Apart from that “swing at me” incident, I saw Bush really cross only once. We were at Jones Street in Kimberley and Bush was battling with credit. I always kept my working papers and notes in a box next to my desk and the carton would be put away in the bookroom at the end of the day. Bush would also come along and dump his stuff in the same box. I had been working on something which required that I get some boxes out of the bookroom and the last one stood next to my table, waiting to be taken away. Bush came wandering over and without looking, dumped his notes which included a whole batch of credit exceptions, in the wrong box. The cleaner came along and filed it right back where he had brought it from earlier – right at the top of a shelf fully packed with boxes.
The next morning Bush came along looking for his notes, which of course were not in my box. He swore blind that he had put them in the box and suddenly he was furiously suspicious of the manager, who he was sure, had deliberately destroyed all his hard work to try and save himself. Fortunately he refrained from confronting the manager but walked up and down, smoking like a chimney and muttering about the “sneaky bastard”. I suddenly realized what had happened and told him we’d just need to find the right box and all would be well. But despite the accountant’s and my best efforts, we could not turn up that box and now his suspicion fell on the hapless accountant who he thought was in cahoots with the manager. It took us more than an hour to pack down and open every single box before we found the right one and were able to restore his missing papers.
He told me afterwards that he just could not face starting that credit audit again and all sorts of crazy thoughts were racing through his mind.
Comments