When I’m 64

OPINION: Imagine Rabid’s surprise when his uppity nephew suggested it was time we retired and left him to run the shop. So that’s what passes for loyalty around here.

What on earth makes him think he’s qualified to run the entire shop on his own nobody knows. Granted, he has had ten years’ experience cashing-up on the register and doing the banking.

OK, it’s true he also does the annual budgets and he’s been pretty good at it all things considered. Still not quite sure why Uncle Tony gets a regular wage when he’s never here, but no point worrying about trivia.

The reason we were so surprised at the suggestion we retire was because we read about it in the local paper.

You heard right, slap-bang on the front page with a mug shot of the nephew with one of his Cheshire-cat grins.

We knew he was getting a bit fidgety but this is beyond the pale.

Now he’s claiming we promised to retire and hand over the shop keys five years back. And to make things worse, he’s got Uncle Rupert, from the flat upstairs, confirming his version of events.

A bit of history will set the record straight. When we bought the shop ten years ago, we weren’t the only ones interested.

Uncle Tony decided the shop would make a great laundry so he was outbidding us and the price was spiralling out of our reach. We knew he couldn’t be serious because we never heard of a laundry that washes money, but we needed a way to stop him using his numbers game to get the shop.

So, yes, we did suggest to the nephew that if he talked his dad out of the laundry idea, then we’d hire him to run the books, and sure, one day, all this would be his.

We certainly didn’t put any time frame on our retirement plans, and there are lots of people still working after they’ve turned 67, and Rabid isn’t even close to that age yet.

And why should we retire when the business is going so well and we’ve almost paid off the mortgage? The nephew says the customers don’t like the way the shop is run and they want a fresh young face with new ideas. Well, we asked the customers and that’s not what they told us.

Everybody agreed the nephew does a decent job with the accounts and they like the way he often runs cash-back incentives and gives free mouse mats to the kiddies, but nobody could handle the idea of him running the place.

They reckon he’s a control freak just waiting to get off the leash, and nearly all the customers said they’d shop down the road at Kim’s Komputers if we let the nephew takeover Rabid.

Now the upstart is threatening to stop looking after the books and spend all day sitting on the bench out the back with a bunch of his mates. It’s almost worth calling his bluff just to clear the shop of the noxious bogans he calls friends. But who knows what they’d get up to out there out of sight?

Before you know it they’d be scheming with Uncle Rupert and we’d have another front page story about our imminent demise. Better park him on the bench out front where we can keep an eye on him.

Gotta go! Customers waiting!

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