Andy's Shorties - 5. Prompt #241

So it finally happened. After six agonising months of being unemployed, I finally found a job. I’ve never gone so long before being out of work.

I got a job as a manager at Your Toyz. It’s a new chain of toyshops that has just opened up and down the country. I didn’t even bother to research the company or anything; I was just so desperate for a job that I applied.

The advert said the company was looking for managers for their new stores, and they were offering a package that seemed too good to be true. They were offering £75000 per year, a company car, eight weeks holiday per year and full medical coverage. As I said, I just applied. I seriously didn’t think I’d get the job.

I’ve done some low-level supervisory work over the past couple of years, but the highest salary I’d ever been paid was £20000, so I figured that I would be seriously under-qualified for this job. The interview actually seemed to go really well. The head guy liked me, the human resources woman on the interview panel was warm and friendly, and we even laughed a little. As interviews go, it was the most relaxed interview I’ve ever gone on.

My first day on the job, I was taken on a tour of the store by the regional manager, Dave Tomson. It seemed that all the store sold were dolls, but what surprised me was that the store only had a dozen on display and there were none in the storeroom out back. I was told that the ones on display were just to give customers an idea about what the company offered, but that the actual dolls that were sold were made to order.

I thought if this was a made to order company then surely it should be far more upmarket than a chain store. However, I was told that although the dolls were of high quality, they could be produced quickly enough and cheaply enough to allow them to be sold at the bottom end of the market.

Dave spent the rest of the morning with me going over all of my duties. He also made me take the first couple of customer orders. I was told that it was company policy that everyone must know how to do the job of the staff that they manage. I thought that was actually very sensible, since I’ve worked under managers who didn’t have clue one about the day-to-day stuff.

A young girl and a woman I assumed to be her mother walked into the store.

“Welcome to Your Toyz,” I said. “How can I help you today?”

“I want a new dollie.”

I looked down at the girl, who must have been about five or six years old. “So what kind of dollie do you want?”

“A pretty one.”

“Have a look around. The dollies on display here are not actually for sale. Pick a dollie you like, and we make one just for you.”

The mother and daughter spent ten minutes looking around and then returned to the counter.

“Nancy likes your ‘Mindy’ doll,” the mother told me.

Dave talked me through the ordering process. Nancy kept the Mindy doll basically as she was, but she requested for it to be customised with having green eyes (instead of the brown eyes it came with) and brown hair (instead of blonde hair it came with).

We finalised the order, and I quoted the unbelievable price of £25. Dave assured the mother that the doll would be ready to collect in three days, but that the store would telephone if it arrived earlier.

The rest of the day passed quickly, and I took three more orders, and each mother was told that their doll would be ready to collect in three days time.. Each person was quoted the price of £25, no matter how much customisation was requested. I figured the warehouse probably had thousands of the dolls already made up, just without hair and eyes and stuff, and then these were added to the completed doll by hand, as each customised order arrived.

As promised, all four dolls arrived three days later. I unpacked each one from the warehouse packaging just to make sure that they had survived the journey in one piece, and was immediately struck by how lifelike they looked. I knew that manufacturing of dolls had come on in leaps and bounds since I was kid, but I had no idea things had moved on this much. The dolls actually looked a lot better than the ones that we had on display.

Nancy and her mum came in and collected her doll. Nancy took one look at her new dollie and instantly fell in love with it. Throughout the day, the other three mothers who had ordered dolls for their daughters also came in and collected their purchase.

I was eating my lunch in the small staffroom, and reading through the morning newspaper; it’s always been a habit of mine to read the newspaper over lunch.

The story on the front cover was the same story the news has been running for the past two days. The abduction of four babies on Monday evening from The Royal Oakshire Maternity Hospital had sent shockwaves through my little community. The Royal Oakshire had been the maternity hospital of choice in our area for three hundred years. Everyone from the ordinary citizen right up to Members of Parliament had elected to give birth in the ROMH over the years. The photograph on the front page was of two day old Abigail Somerset; she was a real cutie with big green eyes, a small mop of brown hair, and an award winning smile.

That day was the closest I came to discovering the horrific truth behind Your Toyz, and to be honest it wasn’t really that close, as none of what I had read really stuck in my mind. I was too focused on eating my chicken salad sandwich, and planning where I was going to go on holiday in the summer given the amount of money I was now earning.

If only I’d paid a little more attention to what I was reading, I might have come to realise just what kind of organisation I was working for.

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