‘ARN and Lyndsey Boutflour’: A Great Story, with a Happy Ending, By Planet Vending Editor, Ian Reynolds-Young
Once upon a time… PV’s relationship with ARN goes back to a meeting we had with John Crichton and Mike Hadfield in a pub in Ramsbottom. We had lunch and a chat and a pint and at the end of that, PV had a job to do.
Barring trade shows and industry get-togethers, we haven’t seen Mr. C. since. He’s got enough on his plate without us mithering him. He told us to mither Lyndsey instead.
Our efforts for ARN continue to this day and our monthly (ish) briefing meetings are – or rather, were – a Zoomed four-way: the Boss and me from PV Central in La Vall de Pop , Allan Walker and Lyndsey Boutflour, stationed just a wee bit north of the Tyne. I say ‘were’ because, as you may already know, Lyndsey has left the company. Indeed, she’s waved good-bye to vending, to pursue her vocation of becoming a paramedic.
Which created a dilemma. I asked Allan, ‘are you sure we should be telling customers she’s gone? I mean, won’t that be an own goal, since most of them probably think that the whole thing will disintegrate without her?’ Allan laughs, because both for ARN’s suppliers and its customers, Lyndsey was right at the heart of the business. But life goes on just the same as it ever did; ‘It’s just a bit less fun’.
Speaking of which, God knows she’ll miss them. Facebook got very gooey the day after Lyndsey’s leaving do, with post after post featuring the gifts she’d been given and the good wishes that went with them. Tears, we can confirm, were shed.
Meanwhile, back to the debut three-way Zoom, where thoughts turn, in a good way, to the prospect of Lyndsey in uniform. Will she be comfortable taking orders from, well, anybody? ‘Will she be able to resist the temptation to ‘get the bloody thing organised’ when she sees for herself how the ambulance service is run?’
Alan thinks not… ‘She’ll be like, ‘this is so inefficient that we could probably halve the amounts of runs we have to do, if we just double-stack the patients’’, he says. ‘She’d have them all on pallets and there’d be a couple of fork-lift trucks at the entrance to every A&E. She’ll probably be nagging the maternity department to adopt a ‘just in time’ strategy. To be fair though, if she can handle NAME OF CUSTOMER or SUPPLIER REDACTED, then sorting out the NHS will be a piece of cake. She’ll have to find something else to do, after lunch.’
It’s been a long story has the one featuring Lyndsey, (first as a Baxter, latterly as Mrs Boutflour), and ARN. It’s over now, so let’s hope we can conclude ‘and they all lived happily ever after.’
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