“I'm not going to eat that, sir.” Carla said calmly and evenly. In the course of her daily life, this wasn’t the most unreasonable request she could expect to hear.
“EAT MY YOGHURT AND TELL ME YOU HATE IT!” The man insisted, his voice filling the cavernous atrium of the council building. He was passionate about his distaste. He had a spoon already loaded with yoghurt and ready to go, which he had pulled out from under his jacket. Carla shuddered to think what it was like under there, but had to admit that the spoon full of allegedly poor quality dessert was well preserved, with very little indication of any smearing or sticking under the man's clothing. He must have been a professional.
“No thank you sir, I'll take your word for it.”
“Typical! You claim you're helping us but you won't lift a finger to do anything. You won't even be spoon-fed this... this... FILTH to support the local people. You make me sick.”
“I think that might be the yoghurt, especially if you've been storing it in your coat.”
“Don't tell me how to live my life!” He plunged his hands into his pockets and yanked out two fistfuls of what was later determined to be double cream, before slamming them down on the desk and storming out. Until the substance had been identified, of course, spirits at the Help Desk had been somewhere between 'low' and 'petrified'.
Even without the unprovoked desk-befouling, Carla had been feeling uncharacteristically anxious that morning; she was due a surprise visit from the MP for Greater Dilhull, Charlotte Pine. There was no ‘Lesser Dilhull’, or even a regular Dilhull, but the council had long ago taken the move to add ‘Greater’, such that the town would command more respect and local sign-makers would have more work.
Surprise visits from Charlotte were meticulously planned weeks in advance, right down to the minute that the MP would enter, so that nothing too important or distracting would be happening. If anything were to draw attention away from the MP herself it would defeat the object of the visit, since media attention was the only reason to appear in person in a time with the convenience of email and telephones. The only problem with that, of course, was that the Help Desk was a public facing office; any member of the constituency was perfectly within their rights to enter and demand some help (the term ‘ask’ had been abandoned as an idyllic fantasy). It was a minefield of the ignorant, the arrogant and the criminally obnoxious, which Charlotte Pine would have to navigate just as much as anyone else.
Carla dwelled on that unfortunate fact whilst wiping the ‘spilled’ cream from her desk and attempting to salvage some of the ruined leaflets which had been arranged upon it. ‘Your Local Collection Schedule’ had escaped relatively unscathed, with only minor splashing on the back cover, and ‘How Can the Council Deal with My Dead Pet?’ could be arranged such that the cream stains were hidden. ‘How May the Help Desk Help You?’ had not been so fortunate however, taking the full brunt of one dairy fist. The cream, spoiled though it was, had managed to saturate the pages quickly, turning what should have been a useful source of information into a laminated napkin, good to no-one. It didn’t matter to Carla too much because she knew the contents off by heart, but it was nice for other people to be able to read it whilst she helped someone else.
“The Help Desk has been set up as part of a new initiative to make the local council more accessible and relevant to the people of today.” Carla recited to herself internally, proud of her contribution to the Help Desk’s creation. Whilst it may not have been as glamorous as the short-lived Heli-binmen, as revolutionary as the ill-conceived cyber-road-repair crew, or as high-profile as the infamous pay-as-you-go cavity search programme, the Help Desk had outlasted all of them in terms of lifetime and usage. Whilst Carla desperately wanted to believe that this was because the Help Desk was a valuable service, she couldn’t help thinking that it was simply because no-one had remembered to revoke its funding yet.
Due to the inadequate definition of the exact nature of the help available from a desk, which is traditionally limited to storage, support, and occasional step-ladder overflow work, the Help Desk became a haunting ground for any miscellaneous queries which didn't reach another department in their quest for resolution. Carla justified this by claiming that her desk provided a more efficient service, allowing other departments to get on with their real work, but she was definitely wrong. The Help Desk simply had no grounds on which to deny a response to any query, and therefore an answer was guaranteed to the enquirer. The other departments exploited this as far as possible, if not farther.
Intentional deflection of work to those more willing to accept it aside, the Help Desk was a heavily frequented council service. As such, it was given as little staffing as the guidelines would allow. That meant that it was solely Carla manning the desk itself, plus two members of support staff named Gloria and Patricia in order to keep the overhead costs soaring as high as possible. After all, if they were low then they wouldn’t truly be overhead.
Gloria was, as ever, loudly reading the tabloids and allowing herself to misunderstand every major issue she read about. It wouldn't usually be a problem for someone who isn't directly public-facing, however her ignorance was matched only by her assuredness that she was both right and incredibly clever. She formed opinions of such a size that they immediately overflowed from her head, gushing like a raging torrent to engulf anyone unfortunate enough to be in audible range.
"They shouldn't let those wretched doctors push us taxpayers around so much. We pay their wages! If I want to take some antibiotics for my glaucoma then he should ruddy well write me a prescription for one. Probably here illegally anyway, he has that look about him." She said out loud to no-one in particular, but expecting a response all the same.
"Here illegally as a qualified doctor you say?" Carla said irritably and distractedly, still wiping cream from her chair.
"Qualified as a witch doctor." Gloria snorted.
"Antibiotics won't help glaucoma anyway, I keep telling you! He was right!" Gloria had been telling the story of her ‘inept’ doctor who had refused to concede to her medical opinion for nearly a week, and Carla was running out of patience with it.
"God, you sound just like him. You must be an immigrant sympathiser who buys all that foreign muck like rice and Toblerone. What's wrong with peas, mash and baguette?”
Carla shook her head and ignored Gloria again. Arguing with her was like trying to stop a drain from overflowing by asking it nicely, and both left similarly sour tastes in the air.
Whilst Carla was distracted by trying to forget that Gloria existed, a man with a short, scruffy black hair and a few days of stubble walked hurriedly into the atrium. His t-shirt and jeans combination marked him as a normal citizen, perfectly entitled to the help offered by the desk, so naturally this set Gloria and Patricia immediately against him, even though he bypassed Carla in order to speak to them directly.
"Could I please borrow your phone?" he asked, his voice betraying that he was in a hurry; a sign of weakness which was unforgivable in the halls of the council office.
"I'm not permitted to deal with public requests, please wait for the help representative." Gloria told him coldly, following her response up with a passive-aggressive 'tch' to really drive home how ridiculous the man was being by talking to her.
"I'm not looking for help, I just need to borrow your phone, please." He clarified, as if logic were something that the crotchety administrator would respect.
"I have already told you that I am not permitted to deal with you. Please join the queue, sir." She repeated with even greater derision, pointing towards the space where a queue would normally be.
"But I don't want the desk! I just need a phone and yours is the nearest free o-"
"Sir! I will call the police if you do not move along." Her wide eyes and hysterical tone did not lend themselves to misinterpretation. This wasn’t a bluff – she was perfectly willing to accept charges of wasting police time in order to prevent this man from using her otherwise disused phone.
“Sir? You can borrow my mobile if you’d like.” Carla said, trying to hide her exasperation from the man and show it to Gloria. Gloria naturally assumed that it was directed at the man regardless, and smugly smiled to herself.
“Please excuse her.” Carla muttered as she handed her phone over.
“Thanks.” Said the man, not terribly sincerely. “I thought this was meant to be a friendly place.”
“It normally is, sir. I’m afraid everyone’s a little on edge today.” Carla replied, biting her lip lest she split his or Gloria’s.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll be back in a second.” He said, and wandered away towards the door. Carla couldn’t help wondering if handing her phone to a stranger and letting him walk away was strictly a good idea, but there was no time to worry about that. Charlotte was due in only a minute, so everyone had to be prepared.
“Are you both ready for Ms Pine?” Carla asked her colleagues.
“Of course I am.” Gloria snapped.
“Hm?” Patricia added.
“I was asking if you were ready for Ms Pine. She’ll be here in about a minute.”
“Oh, well I don’t know. Did I need to do anything?”
“You just need to be prepared to smile politely and answer any questions she may have. Otherwise, just carry on as normal.”
“So you’re asking us if we’re sufficiently prepared to smile and do our jobs, are you? What kind of idiots do you take us for?” Gloria replied confrontationally, still pumped on adrenaline from refusing to let someone use a phone.
“I was just making sure.” Carla told her with her arms raised in the air. Displays of submission were the best way of defusing Gloria’s righteous fury.
“Tch” was the only reply Carla got.
Her desk now bare of leaflets and cream, Carla squared up her chair, kept an eye on the man by the door with her phone, and waited for Charlotte. Right on cue at 11.38, the doors to the atrium swung open. A babble of conversation, introductions and observations swelled into the room, heralding the arrival of Charlotte Pine and her entourage of aides, photographers, social media representatives and onlookers. They moved as a swarm, Charlotte always at the centre, and drifted casually through the room towards the desk.
Carla attempted to make eye contact with Charlotte so that she could show off her most professional and welcoming smile, but the MP was always distracted with someone or something else. What Carla caught instead was the eye of a middle-aged gentleman who skirted around the political mass and rushed ahead of them, so that he could reach the Help Desk without seeming to push into the queue. Before Carla could signal that she was too busy to help him, the man started talking.
"She's mad at me again, I need some help."
"Sir, I’m afraid I need to deal wi-“
“Quickly, too! I need help quickly.”
“I appreciate that but as you can see Ms Pine is-“
“Behind me in the queue.” The man finished threateningly.
Charlotte and her gaggle had reached the desk now and were forming a queue bubble behind the man. Carla desperately hoped they weren’t listening to him.
“OK, what do you need help with?”
“I told you, she’s mad at me.”
“Who?”
“My wife of course.”
“Right, and why's that?" Carla asked. She could think of several reasons why someone might take issue with this man, as she was experiencing several of them herself, but felt that someone who would stoop to marry him must have very different thought processes indeed.
"I said she was getting short-tempered in her old-age."
"I can imagine that would have made her mad."
"And then she said she wasn’t, and that it was me."
"Right."
"So I said that perhaps her old age was making us both short-tempered and now she won’t talk to me.”
There was a lot of throat-clearing and shuffling coming from the politician cloud, as if Carla hadn’t noticed that they were there.
“Well I imagine she was upset by you blaming your disagreements on her age.”
“And what am I supposed to do about that?” the man asked incredulously.
“I’d recommend apologising as a good start.”
“Pah, bloody lot of good you are. If I wanted bad advice I’d have asked the wife.”
“I’m very sorry that our help hasn’t been completely useful, sir.” Carla lied. “Thank you and have a nice day.”
“Bollocks to you.”
Carla drew a deep breath as the man walked away. It wasn’t the display she’d wanted to put on directly in front of Charlotte Pine, but at least he hadn’t vandalised her desk with spoiled dairy.
“I’m very sorry about that. Welcome to the Help Desk. How can I help you today?” Carla said to Charlotte, slipping comfortably back into her rehearsed wording.
“Hello. Charlotte Pine, MP for Greater DIlhull. Pleasure to meet you.” She spoke with formality, but hadn’t quite mastered the smarm-riddled charm of the career politician.
“It’s an honour, Ms Pine. My name is Carla and I run the Help Desk here. These are my colleagues Gloria and Patricia.”
“Hello ladies.” Charlotte said by way of acknowledgement. This was it, their moment to not make a burden of themselves.
Gloria looked up at Charlotte, tutted loudly, then looked back down without smiling. Patricia made a greater effort, but sadly enjoyed no more success. Her attempt at a smile must have been intercepted by her nerves, or perhaps she’d just misunderstood what she was supposed to do, because she instead pulled a furious grimace. It was as if she was on the verge of a rabid biting spree.
Charlotte recoiled and Patricia slowly moved her head behind the bust of King George that she insisted on keeping at her desk, maintaining her grimace all the while.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Ms Pine?” Carla said nervously, attempting to steer attention away from the pair of terrifying crones.
“I have heard wonderful things about the Help Desk, so I wanted to see it for myself.” Charlotte replied distractedly, still keeping one eye on Patricia in case she went feral.
“Thank you.” Carla said. “We’ve certainly been working hard to improve the community.”
“And you’re sure that’s what’s happening? That chap didn’t seem terribly happy.”
“He was… emotional due to the nature of his problem. Our usual feedback is very positive. I’m really helping people here.”
“Good, good.” The MP finally let her attention snap back to Carla. “I’m sure you’ll be aware of the heli-binmen fiasco and the road repair crew. I’m getting a lot of pressure from the opposition to show that my drives toward community support are viable and sustainable, unlike those two, erm…” She searched for a politically correct phrase “…lapses in judgement.”
“I have heard something to that effect yes.”
“The Help Desk is a success, but it needs to grow. I can’t sustain a campaign based on an operation of one person and two administrators.”
“I completely agree! We can easily make this into a fully-department, with sufficient support. We could help so many people and really improve lives!”
“And more importantly help to ensure my re-election.”
“Um, yeah I suppose.”
“The problem is that I can’t get too involved personally, otherwise the councillors will feel like I’m disempowering them. Do you follow?”
“I follow.”
“Good. What that means is that I need you to push this for me, Carla. Give me enough ammunition to prove that I’ve improved Greater Dilhull with the Help Desk. Take ownership of this and convince the councillors that it should be grown further. If you don’t get me results then I’ll come under too much fire for encouraging spending on it.”
“Understood, Ms Pine.”
“I’m glad I can count on you.” Charlotte said with a smile.
“Here’s your phone.” Came another voice from the side, startling Carla.
“Oh, thank you.” Carla said, holding out her hand optimistically. Instead of handing it to her of course, the chap slid it across the desk. Carla was forced to watch it slide past her, sail over the edge of the desk, and land squarely in the bin.
“Ohhhh.” She moaned, pulling it back out and dropping it on the desk.
“What on earth is that all over it?”
“Double cream.” Carla said, deflated.
“Why is th-“
“Please, don’t ask.”
In order to promote her cause for upscaling the Help Desk Carla needed to produce a case for the councillors. However, only the oldest and most jaded civil servants were permitted to elevate themselves to become councillors, lending more credence to personal relationships than facts or data. Their agendas were their own, their loyalties fickle, and their faith in humanity shattered. Winning them over would be no mean feat.
It took several weeks to finally a schedule an appointment with the councillors. All cases must be presented to them personally, and all councillors must be in attendance. Predictably, every time she came close to having an appointment, one of them would come down ill, come up angry, or just not turn up in general. When they finally did settle on a time to see her, however, she was ready.
The council chamber was dark and foreboding, mostly because no-one could weave through the maze of red tape governing how to have the light bulbs replaced. There, in the darkness, the councillors sat with their head torches gleaming and blinding one another, ready to pass judgement.
“We have reviewed your proposal, Carla, and-” Started Councillor Jones.
“Shut up!” Councillor Smith shouted at him. “If you want to secure additional funding and grow the service, Carla, then you need to prove that it will be worthwhile. We can't go throwing money at just anyone who wants to help someone else or put out any old fire in any old block of flats. It’s a waste of-”
“Shut up, Smith! We can and we will put out any fires we like. But we can and we won't fund this until you show us it's a money maker or a money saver.” Councillor Bridling interjected.
“You shut up! We need to see that you're going above and beyond the call of your role. Prove that your desk is trying to do better work, and that you're capable of it.” Councillor Jones butted in.
“No, shut up all of you!” Councillor Smith’s gaze lingered on Carla lest she try to speak at all. “Until you can give us evidence that you've improved quality of life and will secure more faith in the council we can’t justify it.” She decreed.
“I told you to shut up, you donkey’s arse!” Councillor Bridling fired back. “You need to have people queueing out the door before you can justify increasing your desk to a department, so-called Carla.”
Taking one another’s repeatedly given advice, the councillors all fell into silence. In wordless concord, they all thought they had broken her. They thought they had set a bar so high and so vague that no-one would reach it. Being able to make money from an assistive service, especially whilst going beyond the current remit of the desk, tangibly improving quality of life, and securing more people than the desk could handle, was practically impossible.
"OK. Can do." Carla said simply, smile on her face and spring in her step. She bounced merrily out through the door. They hadn’t said no. That’s all she needed.
“She’s trying to help people.” Councillor Jones muttered once Carla had left the room.
“Shut up.” Councillor Smith said quietly. “You’re right. Helping people goes against everything this council stands for. Years of work to make our public think it’s too much effort to ask us to do things could be wiped out.”
“Shut up. Exactly. She must be stopped, but we can’t be too obvious about it. Charlotte Pine wants this to happen, and if she sees us working against her it won’t end wel-.”
“Just shut up and stop yammering on you old buttock. I’m not helping her, and I’m not helping either of you.”
“God’s no!”
“Never.”
“Then it’s settled. We work alone to stop Carla, but just try not to get in each other’s way.” Councillor Bridling summarised.
“Shut up.” Agreed Councillor Jones.
“Shut up.” Councillor Smith confirmed.
Carla’s plans for expansion were colourful and ambitious, mapped out in Gantt charts, timelines, and graphs of feasibility. She’d spent all of the last week working on exactly how she could meet each of the councillors’ requests within the next financial year, ready for a proposal review before the next budget was decided. It wasn’t rock’n’roll, but she was excited none-the-less.
Sitting at her desk and colouring in a bar chart, Carla was so engrossed that she didn't even notice the footsteps echoing up the stone floor towards her. She jolted up to attention when a voice shouted directly in front of her.
"THIS IS STILL AWFUL."
A familiar yoghurt pot slammed down onto the desk, causing the contents to slosh and splash up the sides of the container. It was easy to tell that it hadn't been refrigerated; in fact, against all advice and common knowledge, Carla was fairly certain it been living in the man’s coat all this time. She was just grateful that it had somehow managed not to get onto the desk itself.
"You mean that you ate some more of it!?"
"Yes, and I can tell you that I THOROUGHLY regret it."
"That's really not the best idea."
"I already told you I regret it! Eat some of the yoghurt and tell me you like it. Go on, I defy you to like it."
Defying someone to enjoy a spoiled yoghurt wasn't an act of the greatest courage, Carla decided, so she didn’t feel too bad about disappointing him.
"I don't believe I would sir. If that's all you need help with then I can cheerfully consider the matter dealt with.” Carla said hopefully, preparing to add one to her tally of ‘people helped’.
The man scowled at her, but swiped up his yoghurt pot and shuffled out of the atrium again. Carla noticed that he had been at the head of queue and worried about how long everyone had been waiting there. With a smile she waved the next person forwards.
A young man approached the desk stiffly and nervously. He was gripping a woollen hat with both hands, holding it against his chest as if allowing it out any farther would pose a serious health and safety risk to the surrounding community. He stared at the floor as he walked over and upon reaching the requesting area (outlined by the yellow taped box on the floor) he looked up into Carla's smiling face. That only made him more uncertain.
"Welcome to the Help Desk. How can I help you today?" Carla asked in her rhythmic lilt.
"Oh, erm, hello, yes, erm, I'd like some help, please. If that's alright?"
"Certainly sir. Help with what?"
"Well, I, erm, I'm afraid that this morning, when I was t-trying to leave the house for the, erm, the shops and such, you know, I found that there was some… some trouble with my front garden path."
"Oh come on and spit it out!" Patricia chastised from behind Carla. "You're keeping everyone waiting."
"Oh! I, I'm sorry."
"It's not a problem, sir. How can I help you?"
"Well I was wondering what the council's policy, that is, what their process is for having, erm, large waste items removed."
"If you break any large items down and leave them out on your collection day in the appropriate bag, then it will be disposed of for you."
"Ah, yes well I don't know which bag is the right one.”
"It says on the side! Are you slow or something?" Snapped Gloria, politically incorrectly.
"But the mess on my path isn't mentioned. At least I don't think I saw it. I am ever so sorry if it's there and I missed it."
"Not to worry, sir. What is the mess?" Carla asked.
"It's erm, oh well it's a lot of things."
"Are you being deliberately unhelpful?" Gloria spat.
"No, honestly! It's a mix of a lot of things but I-"
"You'll have to separate them, otherwise we won't collect" Patricia told him.
"I don't know if I can. I-"
"You're what, lazy?"
"Gloria, please." Carla snapped.
"No, it's just that it might not be possible."
"Why do you say that?" Carla asked quickly, trying to get in there before either of the harpies could snipe at the nervous chap again.
"Here, I took a picture." He showed Carla the screen of his phone and her face scrunched into confusion.
"That's a whole car. A whole burned car. And…" her eyes widened. “Is that someone’s arm?”
"Yes, yes exactly. So there's metal, a-and fabric, and plastic, and oil, and flesh, and I don't know how to bag those up or pull them apart or-"
"This is a matter for the police, not the Help Desk. You have a man's arm in your garden! How did it get there?"
"I don't know. I thought perhaps a magpie had picked it up somewhere and dropped it."
"That doesn't sound very likely." Carla said sympathetically.
"Magpies stole my cat once, little hellions" Patrician weighed in.
"Those were vets, not magpies. Your cat had been dead for a week."
"Well whatever they were they could have easily lifted an arm, and probably a car too, so you'd better keep an eye out for packs of them flying into your garden."
"I don't think vets are naturally predisposed to fly around depositing limbs and cars, Patricia.”
"It's that kind of complacency which lets then get away with it."
"I didn't see any vets or magpies." The man added helpfully.
"Then I would advise that you contact the police, so that the arm's rightful owner can be located. Someone might have been killed.”
"And the police will clear away the mess?"
"Yes. They’ll clear everything up, but I scarcely think that’s the point."
"OK, thank you very much. Sorry for taking so much of your time."
"You're quite welcome..." Carla said uncertainly. She was glad to have helped but the vision of a disembodied arm haunted her a little. “Next please.”
A woman in her early thirties approached the desk with a look of sheer, righteous fury on her face. Her hair was worn in a bob, her glasses were horn rimmed, and her expression told Carla that she more often spoke to ‘the manager’ than even her own family.
“You aren't doing enough to safeguard my children!” she shrieked at Carla.
“That’s… erm, how so?”
“Only yesterday my daughter got hold of my kitchen knives. A three year old with sharp knives! She could have seriously hurt herself! It was only lucky that my husband's leg got in the way and caught the blade.”
“Your daughter stabbed your husband?!” Carla asked, hoping that she’d misunderstood.
“Don't take that tone with me! If she'd been safeguarded then it wouldn't have happened, she wouldn’t have been driven down this path of violence. You don’t know me or my daughter so you can get of your high horse and stop judging us.”
“You need to get your husband to a hospital and keep your knives locked away! Has he received any medical attention?”
“Don't tell me how to live my life or raise my children! How dare you! It's typical of you council lackeys, always trying to interfere in our lives and control us. Maybe if you didn't think you were better than the rest of us and actually had some children you'd understand.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“As a mother I don't think I need to answer that. I only want what's best for my children, and that's for you to safeguard them and butt out of our lives!”
"You-" Carla pinched the bridge of her nose "You want me to take responsibility for the safety of your children, but stay completely out of their lives and how you bring them up?"
“Obviously! Ugh, it's like talking to a brick wall, I don't know why I bother.”
“And what exactly is it that you need help with today?” So far the woman seemed to have appeared for no better reason than to shout at someone. Carla had a few ideas of how to help her, but there wasn’t a gallows around for miles.
“I want to know who I can complain to.”
“Social services. Tell them that there’s a child in danger.”
“Pah. I queue out the door for some ‘help’ and what do I get? More interference. I’ll call them alright, but I’d like to see them try to push themselves into my affairs. Thanks for nothing.”
The woman stamped out with a sense of righteousness, completely drowned in a blanket of hypocrisy.
“You two heard that, right?”
“Very clearly. I don’t know why she expected you to understand; you're not a mother.” Gloria said. She was attempting to mask her condescension in false sincerity, but she wasn't very good at it. If anything, it made her sound even more horrible than usual. At least, Carla told herself, there had been a queue of people waiting. It might only have been because she herself hadn’t been paying attention, but it was a box ticked. She was on her way to meeting the councillors’ demands.
A few days later, Carla was sorting through her newly finished portfolio of Help Desk cases when she heard nervous throat-clearing. The nervous man was back, looking even more fraught than before.
“Hello again, sir. How can I help you today? Was the mess cleared up?”
"Uh, Hi. Er, no. The mess is still there and we’re rapidly approaching bin day. I don’t know how to get rid of it all or bag it all in time and everything is getting worse."
"Did you not contact the police?”
“Oh yes, I did, but they weren’t able to do much about it. The arm was gone by the time they arrived, probably snapped up by some wild dogs or something.”
“And the police were fine with that?” Carla asked bewildered. She’d never seen a pack of wild dogs roving around suburban Greater Dilhull, but found that much easier to believe than the police ignoring a severed arm suddenly appearing and then disappearing again.
“Well they took a copy of the picture and said they’d be able to identify it from there. Otherwise they weren’t too worried really. Said it happens a lot around here.”
“Right…”
“Anyway, they said that the law of ‘Finders Keepers’ applied, so the car is mine. I need to declare it legally off the road and dispose of it myself.”
“Would you like me to call someone about it? I am happy to help you to dispose of it and put you in contact with the relevant motoring authorities."
"Oh, yes please. Do you think you could come to my house and help me deal with everything there?"
Carla's gut reaction was to say no. Not only because it was an unsolicited invitation to go to accompany someone home during the work day, but also because this person was known to have had a severed arm on their driveway for at least a day, and all they had done off their own initiative was attend a Help Desk. On the other hand, however, this would certainly qualify as going above and beyond; she would be offering a remote help service and proving that expansion to the service was both necessary and valuable.
"I… yes, certainly sir. Leave me your address and I'll meet you there later on today."
"Oh, well I don't know that I want to do that. You’ll know where I live. Can't you just follow me?"
"I'll still know where you live once I'm there, sir."
"You could try to forget?"
"I have a very good memory, I’m afraid."
"I could blindfold you and th-"
"No."
"Right. Well, I'll leave you my address then, if that's the only way. But I'm writing it on sugar paper so it'll dissolve soon." He produced a sheet from his pocket, and Carla worried that everyone in Greater Dilhull took a peculiar stance on correct food storage. None-the-less, it was as good of a compromise as she could expect, and at least she wouldn’t be letting a stranger blindfold and kidnap her.
Carla’s attempts at hiring a car for the journey were thwarted by a mandatory 3-day waiting period applied to same-day hire requests, so she set off to walk to the man's house. The streets were damp and reflective from the night's rain, kicking up the familiar smell of wet concrete and despair as she made her way briskly towards the site of the troublesome carnage.
The summer sun was attempting to break through the cloud cover and show its golden glory to the people of Greater Dilhull. Whenever there was a gap overhead the whole road erupted into a blazing incandescence, blinding both Carla and anyone attempting to use the roads. The drivers who passed her seemed to be hurling themselves along the road more out of a lust for danger than any real need to be somewhere, despite the danger. In fact, for some reason, being unable to see only made them travel faster than usual. It was a case of semantics causing trouble again, the distinction not being made between "I can't see any hazards" and "I am not able to see any hazards". The English teachers responsible must be made to pay, Carla decided, but that was probably beyond the remit of her Help Desk for now.
After an hour’s walk, Carla finally reached the address on the sugar paper. She would have recognised the front garden immediately from the photo she’d seen previously, but the wreckage of a whole car sitting squarely on the path was another dead giveaway.
The wreck was burned out and blackened, but there were no signs of scorch marks on the ground around it; someone must have burned the car elsewhere and then transported the husk to the nervous man's garden, lifting it neatly over the garden wall. Either that or they'd hired a world class cleaner-gardener pair to deal with the mess after the arson. It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Carla rang the doorbell to let the chap know that she’d arrived, and then took another look at the car. The spot where the arm had been in the photo was now devoid of any human detritus, something for which Carla was very grateful. A couple of nights of rain had washed any trace of it away, as well as rinsing all the ashes down into the foot-wells, creating a thick black slurry. None of this was going to help the resale value of the vehicle at all.
She turned back to face the door and saw that a shadow had appeared behind it, crouching strangely and peering through the frosted glass at her. Carla tried waving, but the shadow shot behind the door again in an act of inept stealth. After waiting for half a minute, the door cracked open ever so slightly, still on the chain latch, and a pair of eyes emerged in the gap.
“Yes?” the nervous man asked.
“Hello. It’s Carla from the Help Desk. I’m here about the car.”
“OK, good. You can deal with it. Thanks.” The door closed again, and Carla heard footsteps running away.
“I can- right. Fine. I don’t see why you had to literally run away from me when I’m behind a closed door, but fine.” Said Carla, clearly to herself on account of the man having fled.
Carla leaned her back against the front door and pondered the wreck. Who could she call to get rid of something this size? Her thoughts were interrupted when a roll of recycling bags landed on the top of her head, followed by a roll of general waste bags.
“Ouch!” Carla said, pointing out that this was not the way she preferred to receive bin bags.
“You’re welcome to use those.” The nervous man said from an upstairs window. He could clearly have just handed the bags to Carla through the door, but had elected to bombard her instead for reasons best known to himself.
“Great, thanks. I’ll just tear this car apart with my bare hands and bag it up shall I?” Carla seethed up at the now closed window.
Looking at the bags, Carla wasn’t convinced that the car would fit. In fact, she was convinced that the car wouldn’t fit, even in pieces across the whole roll of bags. Having not brought her cutting torch or bolt cutters with her it was unlikely that she could chop the car into small enough pieces to do anything with, let alone sort the pieces correctly afterwards.
‘If only the binmen could lift the car out whole’, Carla thought ‘but they’d need a helicopter for that.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Maybe it wasn’t such a mental idea after all…’
Carla deposited the rolls of bags next to the door, faintly hoping that the man would trip on them next time he left the house, and decided that she had wasted enough time with this already. She called a local scrap company to remove the wreck, much like the nervous man could have done himself, and sat herself down on the front doorstep to critique the decision making process which had led her here.
Fortuitously, the scrap company was willing to pay Carla for the car. She had a pang of conscience when she thought that the Finders Keepers law meant the car belonged to the nervous man, but then remembered that she’d been forced to walk for an hour to have bin bags thrown at her. Such projectile assault had worn her altruism down, so she graciously accepted the small payment from the scrap merchant. Carla watched the large crane arm lift the car from the garden and load it onto the lorry, as did a queue of angry motorists waiting behind the scrap lorry. As soon as the loading was completed, Carla set off on her way back to the office. She decided that the nervous man would probably appreciate her disappearance far more than notification that the matter was dealt with; it was exactly that kind of personal service that Carla prided herself on. It also prevented her from breaking the man’s nose for dropping refuse sacks on her head.
The following day, Carla set about writing up how she’d dealt with the car in the garden. Not only had she gone above and beyond by travelling to the man’s house, she’d also earned over ten pounds in the sale of the scrap, a figure well in excess of the majority of charity bake sales. Add to that the fact that the nervous man would surely have faith in the council after such an efficient service and she was well on her way to having her proposal approved by the councillors. It had turned into the perfect help opportunity.
As if detecting that she was in a good mood, the yoghurty menace strode through the doors of the atrium and made a beeline for Carla. He wasn’t alone however; Charlotte Pine was with him, as well as her swarm of insectoid aides.
“It’s even worse now, if you can imagine such a thing!" the man shouted, waving the pot at Carla.
"This man's yoghurt seems to have spoiled." Charlotte said with genuine gravity.
Carla looked up at her and held eye contact.
"It spoiled weeks ago. He keeps it in his coat, you see. Don’t you sir."
"ONLY BECAUSE NO-ONE ELSE WILL EAT IT! I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING MY-BLOODY-SELF AROUND HERE."
"Around the help desk?" Charlotte probed.
"Everywhere!"
"Is this your idea of helping people, Carla? This man came to me personally saying that he’s been here several times and had no help at all. This is not the success story that I asked you for!”
“I have given this man help every time! He just doesn’t want to receive it.”
“Don’t try to talk yourself out of it, Carla. I gave you one simple job, which was to do your job well. Is that so hard? You’re supposed to give people the help they want, not the help you want to give.”
“He wants me to eat a yoghurt which is months old! It’s been kept in his jacket!”
“It’s only months old because no-one else will eat the bloody thing!” the man protested unhelpfully.
“Precisely the case, Carla. If you had given help when it was needed then it would never have escalated this far.”
“Are you so desperate for a public image that you’re going to force me to eat a health hazard?” She looked between Charlotte’s media representatives and aides, wondering why on Earth Ms Pine would want this conversation to be documented in any way.
“I’m championing my constituents, every one of them. Even the eccentric ones. I’m getting a lot of resistance to backing the growth of your help desk you know? It needs to deliver or my credibility is shot, and we will not be able to grow if you refuse to help people. I really don’t need this right now!”
Carla was faintly aware that Charlotte was currently involved in a scandal of some sort in the tabloids, regarding a hunting accident a few years ago. It seemed that credibility wasn't the only thing in danger of getting shot around her.
"I understand ma'am." Carla said, resignedly.
Charlotte didn't like being called ma'am because it made her feel like a school mistress, but formality of some sort was required here. She nodded curtly.
“Sir, I hope that you will accept our apologies, and our assurances that the Help Desk will provide a better service in future. And Carla, I won’t be getting involved on your behalf a second time. You either deliver this service properly or I’ll be forced to accept the councillors’ proposal that the desk is shut down.”
Carla’s head snapped up to face Charlotte.
“Their what?”
“Councillor Jones is attempting to shut the desk down, based on what he calls excessive complaints and a lack of evidence that the desk is providing a decent service. He says that you were tasked with providing evidence that the Help Desk is a service worthy of investment, but that you’ve produced nothing.”
“He asked for that barely a week ago!”
“Then he must have wanted it quickly. Get it done.”
She span on her heels and marched out of the atrium, leaving Carla, the man, and the yoghurt alone together.
“Are you going to eat so-“
“No.”
“Typical. Empty promises.” He scoffed, and wandered out after Charlotte.
Carla barely slept that night, instead sitting up at her computer and desperately trying to form a coherent report to prove that the Help Desk was worthwhile. Photos of the car being removed, the invoice for the sale of the scrap, testimony that queues were stretching out the door, and even evidence that Gloria had done some work this week. It was all the stuff of idyllic daydreams, and there was no way that the councillors could argue against it.
“There’s no way we can argue this.” Councillor Smith said darkly, and not just because the light bulb still hadn’t been replaced.
“Shut up. Elaborate.” Councillor Jones requested.
“Every demand we made of her has been met, technically. The waiting lists, cash-generation, going above-and-beyond, and even increasing faith in the council. They’ve all been satisfied. It makes me sick; she’s actually helped people!”
“Um, thanks?” Carla said tentatively. She was standing in front of them all waiting for confirmation that she could have her funding to improve the Help Desk service before Councillor Jones could have it shut down.
“Shut up, both of you.” Councillor Bridling commanded. “We’ll approve the request as long as you submit all the paperwork correctly.
“You’ll – oh, wow! Fantastic, thank you. What do I need to submit?”
Councillor Bridling smiled a toothy grin.
The sheer quantity of red tape in which Carla's proposal had been wrapped was phenomenal. When she tried to follow the approval path that Councillor Bridling had laid out she found that the ‘Planning Permission for Expansion’ form required the ‘Expansion Permit in Spirit’ form, which required the ‘Intention to Plan and Expand’ form, which required the ‘Plan on How to Expand form’, which in turn required the ‘Planning Permission for Expansion’ form. In triplicate. Even if she managed to escape the circular loop of forms, clauses had been added to each of them to require approval from at least one of the councillors on any high-value project, a category into which Carla's expansion now fell due to a hasty revision of the thresholds. In effect, although the councillors were not directly in the approval loop, they could still stand in her way and refuse to grant permission. They would be masked from Charlotte’s eye and wrath but still be able to shut Carla down. She was stuck.
“Everything I’ve tried and everything I’ve worked towards is worthless now. No matter how good I make my case it’ll would be turned down and torn up by that cabal of arseholes.” Carla said angrily to Gloria and Patricia when she got back to the Help Desk. She dropped her head into her hands, closed her eyes, and wished that it would all just go away. Charlotte was going to come and shout at her again for something else beyond her control, the councillors were going to keep shutting down anything which might actually help someone, and of all the people who could be feeling worthless in that desk, it was her and not the pair of hags she was forced to work with.
A loud slamming on the desk penetrated her melancholic spiral. Deep in her despair and engaged in convivial chatter with her misery, a familiar voice echoed through the cracks left by the loud noise.
"JUST WHEN I THOUGHT IT COULDN'T GET ANY WORSE!"
There was only one matter which could lead to the cocktail of rage, entitlement, volume and aggreivement that Carla was hearing - bad yoghurt. That head-case was back.
“You cannot expect me, a taxpayer, to have to deal with this rancid mess on my own! I have told you time and again how foul it is and what do you do? You hide behind your desk, refusing to eat any of it because you’re the kind of sick, council-headed drone who probably likes this kind of thing!”
In a perverse way she knew how he felt, bashing his head against a brick wall which refused to move to help him. All he’d ever wanted was validation that the yoghurt was unpleasant. Was that really so much to ask from the council?
‘Well,’ Carla thought, ‘I’m not going to let the councillors take this one away from me. They can tie my hands for expansion and try to take my Help Desk away from me, but If this is the only act of help I can muster, then by whatever power I still have I am going to do it.’
“I’d be happy to help you sir.” Carla told him. She swept the yoghurt pot up in one hand and lifted it to her mouth, drinking the eldritch contents down without breaking eye contact, lest her gaze drop down and her nerves fail her. She was faintly aware of Gloria and Patricia screaming as she recoiled at the assault on her senses, and toppled backwards.
Carla awoke groggily in a white and blue room. Her mind was fuzzy but her stomach was loud and clear, transmitting a sharp, definite signal of distaste at what it had recently been forced to deal with.
A cold breeze drifted across from one side, drawing Carla's attention. The window was open, and on the sill was a vase of incredibly unpleasant flowers. They matched the curtains, and that was not a complement to either item. It could only be a hospital. She’d eaten the yoghurt and it had hospitalised her.
Concentrating on what she could remember, vague details began to seep back into her mind. For all the fuss that the man had been making over this for the last few weeks, the yoghurt wasn’t all that bad. If she looked past the taste of decay which pervaded the whole experience, the ghostly remnants of the yoghurt’s original flavour still haunted the pot of evil. It was a little over-sweet for her tastes, but on the whole not unpleasant. The man had been complaining about nothing all along.
Carla tried to sit up, but was held still by her stomach. It felt like someone had forced a mid-sized hatchback in there and then melted it, leaving a stretched, empty, painful void.
“Ugh!” she cried upon realising that sensation.
“Carla! You’re awake!”
She looked towards the source of the sound and saw Charlotte Pine standing at her bedside, this time without her cloud of vultures.
“Charlotte?” Carla replied giddily.
"You ate the yoghurt, Carla! What on Earth possessed you?"
"I’m pretty sure I recall you telling me to do that, Charlotte. I should have done exactly as I was told by your precious constituents in the first place, right?” she said sarcastically.
“I obviously didn’t mean for you to drink toxic yoghurt! For Christ’s sake it could have had anything living in it.”
“I… I don’t care anymore. The Help Desk is finished either way. I'm only trying to help people, but apparently those councillor pricks can’t even let me do that. And with your full support of ‘sod all’ I’m afraid I can’t get around them.”
“Bloody hell Carla, you can’t it all that personally and seriously. I can’t spend all day looking after every problem in every constituency so I delegate, but that doesn’t mean you need to drink poison.”
Carla laid silently in the bed and looked away from Charlotte. Here she was, lying in a hospital bed for the crime of caring, and she was being treated like she’d attempted suicide. After a minute or so she finally answered.
“I only thought it would taste bad, and maybe make me sick. I wasn’t expecting things to go this badly for me. Everyone must think I’m an idiot.”
"Far from it.” Charlotte said brightly. “Gloria read in her comic books that you're a heroine of the people. Her tabloid oracle claims that you ate the yoghurt out of sheer British dedication to doing your job. She’s so proud of you that she bought those flowers, in fact." Carla looked across at the vase and finally understood why the flowers seemed so foul; they were stained with numb-skulled bigotry.
“Patricia is livid at the councillors too. She thinks they forced you into eating the yoghurt to secure permission for the expansion. No-one knows why she’s decided on that but I’ll be damned if anyone can tell her otherwise.”
“She always does prefer her own truth to anything based in fact.”
“Everyone else does too. Every paper has a different story. There’s the ‘dedicated civil servant’ angle and the ‘council forcing you to eat it’ as I’ve said, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. The Times is printing that the council must be employing people with what they call ‘special needs’ and not adequately supervising them, The Telegraph claims that it’s a move by the big-yoghurt industry to destabilise the UK’s government, The Independent thinks you were pressured into it as a rite of passage to break through the glass ceiling – whomever you ask, there’s a new story. But in all of them you’re the hero. Or the martyr I suppose.” Charlotte beamed.
“So half of the world thinks I have a mental illness and the other half thinks I’m a huge victim?”
"Yes, but that’s not the point. It’s all tremendous news! If the councillors block your proposal now then there will be outrage. You're set; the funding is as good as yours."
"Wait, if all those papers are out then how long have I been unconscious? What happened? The yoghurt didn't put me in a coma, did it?"
"Oh, no. You just flinched so hard when you tasted it that you fell off your chair, and then you shook the desk so the bust of King George fell on your head. Knocked you out for a full day."
"That bloody bust! I told Patricia it was a death-trap." Carla said angrily. She began her plans for regicide when she got back into the office.
“It certainly seems that way. Why does she have it there in the first place?”
“Christ knows. Something about him being the last true monarch the world saw or something. She’s a nutcase, so I try not to pay too much attention.”
“Probably for the best. Now, I need to fetch the nurses and let them know you’re awake. Then there’ll be some photo-ops for us both. I’ll look caring and the people will be able to see the face of their heroine. It’s a golden opportunity for me. I’ll be right back.”
Charlotte stepped out of the room, her high heels clacking against the floor, and Carla laid back in her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her expansion would go ahead, and soon it would be a while department under her control. She'd have loved to say that hard work, dedication, and unwavering adherence to her principles had brought about the success she was now experiencing, but deep down she feared that it was due to nothing more than improper refrigeration and unsafe ornamentation.
