Free Doctor On The Job by Richard Gordon

of tea? I mean, it’s a little early. I generally have mine at four.’
    ‘That makes no difference. You’ve still got to take your tea break. If you don’t, it’s a sign of workers’ weakness. What happens when the workers show weakness about anything?’ he added warningly. ‘Even the shop temperature, one degree too high or too low. Provision of soap and towels and all that lot. Though most of these sods here would only nick them,’ he remarked contemptuously as they followed the others towards the ancillary staff canteen on the far side of the building. ‘A worker’s weakness is a bosses’ opening. Get me? It’s like the old boxing match.’ Harold gave a little twirl of his fists. ‘Drop your guard, and you’re floored. KO’d, finished. We’re exploited bad enough, mate, as it is.’
    ‘Do you know, Harold – may I call you Harold?’ Pip said in an admiring voice. ‘I’ve learned more about practical industrial relations from you in five minutes than I should have learned otherwise in a lifetime. And more than a lot of people in British business ever will learn, I suspect.’
    ‘Go on?’ said Harold, looking surprised at himself.
    ‘It’s practical mass psychiatry, that’s all.’
    ‘Listen –’ Harold briefly sucked the tip of his thumb. ‘I got a bright idea. You’re an educated bloke. And sharp with it. How about getting elected as our shop steward?’
    ‘But I’ve hardly joined the union,’ Pip protested. ‘Who’d vote for me? Nobody even knows who I am.’
    ‘Details, details,’ Harold dismissed them. ‘I was left in charge when Arthur Pince had his little engagement elsewhere. So I can call a branch meeting whenever I likes. Nobody attends, see? Nobody ever does. Who wants to be dragged out a night from his hearth and home and telly? Anyway, everyone always does what I says. Them Herberts,’ he nodded towards their brown-coated colleagues, ‘is so thick between the ears they’d thank you for doing their thinking for them. Even if it was deciding whether to go out on the booze at night or have a bit of tail off of the wife. You’re on?’ Pip nodded quickly. Harold shook hands again. ‘No need to fix nothing more. Instant democracy, that’s my speciality.’

7
    Even without a watch, at eight o’clock promptly the following morning, the Wednesday, Pip Chipps arrived at the ancillary staff entrance at the rear of St Swithin’s and punched the clock outside the gatekeeper’s lodge. It was another cloudless day, threatening to be hotter than the last. Pip did not relish idling its hours away down in the smoky porters’ pool. He wondered as he descended to the basement if he could somehow discover some work to perform. But there was no one to give him orders, nor even to indicate where he should seek them. He settled down with his feet up on a bench, reading Jung’s The Undiscovered Self . Pip found interesting Jung’s notion of the Socialist State taking the place of the old religions, and slavery to it a form of worship. Jung’s alternative conception of socialism as a mass regression to irresponsible childhood under all-powerful parents, he marked in the margin. He wondered what such a practical socialist as Harold Sapworth would have to comment.
    Pip continued his studies while his fellow-porters leisurely leafed through their copies of the Sun , Mirror or Morning Star , until the electric clock on the wall, which had apparently the single function of indicating the tea breaks, pointed to a few minutes after ten. He slipped the book into the pocket of his brown coat and quit the room. The administrators should have just arrived at their first-floor office.
    ‘Yes?’ Mr Grout looked up crossly as Pip’s figure appeared in his doorway. ‘What’s the idea, barging in like that?’
    Pip was taken aback. ‘You didn’t seem to mind when I walked in yesterday.’
    ‘Yesterday was different. Then you were one of the students. Now you’re one of the porters. I