No wonder sales are down

(Above) Death of a Salesman is currently playing in the West End.


Temporary work - four hours in the afternoon. I went to the company at 2 o’clock to help out with a visit by a party of sixth formers from a local school. But no-one showed up. Personnel later told me they had got the dates mixed up. I went across to the Training Room (other side of the yard, in the old office block) to dismantle the projector (the visit was going to include a slideshow on how the company markets it services). While I was up in the Training Room Frank Marshall, one of the sales estimators (whom I had only met briefly when I was shown round the company on my first day), came in and sat down at the table. While he worked on his laptop he told me one of the other sales estimators had just been sacked.

“Everyone’s being given tough new targets and no extra leads” he told me. “I’m waiting to go into a sales meeting to discuss all this. Things are getting nasty - one of the PAs showed me a list of e-mails about me that I knew nothing about. The market’s very tight at the moment.” He told me that ideally he would like to leave the company and set up his own business. I just listened to all this - as I’m not staying at the company this imbroglio of office politics has no interest for me.

In the afternoon I wrote the copy for the Commercial Services department, and negotiated a feature with a trade magazine. I also took a call from a local television company wanting to do a piece on the company. The company has missed hundreds of these PR opportunities in the past - no wonder sales are down.