Swerving the checkatrade

"Sergei's selling his lorry Morris", Stan Lee said.

 

"So?"

 

"You could buy it. You said yourself you need a job. With a lorry you could set up your own business."

 

"Business! What sort of business?"

 

"It's a very big lorry, you could start a removals firm or something."

 

"Is that what Sergei used it for?"

 

"Among other things. His niece was living in it for a while, then it was stolen by pirates, but he's got it back now."

 

"I could have a look at it I suppose. Big you say?"

 

"Oh yeah, you could keep an elephant in it, no problem."

 

It was a very big lorry. You could keep an elephant in it, even take the elephant for a ride if you wanted. It was big and sturdy.

 

Morry posted an ad in the local paper. "Lorry with a Morry: Houses cleared, castles emptied, the best removal service bar none."

 

Morry got his first email in less than an hour, offering him a clearance job the following day. It was a big house and he was able to negotiate a sizable fee, armed with which he desperately sought to recruit removal staff. He phoned everyone he knew who might be interested, but it was short notice and nobody was available. He tried a couple of temp agencies, but even they couldn't help. Still, he didn't want to turn down his first job and tried the local pub, hoping to bump into some people he knew, but the pub was nearly empty. He ended up hiring a bunch of students he'd never met before who at least seemed keen to earn some money.

 

The job went wrong from the start. The students were nearly an hour late, meaning that Morry was late, even though he'd allowed 40 minutes leeway. Once they'd arrived at the job the students proved worse than useless, every time Morry turned his back they'd slouch off for a fag break, toilet break, tea break, lunch break or just a break. They dropped everything they picked up, crashed every piece of furniture they tried to move, and broke every item it was possible to break, plus a few things it wasn't. They complained about the boxes being too big, too heavy, the wrong shape and even the wrong colour (I'm allergic to brown) and they took FOREVER. By the time they'd driven the van to the new house and unloaded it was after midnight and the mood of Morry's clients has to be imagined, as there simply aren't words to describe how angry they were. It goes without saying that he wasn't paid, and having given money to the students up front he made a loss. That was before the bills for broken items started arriving from the client's solicitor.

 

But the loss of money was nothing. When he checked his web accounts he realised that the first negative reviews had already gone up, with his clients listing his company's faults in detail. But they didn't stop there. The man worked in IT, and over the next few weeks, he somehow managed to get hundreds of negative reviews of Morry's business on every site he was listed, and even on sites where Morry hadn't listed himself. Morry could move a thousand happy clients and he'd still have the worst rating on the whole internet.

 

"My business is finished," he told Stan Lee that night. "Nobody with a brain-cell would use my company, I'm officially the worst removals firm that has ever existed."

 

"No worries Morry, what you gotta do is swerve the checkatrade."

 

"Swerve the checkatrade? Is that even English?"

 

"You gotta beat the review system, find a niche where a handful of bad reviews won't be noticed."

 

This sounded good advice, but finding a niche for a removal lorry wasn't a simple task. What could he possibly offer that every other removal firm wasn't already far better at? Sure he had a big lorry, big enough to hold an elephant, but there was no point setting himself up a specialist large-house removals firm as it was that which had caused his problems in the first place.

 

The only positive asset he had was his lorry. It was a big lorry, big enough for an elephant.

 

'I suppose somebody has to move elephants', Morry thought to himself. 'After all, there are zoos, wildlife parks, private collections, you can hardly just shove them in the back of the mini'.

 

So he placed a new ad: 'Morry's Elephant Lorry, elephants transported in comfort by professionals'.

 

 

His new company name had no negative reviews and zero competitors, the only downside with the plan was the fact that he was now 100% reliant on the elephant removals trade. However, he got lucky. A couple of days after he placed the ad a zoo contacted him, they had to move all of their elephants (five altogether) due to a planned refurbishment of the elephant house.

 

Morry carefully negotiated the timing of the five trips with the zoo and a friend of Stan Lee's who he'd hired as a driver, so that he'd be free to watch over the elephant and deal with any problems that arose on the journey. He spoke in detail with the elephant's keeper to ensure that he had all the right food in place for the trip. He hired cleaners to refreshen the van after each trip (a major job). The keeper accompanied the elephants on each journey and Morry took the opportunity to join them both in the back and learn everything he could about elephants, their upkeep and their transportation needs. He was also given a brief overview of the main medications elephants were likely to need and ensured that he had a stock in place for future trips.

 

It was a lucky break, as by the time a call came in from a private elephant owner a week after his zoo job finished, he was something of an expert in elephant transportation.

 

Morry had drastically underestimated the size of the elephant removal industry. Sure, zoos and wildlife parks only occasionally contacted him, but private contractors were a different business. It seems that the billionaire classes love nothing more than celebrating their wealth by keeping exotic pets and nearly all of them had elephants. Morry became an expert in meeting the needs of the rich clientele, helping them to ensure that their elephants were well cared for and encouraging them to 'give the elephant treats', usually involving journeys in the elephant lorry. His business grew, soon he had a fleet of lorries each of them carrying elephants back and forth for his private clients. The work was lucrative, with the fees paid as big as the elephants he carried. In no time at all Morry was a rich man.

 

When one of his clients bought an island for his elephant to live on, Morry made the decision to invest in an elephant boat, to transport elephants to and from islands. To make it work, he spoke enthusiastically to his other rich clients about the benefits of giving their elephants the space to roam on their own island. Morry was a good salesman. One by one the elephant owners bought up islands for their elephants, competing among themselves for the biggest island. In no time at all Morry had to get a bigger boat.

 

 

Which is why you are hereby served with this notice to move. A Russian oil billionaire has bought the UK for his elephant to play in. You have a week to move out. You'll have to find somewhere to live which hasn't already been bought by a billionaire for his elephant. Good luck with that.