Jester, Saul and the Accusation of Theft

Let me tell you a little about the Dark Satanic Mill. Strictly speaking, it is an assistance company, working on behalf of insurance companies. Our remit is to get plumbers or gas engineers or electricians or other tradesmen to our customers in times of crisis. We have a network of approved contractors, some of which have been working with us for many years. I work in the complaints department and so have to deal with complaints about them.

I received a call from Saul, one of our contractors, on Wednesday. He asked me to see if I could find a letter that one of our policy holders, Ms X, had sent to us. He explained that his partner, Jim, had been accused by another policy holder, let's call him Mr Y, the neighbour of our correspondent, of stealing £200.00 from his house when he was there on a job. Saul gave me the postcode and I found the letter. It was a marvellous character reference for Jim, explaining that he had worked quickly and efficiently. He had only entered the house in company with Ms X and had been polite and courteous but, when it had become evident that he would have to go onto the neighbouring property to complete the repair, he had refused.

Mr Y had already told Ms X that a plumber from our company had stolen some money from his house but she had told him to look closer to home. Ms X questioned Jim and he confirmed that he had been accused of stealing money and therefore would not go back on the property. She went on to tell us that she had told her neighbour he should look closer to home for the culprit and not to accuse Water Company employees (many of our customers confuse us with the Water Company) with no evidence to back him up.

She explained further that Mr Y has two grown up children living with him. His son is 19 and prefers not to work and his daughter, a young unmarried mother, who apparently takes drugs, lives there with her baby. On the day that Jim visited, his daughter had a friend with her, a girl who is a well-known drug dealer in the area. Of course, Ms X believes that the drug dealing friend took the money and she wanted to tell us so that Jim would not get in trouble.

Her main problem though, was that her pipe could not be repaired unless Jim went onto Mr Y's property and she had wanted our company to resolve this problem. This had all been done by our Call Centre and Saul told me that the repair was being dealt with.

Saul asked me to show the letter to Spencer, the Area Network Manager, and asked if we had done anything about Mr Y's accusation. I checked our records and told him that at the time of the accusation, we had advised Mr Y to report the theft to the police but had not taken it any further. Saul was evidently relieved about this (so was I, it was nice to see our Call Centre follow a sensible course of action) and I told him that I would show the letter to Spencer when he was in the office the following day.

This I did and Spencer told me that he heard about the accusation but had never believed a word of it. Personally, I believe Saul, Jim and Ms X. You get a feel for contractors in my job and this lot are one of the best we have. As for Jim stealing money from a policy holder, well, it's laughable. I'd sooner believe that our resource planners are not a bunch of power-mad, jumped up gauleiters.