The Waiting Man

The work ute has been off the road for the last couple of weeks, as its registration had expired. It had actually expired in late November 2019, but since there's no registration sticker on the car & because it's a company car, all the paperwork would have been sent to the office, not to me, I had no idea I was driving around in an unregistered vehicle for nearly 6 weeks. Not until I was going through some paperwork in the office, looking for something else entirely & found a letter telling our company that the car was now unregistered & if it wasn't renewed by early February, the process of getting it back on the road would involve more certificates, more time at mechanics &, obviously, much more money

The Boss has been away overseas since Christmas & only sporadically contactable, allowing for time differences & the amount of 'socialising' he was doing, so I took the issue up with my cow-orker, who styles herself as the 'Store Manager' & says she's in charge of Admin. How, therefore, did this happen - that I've been driving around in a vehicle that's already got a few defects on it, but was also unregistered & had no 3rd party insurance either?!?! She tried to pin it on me, saying that because I drive the car, I should have known. Having then, very patiently & with a minimum of swearing, pointed out, again, that there is no sticker on the car, no papers in the glovebox & any correspondence from the Roads & Traffic Authority would have come straight to her desk, without my name appearing anywhere on it, for her to deal with as the 'manager' of administration, I sent a message to the actual Boss & awaited a reply...

When it came, it amounted to 'Stop driving it, I'll deal with it when I'm back'. So - public transport to work it is then, because be damned if I'm using Laura to transport stuff around for a company that consistently finds new & entertaining ways, every week, to stuff me around

Anyway, the whole point of this story is - when the Boss returned yesterday, he & I took the ute to a local mechanic he knew & within 10 minutes, had it passed for registration... despite the need for at least 2 new tyres, brake lights, new seatbelt... the list goes on. I really don't know whether to recommend this mechanic to everybody I know, or to report him to the Roads & Traffic Authority for inspection breaches

Probably neither... because it can still be useful, knowing guys like that are out there. I just hope I never have to use him myself...