Global Importers and Facilitators

All knew Mary was trans and to all those she associated with it was of less significance than that she was a left handed ginger of Irish descent, all of which she was gently teased about. Mary was in her middle thirties and worked for GIF, Global Importers and Facilitators, and was one of the best, and possibly the best, operatives there, having established in a handful of years a huge web of personal contacts in companies all over the world. Many had wondered how she’d managed to establish herself so rapidly. Mary had always smiled and said, “I guess I just got lucky.” However, the truth was having been treated badly as a youngster, for no other reason than that she was different, it was only in her early teens she realised she felt, thought and behaved differently from the boys because she was a trans girl, she was acutely aware how it felt to be unfairly treated and how little it took to hurt someone who was already suffering. The result was she treated every one as she wanted to be treated and it had always paid dividends. Folk liked dealing with her for their exchanges were always pleasant and any mistakes, which were bound to happen from time to time, were speedily and amicably resolved.

She was a high earner as a result of a generous basic salary and her bonuses which were semi commission based and partially paid as a result of the high regard she was held in by the companies GIF dealt with. Ten years before Mary had lived with Martin Swift, a relatively recently qualified optician, they were in love and talking about buying a house large enough for the children they had plans for after their marriage. Then Martin had been killed crossing the road outside his place of employment by a drunk driver. Mary’s world had turned black and despite it remaining so for a long time her performance at work had not suffered, just herself. Eventually, she discovered it was true what had been said so long ago, ‘This too shall pass,’ and it did, eventually, but it took five years.

Mary’s second relationship was with Arthur Greenvale whom she married on a bright, sunny, but cold April Saturday. Arthur was a widowered artist with five children who barely made a living, but he was kind, generous and enabled her to laugh and enjoy life in a way she had never known before. Mary to her satisfaction was Mum to the children. Arthur was their home maker and Mary earnt their money which was a satisfactory arrangement to all seven of them, though their most enjoyable weekend activities were not normally very expensive. They were happy, had a reasonable amount of money in reserve, and Mary’s world was good. Good that was till GIF was subject to a hostile take over and four months later the new management fired Mary on the grounds of retrenchment, but all knew it was because they’d discovered she was trans. Mary had been surprised, for she’d assumed that the new management, like everyone else had known she was trans right from the beginning, for it had always been public knowledge and something that she’d always readily admitted.

Things were not looking too good for Mary and her family. It would be a long time before they hit financial hardship, but they needed to be careful with money and had considered it prudent to cancel their proposed summer holiday to Greece. One evening Mary and Arthur had managed to persuade his sister to babysit for them because they needed to get out to avoid the constant gloom they felt before it became depression. They decided to go for a drink at Elsie Rose. Elsie was a lesbian who was married to Rose, a surgeon at the local children’s hospital, and owned and ran Elsie Rose, a popular LGBT+ club.

There was a group of them sitting at the bar discussing the attempts of Mary and others to find a job when out of the blue Elsie suggested Mary should start her own firm of importers and facilitators that could employ a goodly number of their acquaintance. “Come on, Elsie, you know that’s not possible. I haven’t got the kind of money that would require.”

“No you need to get real, Mary. What do you need? An office, phones and competent folk to handle them. All that could be done for a few hundred quid. A couple of grand at most. You’ve got all the contacts, loads in China, India, Indonesia and elsewhere, businesses in this country, Europe and the States too. Many of who will follow you if you contact them asap. I mind you saying that their contact details were all on your phone so you can reach each other in case there’re any problems, or did the new management take the phone back?”

“No it was my phone. I handed the company phone back and it didn’t occur to them I’d have the information backed up other than on the firm's IT system.”

“Good. You need to get it out to all of your contacts that you are shortly to be starting up on your own. I’ll let you use the rooms upstairs rent free if you’ll hire LGBT+ folk. There are loads come in here who are highly qualified at all sorts and intelligent enough to manage a mid career job change, but can’t get work despite the equal opportunity legislation. Many like you had decent paying jobs till their management discovered they were different. How many colleagues from your old firm would follow you? Ask! Call it International Importers and Facilitators and make it clear you operate over the club and will hire anyone who can do the job. Ram it in folk’s faces. Talk to folk who come in here and start tonight when I announce it after the raffle results. The LGBT+ are taking a chance just by breathing, for sure they’ll take a chance on future employment even if it means working for free for a while. Everyone that comes here knows you got fired for being trans. They’ll be willing to help get some guaranteed discrimination free employment off the ground. I know a firm like that has to operate round the clock in all possible time zones, so I’ll employ another cook to feed your night staff. The kitchens cook sixteen hours a day anyway since I got the bus station contract, and the taxi drivers from all three local companies eat here. They’ll all be pleased at round the clock availability of hot food. Others will come to eat in the small hours, for there are few places open then, so I doubt if I’ll be out of pocket on it.”

Rose interrupted, “When I get home exhausted in the middle of the night after an eighteen hour shift has gone pear shaped on me at least neither Elsie nor I will have to start cooking, so it’s got my vote, Mary.”

Elsie continued, “Changing the subject slightly. Maybe a year or three back I remember you talking about how your firm lost opportunities to do with assisting small businesses to trade abroad. Sort it out and grab the opportunities for yourself. Turn your ideas into money and jobs, Girl. I can’t remember the details probably because I didn’t understand what you were going on about very well, but I know it was winding you up at the time.”

“I call it to mind now, Elsie. At the time to trade outside the EU, a company had to be EORI registered. For UK companies their EORI identification was based on their VAT(1) number preceded by the letters GB. EORI number stands for Economic Operators Registration and Identification number. My idea was that since GIF was EORI(2) registered we could be the official importer or exporter to save small firms from having to register for what may very well be a one off activity. That’s perfectly legal as long as the VAT trail is clear. I argued we could charge a fee for what was after all a facilitation of our customer’s trading so well within our remit. The customer wouldn’t need to bother to register to say import a machine from China, which they may never do again, and mind registration can take six months. If the paperwork hadn’t come through their machine would be sitting in a bonded HMRC(3) warehouse giving them a very large storage bill at the end of it. HMRC wouldn’t be bothered as they’d get what was owed to them from the customer, but via GIF.

“The company wouldn’t buy it. They said we’d be spreading ourselves too thin diversifying our services to that extent. I reckon if they’d listened to me the hostile take over bid would have failed because the share price would have held up due to the extra business generated. I’d done my homework, and I knew there were plenty of our customers who wanted the service, and many said they knew others who if that service were available would use us for other things as well, for it made no sense using more than one firm for similar services. The take over only succeeded because the money they had was in the form of readily tradeable stocks and bonds that could buy a controlling number of shares due to the fallen share price which in turn was due to the down turn in business in the third quarter. They were on the ball and must have been watching the markets carefully. They sold what they had and bought the maximum number of GIF shares at exactly the right time. I have to say they must have been planning it for a long time and it was cleverly done. The old management got careless, sloppy even, and paid the price.” Mary shrugged at what was now water under the bridge. “Now we’re out of the EU the EORI system has changed a little, but it’s basically the same.”

“Well do it. I’ll put the word out and ring a tele communications company to have a small exchange installed upstairs. How many phones do you need?”

“Five or six.”

“Okay I’ll ask for a dozen. You never know. You need some office desks and chairs and a computer server system to run a dozen work stations. Frankie can sort those out for you at cost on ninety day credit terms. I’ll talk to Alice later about the server system later for you. It’s what she does for a living. If you offer her girlfriend Lizzie a job Alice’ll set it all up for you for nothing and you have access to the best computer maintenance technician service available.”

International Importers and Facilitators never took off, but Elsie’s ideas were the beginning of great things for Trans Global Importers and Facilitators, usually referred to as TG, and the beginning of the end for GIF. Eventually TG bought out GIF at a fire salvage price from the first liquidator,(4) and when interviewed concerning her success Mary was candid concerning how it had all come about. When asked if she could give a single reason for her success she said, “No, but I can give you two reasons. Money and service. It’s all about money and service. There is no place in business for bigotry.”

“Are you saying that ethics is important in business Mrs Greenvale?”

“No. Ethics are important in business, but I’m saying bigotry is a luxury no business can afford. Global Importers and Facilitators was a multi billion pound business empire, and bigotry dropped their turnover and then their share price to nearly nil. Nobody considered GIF to be worth investing in because TG had taken all their business. TG managed to do that because according to customers GIF had become a company that was not easy to deal with, so as a result things took too long and as a result it was costing them money. In addition GIF was becoming more expensive, so its prices did not represent value for money. Money and service, GIF charged too much money and did not provide enough service. At the end I wasn’t prepared to pay much for GIF because all I wanted was the right to wind it up as a business. The liquidator was glad to accept anything at all for the company because the book value was near enough nil and its debts were mounting by the hour. GIF was not absorbed as a subsidiary of TG. It was bought for a song to be immediately placed into receivership again. It had virtually no assets, certainly nothing I wanted, and was unable to pay any redundancy money. When it was finally wound up it was heavily in debt and a lot of folk lost a lot of money. They were mostly shareholders who supported GIF’s business model which included their bigotry, so I wasn’t bothered by their losses.”

“What about the employees that supported you when you worked at GIF? You said there were many there you liked and had been happy working there with a lot of friends.”

“Long before GIF crashed they’d all handed their notice in and had been working for TG for months, many took part of their salary in shares and all employees are more than happy to receive their bonuses paid in TG shares. I wanted nothing to do with GIF as it was at that stage including all its remaining employees, and was certainly not prepared to risk transferring any of them to TG. TG employs plenty of competent open minded folks I don’t particularly like, probably one or two who if I knew them well enough I would dislike extremely, but TG employs no bigots because I can’t afford it to. No one can. Bigotry is just too expensive a commodity to indulge yourself with, unless of course you want to go broke.

1 VAT, Valued Added Tax.
2 EORI, Economic Operators Registration and Identification.
3 HMRC, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
4 Liquidator, or receiver, are terms used in the UK for those in official charge of winding up the affairs of a bankrupt company. Such a company is said to be in receivership.