White collar grime

He abandoned his curry. She left behind half her spaghetti Bolognese. But little did Wetherspoon’s couple, lunching budgetly of a recent Saturday afternoon in the Liverpool Street branch, realise their tableful of un-downed chow would end up in a more appreciative home than the bowels of the pig swill bin.

Strolling out of the ballroom-turned-pub in on the edge of the City, they paid no attention to the smartly dressed bloke making a beeline towards their table. And even if they had, they’d have assumed he was legging it to claim their table, pronto, before anyone else grabbed it. But it wasn’t their vacated space he was after.

It was their leftovers.

So there he sat, in his tidy jeans, trend-conscious trainers and sleek, grey, knee-length coat, spooning other people’s cold, half-eaten dinner into his big, greedy mouth, necking a discarded half of lager, and even mopping his slobbery chops with their used serviettes.

But why? Credit crunch forced him to choose between food and clothes, and go for the latter? Ex-wife taken him for all he’s got? Telly prank show? Art stunt? Who knows? But he’s not the only one. Any day of the week, you can spot besuited blokes blatantly riffling through litter bins up Oxford Street, seeking who knows what.

And that means they’re doing the very same in major shopping streets nationwide. So if you take it as a given that smart, ostensibly well-off people are secretly eyeing your pub leftovers, what’s a real alpha type like your boss doing? Going through your gym bag and drenching themselves in your cK One while you’re snarled up in strategy meetings?

How about your trusty financial advisor? Calling round when they know you’re not in to go through the bin bag of charity shop stuff left out on your doorstep for the PDSA? Whatever.

Fact is, we’re entering a new era: the era of white collar grime. Don’t mock. The way the economy’s tanking, who’s to say it won’t soon be you eyeing up the contents of your over-flowing street litter bins with eager anticipation?

Sarah Maybank