Jon Stockton
Jon StocktonTNT Express UK, Contract General Manager Royal Bank of
Scotland Contract, 34 years old, married, 3 children
Jon has something of a complex character. When you first meet him, he is extremely polite and reserved, even a little shy. It makes you wonder how he manages to lead a team of 20 people. Then, if you happen to be in his vicinity when he receives a problem phone call from work, it all becomes clear. Out of the blue, he reveals another side of the English character – the bulldog. Hard as nails, he’ll fight until he gets what he wants. Maybe that’s why he was able to deal with a situation none of us would wish upon our worst enemies. Driving to a customer in July 2005, Jon found himself in the immediate vicinity of the worst terrorist attack ever to hit London. Instead of heading straight home like many of us would have done, Jon continued and completed his work for the day, coordinating the collection of cheques and internal mail for The Royal Bank of Scotland’s 250 London branches. He still talks about it as if it was nothing. Typically English.
Jon: “Sure it was scary. The whole mobile phone network went down immediately so I didn’t know where my friends and family were. But then we had our job to do. We had to get to the bank’s branches. After assessing the number of drivers available, the first thing to do was to devise and coordinate an emergency plan. The first problem was the fact that many of the roads were cordoned off. We used motorbikes to make one collection at the end of the day from every branch. The cheques were consolidated and trunked to two alternative clearing houses - one 50 miles away. While one group of drivers manned the trunk runs, the others set out across the city to make the collections. In the end, we managed to reach all but four of the branches. For those four, we tried to explain to the police what we had to do but they weren’t having any of it.”
“Throughout the day, I was in touch via my hotel phone with people from the bank, including some that I didn’t know. Turns out they were Senior Directors who were worried that their customers would be dissatisfied. I think they might have understood if we had told them that we were unable to collect their cheques that day, but the team worked hard, under tough conditions. In the end, there was a tense instance at around 9:20 p.m. before we received a phone call saying that everything got through. That was a good moment. I am told that RBS still talks about it with their customers. Yes, I’m pretty sure they’re impressed with what we did for them that day!”