Car Park Shenanigans.

My Eleventh Blog. I Swear A Lot.

I've often thought while stressing to find a space to park my car and then wandering through the jammed aisles with trolly's left stranded to roll off into someones bumper, why, would anyone actually want to be a Car Park attendant? Especially in the UK, it's cold, wet and windy, a shocking uniform jacket and bus drivers hat, people are miserable from their shopping horrors, you can be verbally abused and they certainly don't like you when you when slap a ticket on their car. However more than anything it's a lonely job. What the feck is there to like about walking round a big square in the rain, stacking redundant trolly's and fining people for being 1 minute late back to their car?

Our last blog left us on number 10 with the very glamorous impression that Jane and I jumped on our private jet and flew off to travel the world and sell protein shakes, talk about antioxidants to heads of state and PM's and earn a bloody fortune. But NO that didn't happen next.

To be fair I can't miss this particular story out as it's a necessary part of the MLM learning curve and the feck ups we all make and I have made along the way.

You may think "but why talk about car parks? What can I learn from this story?" All will be revealed.

Jane and I started to work together immediately, in fact within days of her starting the detox diet and as the weight dropped off her and her husband she couldn't help but tell people about the miracle weight loss and they couldn't help but notice and ask her show she had done this so quickly. It wasn't just the weight that dropped off it was all the amazing health gains too, all the mini miracles in tubs....

We were both very busy as Jane was still working full time in her office job, I was on garden leave from the bank, but between us both we managed to speak to and help everyone sign up to the Piggy Pee diet.

I worked all day and every evening to help with everyones order of the vitamins and piggy pee bottles and as soon as Jane finished work she would either meet me or someone else to help them get going. I have no idea how many people we signed up but it was a hell of a lot. She was and is a natural networker. She oozes confidence and let her own story do the talking. That and the fact that she rang every mother fecker she knew in her phone and told them about it.

Occasionally and only very occasionally do people get on your actual tit end in this job and honestly I did 'sometimes' want to jump down the phone and throttle them. Some people would think it was ok to call at 11pm on a Saturday evening or 6am on a weekday morning and ask what vegetables I had on my meal plan when I did the diet. Do we look like your weight watcher sponsor? Would she answer your questions once you'd left the scale and ran to the chippy? No she wouldn't...

At first I would actually take the time to answer immediately at these random times because I was so eager to build the business and explain that they actually did have the diet sheet and should follow it for what they CAN'T have and anything else was OK" I was trying to teach people to take responsibility by reading and understanding the plan so it would work for them.

However most people replied with "but can I have carrots?"

"What the actual and I can't stress this enough Feck, part of are they on the list are you not understanding...." Often went through my head.

I'm actually an extremely patient person with everyone, believe it or not but on the odd occasion I did have to bite my lip and let those WTAF thoughts disappear and bring in those kind thoughts and just message back, "Sorry no carrots"

I basically completely fecked up as I answered everyones call or message straight away like I was on a shopping channel for a miracle shake, because I thought I was being super helpful but In actual reality all I was doing was removing any boundaries and respect and thus allowing people to call me whenever they felt like it. As a sponsor or Networker this is so important that your team know when you turn your phone off and when you turn it back on...Yes put the hours in but draw the line.

Also and more importantly the mindset of your team shifts the way they think about you. What you do they will do and if they think that they can't then they won't start...

So don't be desperate for sales and answer anyone at all at midnight and talk about roasted or boiled broccoli for a half an hour. It's just not worth the respect you lose in the long term.

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS WAIT to reply to someone new especially about the products and send them to the documents for the products with links, yes and with screen shots etc, and this way you are teaching people to be responsible by showing them where things are and they will do the same with their team.

Teach people to teach!!!

Otherwise you'll be on call for the rest of your life and never have 'PASSIVE IS MASSIVE' across your t-shirt and you'll never get to the big bucks doing 'stuff' for people that they can do for themselves. 'Educate to Elevate' and all that politically correct stuff they spew out these days...BUT it's true.

So back to Jane and I. We were constantly thinking of 'new' ways to expand the Network in the UK through the diet campaign, which I will go over in another blog, but for now I'll tell you just two of the daftest diet things we did and how we very nearly got into big trouble.

Slimming World Disaster.

I had the 'brilliant' idea that I would drive around my home town and basically anywhere that was busy with posters plastered on my car windows. They were mostly of the random strangers that had completed their 28 day Piggy Pee Plan and had kindly taken before and after photos. Now these photos were of Men and Women of all ages but over 18, in their underwear and mostly German. Are you getting the picture? I had thought it was a good idea to put huge images of virtually naked people in underpants and knickers in my car windows...

I have many German friends and love them dearly...some shave and wax and some don't and yes it is the same in the UK and we shouldn't care...but we do have a tendency to care in the UK before our photograph is taken if we have hairy legs, hairy backs and armpits you could plait into braides.

So basically I would drive around the country showing their virtually naked bodies in big pants slapped on my car windows. I even laminated them.

There has to be something illegal about this right?

Jane and I had designed some fliers which sounds simple enough but no no it wasn't as we spent days sat at my kitchen table designing this flier and deciding who was going to be poster girl or boy, who's telephone number should we use, what colours, fonts and sizes blah blah blah.

We even went to our local printers for a meeting and did a deal on the price for all these posters and we actually thought it was a big deal. This poster campaign of the naked German hairy people was going to launch us like a sky rocket into Network marketing history for the fastest growing superstars in the UK. We would be swamped with offers to appear on stage with Tony Robbins, be a guest speaker for Eric Worre, invited on stage in Vegas and Oprah herself would call to invite us on her show...so these fliers had to be perfect right?

We were actually fecking mental.

However we were deadly serious about this at the time...we wanted the 'Piggy Pee Plan' to be the UK number one best seller. Except we would change the nick name of course but keep the big panted Germans...Jeez I am actually laughing while writing this!

The next step after the posters were ready was to search the internet to find out if there were any diet meetings in our local town that we could hijack. Of course why not, why would you not do that?

In fact there were so many of these diet nights that we could have attended, more than one a night in our little town of chip butty eating beer swilling peeps.

We decided to choose one particular club on a very cold and wet Wednesday evening. It was dark as it was already late and it was held inside a Cricket Club prefabricated building on the outskirts of town. But...we had a plan and it really was simple, we would pull up in the car park just before people arrived in Janes lovely posh big car, looking gorgeous and slim, hair and makeup all done, heels on, smile and hand out the fliers to the ladies walking in for their weekly weigh in.

Why we thought jumping out on these happy lovely ladies in the dark and trying to shove a flier in their hand with images of naked hairy germans would actually work I don't know.

It didn't stop there.

We then thought we would put the fliers all over their cars while it was raining and windy, while they were being weighed in.

As most of us know not everyone loses weight every week in these clubs so we decided it would be a good idea... to wait for them to come out crying about their extra pound or two and pounce on them for a second time, while they were distraught, and tell them all that we had a diet that actually did work.

What we didn't count on was that it was minus 4, there were no street lights in the car park so nobody could actually see us OR hear us as it was blowing a gale, we couldn't see anyone either, the ladies were all running out of the main door to their cars trying to dodge the rain, the fliers were either getting soaked and sticking onto windscreens or flying off to someones garden and we were being ignored by every fecker who left the building as they sped off to 'Hasim's Kebab and Burger Shop' because they had lost possibly half a pound and wanted to celebrate. As my mum's friend used to say "I've had bigger shits than that"

So we were left stood in the entrance of the cricket club, soaking wet, hair a mess and freezing cold, a total waste of makeup and looking through the main doors at the rather large lady shoving the weighing scales into her Asda carrier bag, folding the flip chart and picking up a few leaflets that were left on the little round tables. She seemed all smiley earlier when she was weighing people as we looked through the glass doors trying not to get soaked, now she wasn't so much smiles but grumpy and sad. I felt bad that we had tried to steal her clients that she got paid feck all for.

As she came to the door to leave she saw Jane and myself looking like drowned rats still carrying the fliers and shaking with the cold but we determined to have a chat with her.

We asked her if we could have a word as she 'squeezed' past and she looked quizzically and said "yeh sure what's up". We both went on to explain what had happened so far with the diet and how wonderful this business was and how it was better than hers and she could earn more money etc...Not exactly professional and talking over each other far too excitedly.

When we had finished blabbering on through chattering teeth she told us in no uncertain terms to "Feck Off and never come to her meeting again or she will personally call the police"

Fair enough.

There was nothing left to do apart from run to the car with our hair flying, sticking to the lip gloss and high heels getting stuck in the pot holes, jump in Janes car, blast the heater on and drive home with 200 wet fliers stuck together.

Epic fail.

Morrisons Car Park

If the event the week before at Skinny World going tits up wasn't bad enough then read on for more embarrassing moments. This one is an under the quilt 'I want to die moment'

So I had another superb idea to spread the word about the diet. I would go and stand on my local Morrsions supermarket car park, on a Saturday, which is the busiest day of the week, next to the outdoor and indoor market and shopping centre. This way everyone in the town out shopping that day had to pass me by and I could seize the opportunity and chat away to them about health and weight loss. What could possibly go wrong.

Not for one minute did I think you needed a license or that it was private land or that they had security people and cameras.

I found a great parking spot where everyone could see the posters on the windows of the Naked hairy people, checked my lipstick was ok, grabbed the fliers and a few business cards and jumped out ready for action. I think I even made a questionnaire and printed those off and stood with my big pen ready.

I was literally there for one minute when I asked a rather large lady carrying 6 plastic shopping bags from Iceland supermarket, as she headed towards the bus stop, if she would like to know about an amazing diet I had just completed. Now in my mind I thought she was a perfect fit for me to chat to as she looked very uncomfortable carrying those bags and she was waiting for a bus so obviously had time to talk. I thought I could help her genuinely. However her retort went like this in a high pitched scream"Feck off you cheeky cow, are you calling me fecking fat? Feck off!!!"

I stood paralysed by fear and embarrassment. OMG I had straightened my hair and done my makeup for this?

The whole world seem to stop and stare at me, I wanted the ground to swallow me up right there and then...but it got worse. How could it possibly get worse I hear you ask but it did. The Iceland lady who obviously thought I was being rude to her, threw her frozen food bags on the floor, a few sausage rolls and a tub of fifty pence vanilla ice cream fell out as she shouted for the security guard to come over....I didn't even know a free car park had security, I was in shock. I didn't know if I should pick up her shopping and help get the sausage rolls back into her bag or stand still and pretend I was invisible.

The main bus station was right next to me and everyone sat staring at the scene infront of them, some with rollies hanging out of their mouths, cans of coke on the floor, a row of pushchairs with kids sat in them eating cheese pasties, shoppers walking towards their cars carrying their carrots, spuds and bunches of flowers from the market or pushing their Morrisons trolleys loaded with food bags and ready roasted chickens. All I could do was to stand there while a guy wobbled over in a huge jacket high viz vest thing with a walkie talkie he had probably never used tapping it like he was in Afghanistan and about to be airlifted out. He had a uniform hat on and was pulling up his black trousers from his baggy ass, and was trying to walk fast and shout at the same time.

I just stood still and waited for him to come over to me. Actually my legs wouldn't move I was soooo embarrassed.

Iceland woman met him half way and started to point in my direction by jabbing her stubby finger in the air towards me and I saw him nod a few times and eventually head over my way. One hand on the trousers to keep them up the other pretending to talk in his walkie talkie.

Iceland was not happy and looking back I don't blame her, I must have come across as mean but it was in no way intended to be cruel I promise.

Once 'Mr Security' arrived in front of me he explained that the car park was private property and I wasn't allowed to promote my business on their land, and if he saw me again handing out fliers he would call the police and have me arrested. It was obvious that this was the most excitement he had had in months. I stared at him and imagined he had to live with his mum, eat Indian takeouts, fart when he wanted and watch porn in his single bed while still a virgin at the age of 45. All this was going through my mind while he was just doing his job and telling me off in front of the 'whole' town so he had to make it look good didn't he? By the whole town I mean the folks leaving the market carrying white plastic bags with fruit and vegetables stuffed in and the odd potted plant hanging out the side where a wire coat hanger had burst the thin bag and a little trail of soil followed them to the bus stop.

If you ever do get to read this blog Mr security, I apologise for those thoughts profusely and hope you are happily married with the children of your dreams and Morrisons has finally promoted you by bringing you 'inside' and you're now 'undercover chief security officer' of the doughnut section.

I returned to my car after apologising to him profusely for handing out the fliers on 'his' land and also to the Iceland woman who was now scowling from her bench at the bus stop, checking her sausage rolls were all there.

I drove home thinking I could never go in that supermarket ever again unless I was undercover and buying 'double tasty ready cooked chicken'.

I needed to get out of this town and it was becoming obvious to a blind man and his dog that it wasn't going to be via the Piggy Pee Plan and handing out fliers from street corners while nearly getting arrested.

A few weeks later the land owners of the car parks and Morrisons decided to install payment machines and charge for parking spaces. This was their statement to the press and the local council. "The move is to stop its car parking spaces being 'abused' and to ensure there are enough spaces for its customers"

'Abused!!!!!'

Jesus Fucking Christ are they actually kidding me....The world has gone mad with pettiness. I might decide to be a Flat Earther one day and jump the feck off the edge. This was the driver to do 'better' to not fail and to definitely get the feck outta stinksville.

Not yet though, I had work to do.

Disclaimer 1. 'This blog contains discriminatory content which some may find offensive'

Disclaimer 2. “This is a work of creative non-fiction. All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. Some names and identifying features have been changed to protect the identity of certain parties. The author in no way represents any company, corporation, or brand, mentioned herein. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.”