FUCKING ASSHOLE SPEAKERS

This isn't really anything directly to do with my job except that I saw it while I was at work. So I guess it basically is to do with my job.

Anyway, I park my car on this backstreet between drops, and to get from the backstreet to the main street where the pizza place is you have to walk through this alley. It's quite a narrow alley, and is often full of tramps, but it's all good. Sometimes I give pizza to the tramps (actually that's another story for another day, about how I fought the man by feeding the homeless).

So I'm coming through the alley, heading in the direction of the main street, and this hairy dude is heading the other way, dragging this massive speaker behind him. I mean massive, yeah, like that shit they have at rock concerts. Nothing too bizarre about that though; I just figured he was a roadie or something, and he was dragging it to some club for some gig or whatever.

Only later would I realise he was heading out of the city centre, not into it. No clubs in that direction! The plot thickens...

About twenty minutes later, I park my car up and see the speaker the dude was dragging. It's at the side of the road, just out of the mouth of the alley, and the guy is nowhere to be seen. Bit weird, but none of my business. Hell, it's just a speaker: what do I care? I head up the alley.

The hairy dude is heading down the alley.

He's dragging another speaker.

Same kind of size, by the looks of it I'd guess it was an exact replica of the first speaker (but I'm no expert on speakers so DISCLAIMER don't take my word for it). I give him a nod and a grunt, the universal male signal of greeting/acknowledgement, but I receive nothing in return. In his defence, it looks like a pretty heavy speaker.

I don't see the guy again for about an hour, but over the course of the next few drops I see more speakers. The second speaker was sat next to first. One drop later, a third speaker (same size, shape, etc.) is place on top of the first two. One drop later, a fourth speaker is haphazardly laid to the side of the speaker pyramid. A fifth speaker later appears, balanced precariously on the fourth.

The speaker pile built up over the course of about an hour, and by the end of it I was a little weirded out, but not too much. Maybe they'd just finished a gig, I told myself, and this roadie was lugging the speakers to somewhere out of the way to await the tour van, which was gonna roll up any second now and pack the mountain of speakers away.

Yeah. That made sense.

Too much sense, apparently.

As I walk past the five monstrous speakers and enter the alley, lo and behold I see the hairy guy again. Only this time he has a friend with him, and then friend is a five foot long piece of metal piping.

Okay, yeah, I wouldn't exactly think of myself as a coward, but in my defence, this guy was hairy, pretty large, quite possibly deranged (more on THAT later), and carrying a five foot long piece of metal piping. I just about managed to keep my shit inside my intestines and out of my boxers, and scuttled past him, pressing myself against the wall so hard I picked up a couple bruises on my back. He paid me absolutely no mind whatsoever. All his attention, all his energy, was focused on one thing, one foe, one nemesis.

I wasn't particularly keen to replace that nemesis in his attention (note for those of you who have been skimming: five foot long piece of metal piping), so I carried on my way.

I took the long way round to get back to my car for my next drop, anxious to minimise the possibility of running into Mr Speakers. No such luck: he's there, in the street, probably only a couple metres away from my car.

Happily for me, he isn't looking at my car. Or me. In fact, I doubt he even realises we exist. I doubt he's aware of anything at that moment. Anything, that is, except the speakers, which he is laying into with a ferocity I haven't seen since the schoolyard fights of my formative years.

I mean, he's flailing, he's winding up with this impractically huge length of piping and he's swinging, like BAM... only these speakers aren't going down. He's smashing, he's crashing, he's huffing, he's puffing, but the speakers remain. Maybe it's because the piping's just way too fucking long for him to really get much steam going with it, or maybe it's because they're top notch kit and they're built to last, I don't know, but the fact that they seem impervious to his frantic assault seems to mean little to him. He keeps wailing on these speakers, sweat flying from the lank strands of his mop of hair, and between the grunts of exertion I hear mutterings.

"Come on, you cunt."
"Fuck's sake, you little shit."
"Fucking taking the piss."

And so on and so forth. I get into my car and drive off, unsure as to whether I should be laughing with mirth or crying with relief that I escaped with my life.

When I pull up again twenty minutes later, he's still there. His efforts have apparently started to take their toll on one of the speakers - the casing is gone and he's beating on the insides pretty good - but god DAMN they have taken their toll on him about a hundred times over. He's shirtless, and his whole body is beetroot red with sheer exhaustion, dripping with sweat despite the fact it's now about 9pm (and this is England, so 9pm pretty much means COLD regardless of season). His hair is plastered all over his face.

My God, he looks insane.

He pays me no mind as I drive past him; no mind as I get out of the car and walk directly in front of his line of sight to get to the alley. He's in the zone. Those speakers are not going to live to see morning, unless the dude has a heart attack before then. Looking at him, I'd probably have put money on him croaking before all five of the speakers did.

When I come out and head back to my car, about one minute after I enter the pizza place (pretty busy time of night), he's not shirtless anymore.

Well. He's not just shirtless.

He's also trouserless. And shoeless. And sockless. He's wearing white y-fronts, the archetypal British underwear... and that's all he's wearing, unless you count a thick sheen of sweat as clothing. Around these parts, we don't.

Still, it's hot business wreaking revenge on a pile of expensive speakers, so, whatever, I'm not going to judge a guy with a fucking five foot long piece of metal piping. This time, however, it's a lot harder to not just break down into hysterics. I mean, sure, this is a back street, but it's still in the middle of the bloody city: there's a block of flats directly opposite this nearly-naked man. This is just insane.

As I climb into my car and shut the door, I make out another one of Y-Fronts' muttered curses over the sound of metal pipe meeting expensive wooden veneer.

"Fucking asshole speakers."

That does it. A burst of braying laughter escapes my throat and I hit the gas without looking back to see if the dude heard me, crazed giggles pealing out of my throat and showing no signs of stopping.

As I pull back into the street after the drop I'm pretty nervous: what if he heard me? What if I'm next on his list? What if the fucking asshole speakers are no longer Y-Fronts' number one enemy, and the fucking asshole pizza boy is the new top target? As I round the corner I'm reading to shit three bricks.

No one there. The speakers are there, but their persecutor is gone. I step out of my car and survey the damage. One is beyond repair: he got it good. He'd started in on the second, and by the looks of it he wasn't too far from breaking open the casing to get at the delicious electronics held within. The other three were unscathed, and probably sending up prayers to the Speaker God even as I looked at them.

Apparently - according to one of the other pizza guys who saw the end of this sordid tale - the cops finally showed up. Fucking bizarre that it took that long, to be honest: like I said, a block of flats right in front of him, and every person in the place was probably able to see the musical carnage taking place on their street. I suppose, on reflection, I could have rung up the po-po, but in my defence, and despite how terrifying it was at a couple of points, it was really fucking funny.

As the cops dragged him down the street (he didn't go peacefully), one of them carrying Y-Fronts' clothing over his shoulder, he could be heard (quite clearly, apparently) to lament that he wasn't able to finish those fucking asshole speakers.

I debated finishing the job in honour of Y-Fronts, but decide against it. The pipe looked pretty heavy; and besides, I don't really have the physique to go topless.