She slams her coffee cup down on the breakfast bar, spilling the contents over today’s post. It’s nothing important, an advert for a pizza delivery and a charity begging for money in return for a biro that doesn’t work. The Iranian maid, as always, appears as if from nowhere and in total silence clears up the mess. “You’re a monster!” My daughter has a colourful vocabulary so this is mild. “I hate what you’re doing. How could you. Why can’t you have a proper job?” “Think yourself lucky young lady, I say, “You wouldn’t have all this without my work.” She flounces off, slamming doors behind her. I am a business man and I help people get what they want. If I ran one of those glitzy American companies I would have a ‘Mission Statement’ “Helping people achieve their potential. . “, or some such weasel-speak. Governments don’t like what I do, but the people I help every day need me. Is it my fault that everything is set up to make it as dangerous as possible for my customers to get what they want, what they need? No, it isn’t. I just do the best I can to feed my family. Really, I should get a medal. Or go to hell, I’m never sure which. I work on my own as far as possible. In this business I can’t trust other people to get it right. Actually, I just can’t trust other people. That means I have to have my hands on every bit of the entire system from end to end. Masters of Business Administration students could learn a lot from me. I use social media a lot. It’s much easier than endless phone messages, although I have to be really careful to keep it a safe distance from me. Non attributable, I think the term is. But I don’t have some highly paid marketing executive, doing her nails, drinking expensive coffee, chatting pointlessly to any idiot who has nothing better to do and running ‘social media advertising campaigns’ or ‘social media events’. I just use an encrypted service to an anonymous account with short, coded messages. My customers can reach me if they want to buy the services I offer. I use truck drivers from Romania a lot. I find that they tend to have a useful lack of empathy with anything other than the money I pay them. It keeps their lips sealed and their minds on the job. Of course, I also have an enforcer who makes sure they don’t stray from my ‘Business Conduct Guidelines’ to use the MBA term. My enforcer is a very kinetic sort of person, to use the business jargon. You wouldn’t want him to get all kinetic with you. The drivers ensure that my customers are properly loaded into the luxurious trans-continental travel vehicles, or trucks as some people call them, and the enforcer makes sure the fare is properly collected and finds it’s way to me. I occasionally have to replace an enforcer, which can be a hefty business expense. Of course, governments and law enforcement work hard to make my life difficult. Isn’t that always the case? If I ran a grocery shop the business rates, corporation tax, the income tax, national insurance and the VAT do the job for the government. In my line of work I have to pay a different set of taxes. Luckily, people in my business, collectively have a much bigger budget than governments so we are able to be creative and agile. Agile, another MBA buzzword. We can usually find a way round any little legal or jurisdictional difficulties that might arise. Crossing borders between countries is one of the taxation points. I find that a decent camouflage of legitimate import and export paperwork and a very few friends in the right place, usually family members, help enormously. Of course, this all costs money, but it’s less than VAT. I always have to laugh at this. Everyone likes to get one over on the tax man. Once I deliver my customers to whichever motorway service station is currently suffering a temporary, unforeseen CCTV failure, my job is done. The people that take them on from that point are not very nice at all. Scumbags actually. Modern slavery they call it now. Not my problem. Although, they pay me for the ‘cargo’. Well, business is business. I can’t just go letting truckloads of people wander off into the night. It wouldn’t be safe. Not for me anyway. So of course I get paid for delivery. My customers don’t know about this end of the deal until they arrive. Sometimes something goes wrong. It has only happened twice to me whilst I’ve been in business so that’s pretty good going. It’s a shame all the passengers died. But they would have died anyway if I hadn’t helped them. It cost me a lot of money both times. New drivers, new routes, new wagons, new enforcer. Very messy. My daughter, who has everything she could possibly need thinks she found out what I do. She read one of my messages. She says I’m a monster. I told her that I know what I do and it pays for everything she has, everything she wants and everything she dreams of. She just slammed the kitchen door and flounced off to ride her pony. On reflection, I think it’s time she started earning her living. I might have to give her a job, it’s a family business after all.