Tom The Tractor Is Broken

One of the tasks of my new dept is to place calls to engineers to come and fix anything that goes wrong in the store. A dept will contact us to say their oven, or a mixer, a light switch, whatever is bust, and we take down the details and then consult the Maintenance Folder. Inside this tome, is a listing of every piece of equipment in the store that can break down, and the name of the company responsible for fixing it along with their phone number.

Some things break more than others naturally, because they get used more. It is a rare week that something doesn't need fixing in the Bakery for instance, as the machines down there take a real hammering every day. And for some bizarre reason the Coca-Cola drinks machine in the store Cafe just keeps breaking (the engineer has had to be called out 5 times in the last 8 days now. It's gotten to the point that when he left yesterday, he said "I'll see you tomorrow no doubt", sure enough he was back today!)

So anyway, today I got a call from the Cash Office to tell me that Tom the Tractor is broken and can I please call out the engineer to fix it. Tom the Tractor is a really crap kiddie ride, that looks like a cartoony tractor. The kid sits in it, places his coin in the slot, and is "entertained" for a minute or so as Tom wobbles about, a few lights flash and a bad song plays. Maybe I'm being overly critical, chances are good I enjoyed these things when I was a toddler, I honestly don't remember.

Still, getting back to the point, I duly note this down in the equipment maintenance record, so that the store has a record of us calling out an engineer, along with when we did it, and then ask what exactly is wrong with it (as the company responsible for fixing it will be bound to ask when I phone them). The conversation then went a bit like this:

"I don't know"

"Well in what way is it broken?"

"I don't know"

"Well have the mechanics gone, the lights, the song, is it smashed in some way?"

"I don't know"

"Well how do you know it is broken then?"

"No-one has spent any money in it for two weeks"

I'm not actually sure what I said to that, probably something like "Oh right, okay" and then I hung up. Is it just me, or could the reason no-one has put any money in Tom for two weeks be because it is a really shit ride, that is tucked behind the passport photo booth and the customer service desk in a corner of the foyer, and it has been the same ride now for months. We used to change the ride fairly often, I presume so that kids would not get bored of nagging their mum for a ride on it. But Tom the Tractor has been there for quite a while now, and perhaps the local kids are bored of him. Or maybe he really is broken. I guess the engineer we've called can find out.