She's gone. There's just a blank space where she used to be. We spent so long together, so many experiences, so many places and now she's with another.
My car that is. My company car. It went on Friday, collected from me, after the end of my three month's notice period, along with my mobile phone, fuel card, epaulets and with my sabre broken in half in front of me. This is quite a defining moment. Now that really does draw a line under the last job and totally cuts me free from them. I had intended to use the car on the last day of use and drop it off at the HQ (that would have felt very, very weird) but plans got changed so I got them to come and collect it. Well the HQ is in the middle of nowhere and it would have been easier to escape from Alcatraz than find public transport that actually went somewhere you wanted to go to at the time you wanted to go there. "Well we do go through Much Deriding at 0600 to get to the ewe tupping market and then onto Little Caring for the 'stare at the stranger in the village' morning at 2142 if that is any help me love?"
You have to be careful with company cars though. At my last company it went through regular financial crises, like once a month. At one board (bored) meeting the Financial Director suggested scrapping company cars, as a cost saving exercise, and replacing them with a monthly cash allowance. You could have heard a pin drop when he announced this. I mean, for most company car drivers you could reduce their salary by 75%, take away all fringe benefits, make them work 24/7 and sell their family into slavery and you would get less fuss than if you tried to take their company car away from them. We didn't change the car policy and he never got invited to any company social event ever again.
It's only a car after all so I'm not getting maudlin about it (or should that be too maudlin, leather seats, aircon, central locking, cruise control - I miss them so much.). We'll manage in Mrs EotP's little run about for the time being. However it is 10 years or more since we were without two vehicles and, in just two days, I'd forgotten about our new status and went to go out today - except my wife also needs the car. So we've had to arm wrestle for it and I'm staying home. This also means a very close co-ordination in diaries for the first time. When do you need it? Can I have it then? Shall I get a lift? I think there's a bus route (I haven't been on a bus for decades, how do you work them?).
Because I've worked in the automotive industry cars have become blase. A quick calculation reveals that I have had more than 50 company cars in the 27 years I've been working. Yes folks, a new car at least every 6 months on average. Now for the last 7 years my company car has been changed every 3 years (positively vintage) so you can see that at some periods the changeover must have been very frequent. One company I worked for changed company cars at 5000 miles - as I was commuting 1000 miles a week I would be ordering a new car at collection which caused the HR department to go into melt down trying to keep up with me. The car never required a clean inside or out whilst I had it as I never had long enough. I also had a fuel card and could never remember the registration number when I went to pay for fuel always tried to park the car at a pump where I could see it from the cashiers. I'm sure the local petrol station thought I was mad, going "errrrr" in response to the question about the registration. Every car was silver, the same model and spec so to them they looked exactly the same.
On the basis you don't know what you've got until its gone the first redundancy was very traumatic. The company I worked for then had such a liberal policy on company cars that everyone in my family had one and I could go down the street pressing car keys into surprised neighbour's hands and insisting they have one too. However the car(s) went. And they wouldn't come and collect it. On the last day I had to make my way back from a place that, though well connected North and South with the rest of the world, saw going West (where I lived 26 miles away) as unnecessary so I could walk for all they cared. And they didn't care. Fortunately a colleague thought that being car-less with a three month old baby in Winter at a time when unemployment was rocketing was a little tough. So he pressed the keys of his spare car into my hands with the proviso that I insured it myself. No problem, except that as a company car driver I had no record of insurance. "To insure you will cost £2.3m - £5m if you want fully comprehensive" the insurers said. Well, to be truthful, £700. This for a 1.6cc standard new car. "But" I blustered, "I can go to a daily rental car hire place and get insurance for 3 pence a day with their cars and I can prove that I have had an accident free driving period for at least 7 years." They were unmoved almost to a broker. Except that I found someone at last that covered me for a more reasonable sum. When I found a job a last with a lovely company car policy, we decided that we would buy a car so that, should the day come again when I had no job, we would not be without transport. Three redundancies later that decision has proved fortuitous.
Are there any upsides? No company and private fuel tax for the time being so that will cause me and the Inland Revenue much hilarity trying to work out who owes who what at the end of the tax year.
What am I saying? I always owe them something.
A lot more space on the drive for...nope working on that one.
No that's it - less convenient but we'll work around that one.
I don't need a big, grand company car a Trabant will do me- until of course I get my next job with a company car and then spend hours working on the optimum brand/colour/spec/tax/combo before ordering it.
And then there is always that wonderful smell of a brand new car.
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