I am reminded of a night shift handover when the outgoing manager informed me that both my mobile patrol men were already on the road but would be unavailable to me for about an hour or so. He went on to say that Guard XXXXX was presently at the North Middlesex Hospital having his broken leg removed and expected to be on Site 1476 in about an hour so one Mobile was baby sitting the site whilst the other was going to Guard XXXXX's home to inform his wife. Apparently an ambulance, leaving the hospital, had knocked the guard off his motorbike so they had carted him in to A&E whilst the receptionist summoned the hospital engineers to fix his bike.
The MD was in the control room at the time and became very agitated at our apparent lack of concern at all this "How can he have his leg removed and you two still expect him to be on site in an hour?"..... Woodstock, who was manning the radio controls that night, then explained to the MD that Guard XXXXX was known to be accident prone and was frequently having to go to hospital to have his tin leg straightened or replaced so he had been given a "spare" to keep in reserve. All we had to do was arrange for it to be collected from his home and delivered to A&E and he'd be back on duty.
The MD turned white and left.
The next day a memo came out from head office demanding to know how many other guards were deficient in limbs and how they had passed the medical.
We sent back a polite note saying as far as we knew 6 out of 750 had at least one false limb and two more each had a glass eye. We added that we could make no comment on the mental capacity of any of the others.
The MD never came into the control room at handover time again.
