How James Borrow became a smoothie operator

REGULARS in the Xing juice bar in Shambles are laughing and joking over their wheatgrass and ‘passion ration’ (peach, mango and passion fruit) smoothies about their favourite member of staff.

“He reckons he can hold three smoothies in one hand,” jokes one customer good-naturedly of Xing bar manager James Borrow. “He’ll be global ruler next,” chips in another. “I think this guy is fabulous,” adds businessman Adrian Barraclough. “He’s always smiling. I model my staff on him.”

James has particular reason to smile at the moment. He has just been named employee of the year in the York Tourism Awards – and his customers are enjoying a bit of warm-hearted banter at his expense.

James isn’t here, but his boss Simon Long, co-owner of Xing, is more than happy to join in the chorus of praise. “We couldn’t do without him,” he says.

It’s not long before the man himself bustles in, carrying a poster produced by a Fulford School pupil – following a talk James gave there – for a new health drink called, appropriately, The Fulford Smoothie. Sure enough, he’s beaming fit to bust. “Me? In the paper?” he says. “It’s like I’m a mini-celebrity at the moment.”

It is clear that everyone at Xing, customers and bosses alike, dotes on James. He also wowed the judges at the tourism awards.

Being named York’s best employee in a tourism-related business is achievement enough. What makes it all he more remarkable in James’s case is that, just a year ago, this smiling, bright, confident young man was at rock bottom: unemployed, depressed, and with his confidence and self-esteem shattered.

So low was he, he admits, that he couldn’t bear to look anyone in the eye. He shuffled around town with his head down. “I used to wear a woolly hat and a big jacket just to hide myself. I didn’t want people to look at me.”

He found himself out of work after quitting his job as a warehouse manager with a carpet firm. He had been with them for nine years, since leaving Lowfield School at 16 with no qualifications. “I thought I could just do with a change,” says the 27-year-old, who lives off Holgate Road in York.

In retrospect, he would have been better advised not to quit his job in the middle of a recession. He flitted from job to job for a while, and had a holiday in Australia. But when he got back he couldn’t find a proper job. He handed out his CV to “hundreds of people”, and occasionally got an interview, but no more. The longer it went on, the more his confidence nosedived.

“After being unemployed for six months, you start to think: ‘Why does no one want to employ me? What’s wrong with me?’” he says. “It was a nightmare. I was just frightened. I used to walk up and down, not knowing what I was going to do, or where I was going to end up.”

His confidence had probably always been a bit low, he admits. A shy boy at school, he was bullied for being overweight and mixed race. “There was a group that used to bully the non-popular ones. I had a few racial names and that. It was a bit upsetting.”

He got through it with the help of his mum and his older brother, Warren, a popular boy who always stuck up for him. But he used to comfort eat to make himself feel better – hence the weight.

At one point, by the time he had left school and was working for the carpet firm, he ballooned to 18½ stone – impossible to believe, looking at his trim frame today. He started going to the gym with his dad, Paul, and Warren, and over the next few years lost six stone.

That was a boost to his confidence. But by this time last year, after six months out of a job, he was low, and beginning to feel desperate.

Then one day, while he was doing a Learn Direct course organised by the Job Centre to improve his maths and English, he wandered into Xing for a smoothie.

He enjoyed it, and became a regular customer. Simon was able to draw him out and get him talking, and he loved the vibe of the place. Before long, he found himself offering to work there for free. “I said, ‘I’ll work for nothing if you’ll give me something to do’. I thought it would give me the opportunity to show what I could do.”

Simon takes up the story. “He was wearing a tracksuit and a hoodie, and he wasn’t our usual employee,” he says. “But he persisted, so we gave him a trial. We could tell he was a nice guy and deserved a chance.”

At first, there were problems. “He had no self-esteem or confidence at all,” Simon says. “He was in a very bad place in his life. The result was that he couldn’t make eye contact with anyone. Not us, our staff, or customers. We even had complaints from our loyal customers that they thought he was rude.”

But gradually, his confidence began to return. At first, he just worked head down in the back of the health drink bar, cleaning and tidying, and didn’t show his face to customers. But all the time he was watching and learning. Then one day he noticed there was a long queue, and that the Xing staff were struggling to cope.

Without being asked, he began to help out.

“I just thought, ‘I’ll go and give a hand’,” he says. “I just made someone a smoothie. That’s how it started.”

His family gave him the confidence to take that step, he says: they always stood by him. But Simon had a big hand in it, too. It was Simon who got James to take off his woolly hat and jacket, and who constantly encouraged him. “He was always saying, ‘Well done, mate!’, and the more he did it, the better I was feeling.”

Simon taught him to be able to look people in the eye again, too.

“He said ‘people look at you differently if you look at them’,” James says. So he began to force himself to look Simon in the eye.

Soon, there was no stopping him. He learned to understand the company’s accounts. Computer illiterate when he arrived, he quickly mastered keeping an online calendar, then began to administer the firm’s Twitter account. He got to know the customers.

“The same customers that once thought he was rude soon loved him,” Simon says. “They even come specifically to talk to him. He has his own fan club.”

James was soon so indispensable to Xing that Simon and Philip offered him a paid job. Within six months he was bar manager. Now there’s talk of making him a partner.

His enthusiasm is boundless, Simon says. “He stands on the doorstep in any conditions, giving samples out. Even in December, throughout the snowstorms, he was there giving samples out.” That energy and enthusiasm contributed to a 90 per cent increase in sales in December. No wonder Xing say they can’t do without him.

James says he is just glad to be there. “We’ve got something special here,” he says. “I love being here, and it has helped me so much. I work with Simon day in, day out, and he’s a top mate, my best friend.”

He says he’ll stay with Xing as long as they want him, and hopes to help it grow. Already it is taking smoothies roadshows into local schools, and there are plans to build up the food menu. He hopes more branches will open. And the best thing of all, people – his customers and his bosses – listen to what he says. “My opinion matters.”

Meeting him today – his brown eyes warm and bright, a smile splitting his lips – it’s hard to imagine he ever was that shuffling, shambling figure who couldn’t look anyone in the eye.

Then, he says, he was afraid people would look at him with contempt.

Now, it has all changed. He looks at a newspaper headline proclaiming his triumph in the Tourism Awards. “I’m being looked at in a nice way now!”