Telesales here we come. Thanks Mr Butler!
Hello everyone.
This is John.
No, John isn’t at a fancy dress party! He’s a miner.
Mining is what we call a “shitty job”. If you want to know more about shitty jobs just ask your dad and he’ll tell you all about that time he worked in telesales.
John’s favourite expression is “Where there’s muck there’s brass”, which is odd because he works in a silver mine.
John gets up half an hour before he goes to bed and works 14 hours a day down the mine.
His work is difficult and dangerous. He spends all day scraping out little bits of silver and hauling them to the surface.
At the end of a week the pit owner takes the silver that John has mined, weighs it and then takes half of it for himself.
The pit owner can do this because he lets John work in his mine out of the goodness of his own heart. And if John doesn’t like giving away 50% of his silver he can always piss off and try his luck in telesales.
This is Julie.
She’s John’s wife and she’s “high maintenance”.
She loves shoes.
And ridiculously big horses.
And she also likes a bit of rough, which is why she married John.
“Why can’t we ever seem to get ahead?” says Julie. “I need a new pair of shoes and a new dress and so does the horse.”
Julie thinks it’s completely normal to buy dresses for her horse.
John sits up half the night worrying and decides to sneak out of the house. He breaks into the pit owner’s property.
And comes face to face with an enormous slab of silver which is so polished and smooth that it looks just like a giant mirror.
He stands and stares at the silver slab. But he doesn’t see wealth or hope or opportunity, he just sees his own reflection. And staring back at him is the face of a dejected and broken man who for far too long has been forced to buy dresses for a horse and give away the fruits of his labour to an unscrupulous pit owner.
Key phrases:
- Where there’s muck there’s brass;
- A bit of rough;
- 50%! Are you kidding me?!
