JOHN BROWN, GREENCAP, DUBLIN AIRPORT
I'M ONE OF the six original Greencaps at Dublin Airport. The business was set up as a joint venture between Aer Rianta and the Ballymun job centre in 1993.
We were all from Ballymun and all unemployed. Prior to that, I don't think anyone from Ballymun worked at the airport, even though it was the nearest town to it.
Actually I'm the last of the original Greencaps left, and even I'm a white-collar worker now, in that I came into the office a few years back and work mainly on invoices and payroll.
But I'm still very hands on around the terminal. I love it. There's a buzz about the airport you can't explain. It's not the same as the one you get when you arrive here to head off on your holidays, but it's not far off it.
At the moment there are nine full-time Greencaps and two part-timers. Shifts run from 5am to 11pm, and we have a number of services, including running a left-luggage facility, so that people who arrive too early for a flight can park their cases somewhere safe and head off into town.
We also hold car keys for people, such as house swappers, who have other people coming to pick up their cars from the car park.
We operate a porterage service, too, which is especially popular for VIPs.
I've worked with them all over the years: Bono, Morgan Freeman, Naomi Campbell, Christie Turlington. I'm sick looking at Ronan Keating. The biggest tip we ever got was from BB King. He gave us €275.
When they arrive at the airport they go straight to the VIP lounge, and we do all their baggage handling for them, so they don't have to queue.
Bono was great. Being from the Ballymun area himself, he took a real interest in what the Greencaps were all about.
My favourite so far, though, has been Roy Keane. I played against him once, when he played for Cobh, and, though he obviously didn't remember me, we got talking in the baggage hall for half an hour, and I enjoyed that.
You never know what's going to happen here each day. Once there were 12 of us called to provide wheelchairs for 12 nuns, and as we pushed them through the terminal everyone was asking us if they were nuns on the run.
And if you wear any form of ID in an airport everybody thinks you are the eyes and ears of the entire place. If I only had a sign over my head saying "Information €1" I'd be sitting beside Bono now.
But we have fun, too. I remember once waiting for a passenger at the steps of a plane just in from Boston. As everybody got off we were kidding around, saying "Welcome to Shannon". One woman started running back up the stairs, shouting to her husband: "Quick, back on the plane. We got off at the wrong stop."
To be a good Greencap you have to keep your wits about you, simply because there are so many queries coming at you. You do an eight-hour shift, and you are working flat out for all of it. Through it all you have to be personable and nice, and try and remember that the customer is always right.
The only problem is that people can get tense and wound up in airports. I've seen members of the public reduce Greencaps to tears. Over time, however, experience teaches you how to handle people.
In conversation with Sandra O'Connell