Who on earth would want to be a buying clerk? Apparently the schools of East Winchley regularly turn out young lads for whom this is the height of desire. And each one is a very real threat to Bristow.

They seem to flock in their thousands to the evidently desirable gates of the Chester-Perry Building strip 3578. Once there they are rapidly and bitterly disillusioned by the work, the low pay and the meaninglessness of it all. This suits Bristow enormously. He doesn't want any young whipper-snappers taking the very bread out of his briefcase. In his view he has earned his position and no spotty-faced young shaver is going to take it from him.

But why do they want to be buying clerks? and why at C-Ps, for heaven's sake? Here is the sad story of one David Boggis, younger brother of the tearaway Elvis. We share the grief of his careers master in his school at his rash and naive ambition strip 4424. Young Boggis visits the company. Bristow advises him to jump off the roof. Mr. Pepys of Personnel writes off as rather dim. He returns to school undaunted but fails to get the job of his dreams. Even though he makes careful notes about the clothes that buying clerks wear ("scruffy shirt...down at heel shoes").

Another school-leaver, Duane Bloggs, actually gets a job in C-Ps but turns against it. Kicking and screaming he clings to his mother's legs "I don't want to go to work in the nasty horrible Chester-Perry Building". "You and me both kid" thinks Bristow. However Duane soon settles down after a fight with the post-boy and joins all the other school-leavers in the Brolly and Bowler for a consoling drink after work.

Every so often the firm actually recruits school-leavers. Bristow tends to be philosophical about it - "as long as they are prepared to learn our ways" but sabotages their well meaning efforts at every opportunity. He reassures them that by working double overtime and at weekends they might just be able to make ends meet. He explains that the fear and trembling which has overcame them after the first day are an integral part of their job. He encourages them by explaining that, once they have made it through the first week, they have learned all they will ever need to know.

For poor old Atkins of Accounts there is extra stress. He gives the shiny-faced eager young clerks their first wage packets and then has to deal with the heart-rending agony as they are deducted their first stoppages.

In recent times C-Ps has spruced up its image to ensure that it continues to recruit the cream of modern youth. This policy may be unwise. To quote Bristow (from the website, September 2003) as he enters the Buying Department and hangs up his bowler:

That was the most harrowing journey I've ever had.
I travelled up with a young man who was reading a Chester-Perrry recruitment brochure
He spent the whole journey comparing me with the picture on the brochure and every time he looked back at me a few more scales fell from his eyes.

As well as deluded schoolkids, from time to time we encounter various unlikely candidates who will give it all up for a desk in the Buying Department. Indian princelings, Foreign Legionnaires, asylum seekers - all meet an appropriate fate (shot from a cannon, buried up to the neck in sand , advised to return to the gulag etc.) for daring to follow such a perverse idea . In strip 10657 a typical would-be clerk engenders a slightly less typical response.

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