Chapter 18
‘So, what can I get you?’ Roly felt self-conscious as he approached the two young women sitting at a table in the window.
He had no problem serving customers, and he found chatting to them easy.
But he was aware of Ray watching him the whole time from behind the counter and judging his performance.
Roly had only been at Insider Out a week, and was still in training.
‘Oh my God! Roly Punch!’ The blonde woman squealed. ‘It’s really you!’
‘Yep.’ Roly smiled, pen poised over his little notepad, ready to take their order. ‘It’s me!’
‘You were right!’ the blonde said, grabbing her friend’s hand across the table.
‘Told you.’
‘She told me you worked here, but I didn’t believe it.’ The blonde turned her attention back to Roly. She was cute – big blue eyes, long poker-straight hair, nice boobs. Her dark-haired friend was attractive, too, in a more offbeat kind of way.
In reply, he smiled and held out his hands as if to say ‘behold, my official notepad and pen, my Insider Out uniform’. It wasn’t actually a uniform, just black jeans and a white T-shirt that Ray, the owner, required all the staff to wear.
‘Wow! This is amazing!’ The blonde giggled, fanning her hand in front of her face rapidly. ‘We were such Oh Boy! fans.’
The brunette nodded. ‘We were always trying to meet you back in the day.’
‘And now here you are, serving us coffee! It’s surreal.’
‘We used to spend all our money following you guys around.’
‘Or we’d just hang around outside your house – sometimes for days at a time.’
‘Your mum was really nice to us. She even brought us out lemonade and packets of crisps one time.’
‘You probably don’t remember me,’ the blonde said, ‘but I managed to sneak backstage a couple of times and meet you all, and I hung out in your hotel room in Manchester once.’ She gave him a flirtatious smile. ‘I was a major groupie.’
Roly smiled at her, while at the same time trying to guess her age. Was she implying they’d hooked up? ‘We didn’t…?’ He left the question hanging, almost afraid of the answer.
‘Oh no,’ she laughed lightly. ‘I was more of a Zack girl.’
‘Right.’ Of course. They were all bloody Zack girls. ‘Well, I’d love to stay chatting to you girls, but my boss is watching.’ He threw his eyes behind him, where he knew Ray would be standing behind the counter. ‘So, what’ll you have?’
‘What were you talking to that pair about?’ Ray asked, nodding to the two women as Roly joined him behind the counter.
‘They were Oh Boy! fans.’
‘Oh, were they?’ Ray nodded, looking intensely interested. He had the air of a Bond villain cooking up some elaborate plan for world domination. It was a look Roly had already come to know and dread. ‘Chatting you up, were they?’
‘Um… yeah. Reminiscing about the old days.’
‘Okay, good work. Good work.’ Roly could practically see the cogs turning. ‘What did they order?’ he asked, then held out a hand, like a lollipop lady stopping the traffic. ‘Don’t tell me, don’t tell me. Two cappuccinos, right? Extra foam.’
‘Er… no. Just a couple of Americanos.’
‘Americanos,’ Ray nodded knowingly as if that would have been his next guess.
Roly liked Ray. He was a squat, chubby man with thinning dark hair and slightly crooked teeth that looked too small for his face.
Roly had described him to Ella as middle-aged after his interview, but had since been shocked to discover Ray was only a couple of years older than him.
Maybe the cafe business had taken a lot out of him.
Roly began making the coffees, and Ray leaned against the worktop beside him, arms folded.
‘When you bring those over, ask them if they want a muffin or…’ He shifted his gaze to the two women, narrowing his eyes.
‘A brownie. Yeah, they look like brownie people.’ Ray liked to think he was an astute judge of character – insofar as character consisted in what sort of drinks or snacks people would order. He was almost invariably wrong.
Roly liked working at the cafe, but he hated this part of the job – what Ray called ‘upselling’ – which meant trying to get people to order stuff they didn’t really want.
He especially hated doing it to Oh Boy! fans because they’d order anything he suggested, and then he felt guilty that they were spending money on stuff they didn’t want just to please him.
‘If you want to succeed in business, Roly…’ Ray often gave him little pep talks and business tips as they worked, and Roly pretended to be interested and grateful.
He didn’t have the heart to tell Ray that he had zero desire to succeed in business.
The little neighbourhood cafe was Ray’s pride and joy, and he’d been good to Roly, taking him on with no experience or qualifications, and sending him on a one-day barista course, so that now he could make fancy coffees and he had an actual transferable skill to put on a CV.
He even had a certificate. So if Ray fancied himself as his mentor, he thought it was only fair to play along and act the part of the eager pupil.
* * *
‘If you want to succeed in business,’ Ray said to him that evening, continuing the lesson as they cleaned up, ‘it’s all about the bottom line.’
‘Right.’ Roly nodded as he wiped down the coffee machine.
‘You see it all the time in America. They’re great at it.
You buy a pair of shoes, they ask would you like some socks with that.
In McDonalds, “would you like to supersize that?” – same principle.
So if someone orders a tall, ask them if they’d prefer a grande.
Emphasise the value – it’s only 10 per cent more for 75 per cent extra. ’
‘Is it?’ Roly frowned, trying to work out the maths in his head.
‘It’s close enough. They’re not going to start doing the calculations on a napkin.’
‘Okay.’ Roly had no intention of trying to sell someone bigger coffees with dodgy maths.
‘If they don’t order something to eat, suggest something. Sell the benefits.’
‘The benefits? Of, like, a brownie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And… what are they?’
‘It’s the feel-good factor, isn’t it? Serotonin and dopamine and all that. Use your imagination. We’ve also got the gluten-free muffins, don’t forget, so there are the health benefits there too. Flapjacks – full of fibre, very important for our older demographic.’
‘Huh?’
‘Constipation, Roly. Old ladies are obsessed with it.’
‘Oh, right.’ Was he going to have to start talking to old ladies about poo? At the same time as he was trying to sell them cakes?
When they’d finished cleaning and closing up, Ray made tea for them both in the back room.
He liked to sit down with Roly for tea and a chat after the cafe was closed.
He called it a debrief, and he went over the day’s business while working his way through the remaining baked goods that had reached their sell-by date and couldn’t be put out in the glass display case for another day.
‘Tuck in there, Roly,’ he said, grinning as he put a plate of assorted flapjacks, brownies and Danish pastries on the table. ‘Everything must go.’
‘Thanks.’ Roly didn’t want to be rude when Ray was trying to be nice, and if he said he was on a diet, it could make Ray feel self-conscious about his own weight.
It might even sound like he was fat-shaming him.
So he took a flapjack, figuring it was probably the least fattening option – and maybe all the fibre would make him poo the calories off again.
‘Okay, I’ve got an idea,’ Ray said, taking a Danish pastry from the plate. ‘Those two you served earlier – the Oh Boy! fans?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s got me thinking. They just came in for a coffee and they ended up staying for lunch, buying sandwiches, cakes, the lot. So good work, Roly!’
‘Uh… thanks.’
‘It’s made me realise that we haven’t been maxing out on the potential of having you here. And I’ve come up with an idea!’
‘Great.’ Roly dreaded Ray’s ideas.
‘We should spread the word about you working here – get it out on social media, you know. Maybe even go viral,’ he said dreamily.
‘Oh!’
‘So, are you okay with that?’
‘Um… yeah, sure.’ He was so far from okay with it, but he didn’t feel he could say no to Ray.
‘Great!’ Ray rubbed his hands. ‘I’ll tweet about it tonight to kick us off.’
Roly relaxed. He’d seen Ray’s Twitter. He hardly ever tweeted and he had less than a hundred followers, many of whom, Roly suspected, were inactive accounts or bots. ‘Good idea.’
‘And then I want you to retweet it, so all your fans see it.’
‘Oh.’ This wasn’t so good. In fact, it was very bad.
Roly rarely went on Twitter any more, but he still had something like thirty-five million followers – and he didn’t want a single one of them to know that he was working as a waiter at Insider Out.
What would they think? What would the other guys think?
They’d have a right laugh about it. Not only was he working in a cafe, he’d look like he was really proud of it. Shit!
‘I don’t really tweet any more, Ray,’ he said. At least that was true.
‘Well, I’m sure you still have plenty of people who’d see it if you did. And what about Insta? Do you Insta?’
‘Um… yeah.’ Unfortunately, he did ‘Insta’. ‘Mostly Stories, though.’
‘Good, good.’ Ray nodded. ‘Well, Insta’s even better. We could brighten the place up a bit, make it more photogenic. I think you’re onto something here, Roly.’ He grinned.
‘Well, it wasn’t my idea—’ Roly didn’t want to take the credit for his own downfall.
‘No, but you’re taking my idea and running with it. Using your initiative. Insta Stories…’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I like it.’
Roly tried not to panic. Maybe he could post something in the middle of the night when not many people would see it, and find a way to make it disappear quickly. Or maybe there was some way he could make a post so that only Ray would see it? He’d have to look into it when he got home.
‘I suppose you’d want to make the place a bit more Instagrammable first,’ he said, looking around, hoping to stall for time. ‘I mean, it’s very nice, but—’
‘I hear what you’re saying, Roly. Some fairy lights? Lick of paint maybe? New tables and chairs?’
‘You don’t need to go that far.’ Roly couldn’t let Ray shell out for painting and decorating because he didn’t want his new career to go viral.
Ray slapped the table suddenly. ‘Sure, what am I thinking? We don’t need any of that stuff. We have our most Instagrammable asset right here in front of me.’
‘What? Where?’
‘You.’ Ray pointed to him. ‘If people started coming in and taking selfies with you – that’s major bragging rights. It could blow up big time.’ He reached out and took a brownie from the pile. ‘Now, we’re motoring. We need to come up with some snappy hashtags. Let’s brainstorm it. More tea?’