''Let’s get this straight – I never told John to speed. I just pointed out that this new contract was really important to us, and... well, if we didn’t deliver on this one then the client had made it clear that he would be looking around for somebody else who could.
I tried to protect John by saying I never keep records of who was driving any of the vans at any particular time – but they said they had the pictures and failure to identify the driver could put me in the dock with the possibility of a heavy fine or even jail... so what could I do?
I was sorry to let John go though. But as it’s company policy that all our drivers must have a clean licence and he’d picked up six points in less than an hour – well, I just didn’t have any choice. We did pay his fines as a gesture of good will.
Oh, and the sting in the tale is that we lost the contract anyway!''