Welcome to New York. You remembered your wallet, right?

Despite my dartboard memory, I have a high capacity for certain things. Favourite lines or passages of dialogue for example. I also never forget being stung. So my Skinflint Spidey-sense was tingling as I stepped off the tourbus into the Long Island sunshine. Walking into the venue, I remembered last year, when a friendly man conned me into installing not one but two telephone lines into the office, then charged us $550 for the privilege.

''Well, won't get fooled again" said I, and spiralled off into a 9-minute drum solo. Next thing I know there's a guy in my office.

"Hey buddy. I'm puttin 'ya phone line in, lemme show ya where.."

"Oh, that's ok, we never use the phone." I attempt humour; "We're from Europe- we don't have any friends here." This worked two days ago. No dice.

"Well, Im gonna put one in. Ya know, just in case." Right, in case my watch stops and I need to call the Speaking Clock? In case I just gotta call my BFF Jill?

"Seriously, man, I don't need a line. I don't want one."

"Well, you never know."

He left and I went to find something beautiful to destroy. If he can't get in, he can't install it. When I came back, the sneaky fuck had got in with a master key and installed a 'phone. A white one.

Welcome to Union Country. Where if you don't ask, you get it anyway, and they charge you for it. He'd switched the line on, so now we had to pay the prick. All day. Nice switch-flicking there, no-mark.

I had been warned that if the Teamsters didn't get breakfast, they could make the load-in and load-out very difficult, insisting only they could handle anything, but of course sticking strictly to their break schedule, so that basically 33% of the 'workforce' is always on donut-time. They have a minimum load-in time of 8 hours; it takes 4, maximum. They have a minimum load-out of 6 hours; it takes 2 if the local hands are really slow. Which, of course, they will be.

That's 14 hours' pay for a maximum 6-hours' work, and 2 free meals. From the outside looking in, the US Union is a lot like the British dole, only a little less honest. Rather than pretend to look for work, they pretend to do work. You can't blame them- they get paid more this way.

"You wanna standin' contest? I think I got time..."

This beautiful hunk of clay is a forklift driver. We pay him for 17 hours. He can face many directions, oh, yes. Not just South-West with his nose towards catering, sniffing the air like a starving polar bear.

So, my wondrously expensive phone installed, I wander over to the Teamster office. That's the semi-circle of chairs around a TV you see in every Union building. I ask the surly cigar-chugging scholar and gentleman how many staff he had working that day, so I can issue them with carte blanche to our catering hall.
"Well, you asked for none, I gave you my minimum." He had to slip that in. I die a little inside. "So that'd be eight."

God bless the Union.