Put a clamp on abusive behaviour towards those with unpopular jobs

A MEETING is going to over-run, somewhere today. A meal is going to take longer than it should. A driver is going to lose track of time.

No matter what the reason, the outcome will be the same: a big white sheet stuck to the window of the car, drawing attention to the fact that one of the wheels is immobilised by a yellow clamp.

It happened to a friend of mine last week. The two of us stood, disproportionately dismayed by the clamp, feeling a mixture of guilt, confusion and slight shame.

Then we took out the cellphones and began to obey the instructions. The guy who answered the call was so defensive, you could figure he spends his life in a permanent crouch, warding off verbal blows.

He took the credit card details and promised the de-clampers would be there within an hour. Would we like him to text us updates on the timing? No thanks, we said, that would be too much excitement for one day.

The lads pitched up within 10 minutes, to probably the warmest welcome they got from anyone that day. The driver of the big 4x4 was delighted by their speedy arrival. She practically hugged them. I was surprised she didn’t tip them, she was so chuffed about the whole thing.

They carried their bits of metal to their van, looking stunned and relieved. Apparently the continuum of response they expect starts with frozen silence and moves on to hollered abuse.

When I mentioned the incident to other drivers, one of them got furious with my friend for being pleasant to the clampers.

She was, he felt, letting down the side. In a burst of horrifying candour, he announced that on one occasion when his vehicle had been clamped, he had telephoned Clamper HQ, sworn like an apoplectic sailor at the poor devil who responds to these calls, and then, while waiting for the de-clampers to arrive, had peed on the clamp. He then silently watched the disengagement process and only as the lads were about to drive off, told them what he had done.

You have to assume that the recruitment interviews when clampers are being sought are remarkably rigorous, so that wilting violets are culled at source, or that half the clampers spend half the year out on stress leave. It has to be one of the worst jobs in the world, up there with dentistry in the old days.

Nowadays, going to the dentist is a time- absorbing necessity, rather than the spectacular trauma it used to be. Indeed, it could be argued that on the list of hated professions, dentists have slipped down from top position.

No matter how pleasant the individual, the fact is that having to use the services of some people is not a joy. Yet we give a few of those groups a free pass. None of us wants to have to call an ambulance, but we love the paramedics who arrive with it.

I did come close to clouting one of them a while back when someone close to me was having difficulty breathing and had chest pain. I wanted the ambulance guys to arrive like the SAS, shinning down ropes, flinging the patient onto a stretcher and getting him into an operating theatre within five minutes. Instead, the head guy approached the matter with a stolid calm that reassured the patient but drove me nuts.

“You have a weight on your chest, right?” he asked. The patient nodded.

“Now, would it be the weight of a full grown man or a toddler or a baby?”

The patient’s face was blue and he was breathing like a deranged Hoover, but he gave serious consideration to the hypothetical population explosion on his chest before deciding the weight was the heft of a good-sized toddler.

“Four-year old,” he offered, on a gasp.

That seemed to liberate the ambulance man into action, and in no time, the patient and his ghostly four-year old were in the vehicle, oxygen mask applied and comforting words offered. Of course, once the patient was out of danger, I wanted to give the ambulance man my house at least.

THE same happens with firefighters. The difference is that firefighters have a collective exhibitionism to their operations. Another friend (I hang around with disaster-prone people maybe too much) recently squashed a massive pizza box into his fireplace and set fire to it. Because of the oil which had leaked from the cheese, this resulted in quite a satisfactory blaze, at which he was warming his hands, when he became aware that his house was filled with a thundering roar suggestive of the ride of the Valkyries.

It took him a minute to realise he’d set the chimney ablaze. This is not a good thing to do at any time, but at one in the morning in a quiet suburban estate, is a seriously bad thing to do.

It’s a little known fact that anybody who sets their own chimney on fire follows the action with an internal conversation, which goes something like this.

“This is probably a good thing; it’ll clear out the soot. Although I should have had the chimney cleaned at some point in the last 10 years. Still, what harm could it do? I’ll just walk outside and....Oh, hell. Flames shooting out of the chimney like a blow torch. This will be seen for miles. This will cause planes to crash. This will set fire to the entire neighbourhood. Better ring the fire brigade.”

The unintended arsonist then rings the fire brigade and consults with them as to whether he really needs their help. The fire brigade never shirk. Ah, yes, they say. We’ll be there. They murmur about danger to structures and people and get the address.

In the case of the pizza-box arsonist, this was at once comforting and worrying. Worrying because of the red lights and siren. Maybe, he suggested mildly to the dispatcher, maybe the lads could leave off the lights? Under no circumstances, the dispatcher responded with some asperity, as if it had been suggested they arrive without their trousers on. Well, how about leaving the siren off? That, too, was refused.

The fire brigade arrived like a Cecil B De Mille epic a few minutes later, and the pizza box arsonist could see neighbours, roused by the lights and noise, fixing him with the look of concentrated hatred inflicted insomnia will create. His family, who, up to that point had slept through the thundering chimney noises, were man and boy right down to the baby roused from slumber by the firefighters lashing up and downstairs in boots the size of wheelie bins. Yet, as the furore died down and the fire engine retreated from the scene of the crime, everybody agreed they were great lads altogether.

Firefighters good. Clampers bad. It’s just not fair. Someone should start a support group for the guys who have to brave the fury of people who take the risk of over- staying their parking time and then blame the unfortunates at the front end of the punishment.