, it makes me sweat with dread just at the thought of it. So tell me then, after standing towards the back of a large and attentive audience for over an hour I suddenly, in response to Tim's probing about further questions thrust my arm into the air. I certainly hadn't thought about it previously and it was as much a surprise to me as anyone else but Sir Terry noticed the sudden movement in pale blue at the back and tilted his head back in a gesture for me to proceed. Instantly my mouth went dry and equally quickly I could sense my
Every Little Helps
The girl in the iron mask. face starting to turn an deep beetroot colour.
"What d'ya think of the blues chances after their dodgy start to the season?" I said aloud.
OMG. Where did that come from ? My question was met with total silence. Some people in front turned their heads to look at who this ridiculous man daring to ask a nonsensical question to their messiah was. Even Sir Terry looked put out. What had I done ? I considered curling up into a ball under the desk in front of me or better still running and hurling myself through the plate glass window at the end of the room.
Through glazed eyes I thought I could just about make him out gesturing for me to repeat myself. Thank God, he wasn't looking in scorn after all, he just hadn't heard me. I hadn't waited for the arrival of the microphone and he was about forty yards away after all. I repeated the question louder adding the word Everton into the mix after the word 'blues' for the benefit of the Americans who I realised still wouldn't have a clue what I was on about and, thank God, a smile instantly
Every Little Helps
West Indian Girl soundcheck. broke across his face. A handful of ex pats even laughed aloud although whether it was at his reaction, my audacity or simply the colour of my face I'll never know.
"Read about it" was his simple sarcastic three word answer in reference to his constant appearances in the press re; his involvement with Everton's alleged ground move before adding "..but we play Liverpool Saturday so God knows". And then his attention went elsewhere.
With Phil away in Chicago for the weekend I decided to have a quiet night on Friday which involved a drive up to he elevated district of Palos Verdes to witness, quite by chance the most incredible sea mist, an excursion around the port and a night in alone with just a bowl of spaghetti and a glass of wine for company. Early Saturday morning I was going to be jumping in the Jeep and off on my first proper road trip, destination Santa Barbara and beyond. Watch this space.
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Matt The Pig
Matt
He He He ! Yeah, any one of your collection will do !