The company has the appearance of being modern, dynamic and successful

I am glad that the process of getting a job is over, but I can’t help wondering if I should have held out for something better. I am slightly better paid than previously (an extra four thousand per annum); the working conditions are slightly better; my new work colleagues are, possibly, slightly worse. It is not at all the big step upwards that I had been hoping for.

My physical location changed this week. Instead of being on the first floor, with Personnel and Customer Complaints, I am now on the top floor, with Sales, IT and a small business unit that works closely with Marks & Spencer (part of the endless Chinese boxes of companies within companies that makes up my new working environment). My new desk is not new and not really mine - it belongs to one of the sales supervisors who has fallen out with Sales Director Mitch Holmes and refuses to come into the office (Mitch Holmes just told me to chuck all the stuff in the desk away, as if the Sales Supervisor was already “history”).

The top floor is a big open space, across the stairwell from the Directors’ suites. The sense of space is enhanced by the fact that there are no partitions or cubicles - just groups of desks widely separated. My desk is on its own, against the back wall, opposite a long range of ten desks for the sales estimators (deserted until late afternoon when they all come in at once and the noise level shoots up), my nearest neighbour being way over to the left, in a corner - a Marketing Manager for one of the other business units. Then there is a wide expanse of carpet and more desks over by the windows where the rest of the floor’s staff have chosen to sit. I introduced myself to the other Marketing Manager, and for a couple of days we got in well, until I came in on Wednesday morning and found he had been made redundant (his secretary-assistant, in a state of near-bereavement, going through his desk trying to work out what needed to be done urgently). This redundancy made the rest of the staff on the floor nervous, and they talked about it for a couple of days in a jittery sort of way as if they were trying to frighten each other.

The sociability of the floor is quite low. The people are superficially friendly, but this hides a wariness and sense of suspicion that is obvious in the questions they ask me (as if I had to justify myself in some way). This barely concealed hostility perplexed me until Sales Supervisor Sarah Linton explained things.

“Don’t expect people here to like you” she said. “This was a family-run company for about twenty years until the plc bought them out and began to bring in new managers. You and me are outsiders - I’ve been here over a year and I’m still not accepted” (this was true only up to a point - Sarah Linton had been a secretary in the company about six years ago, had left and made a career in sales, had come back in a senior sales role over the heads of many of her former colleagues, and had then, if rumours are to be believed, embarked upon an affair with Mitch Holmes which further consolidated her position).

Most of the week (my first official week with the company, the temp work not really counting) was spent in an extended induction that included meetings with all the senior managers: Ralph Schofield (manager of the Essex branch) very guarded and non-committal about what he said, restricting himself to answering my questions in as few words as possible; Sue Napier (Quality Manager) defensive and negative, long pauses before she spoke, all the time looking at me shrewdly, as if I was trying to catch her out; Malcom Jeffery (Senior Sales Manager) effusive, conspiratorial, telling me all sorts of company gossip, finishing our session with the loud proclamation “It’s nice to meet someone who agrees with me” (except that I hadn’t agreed with him); Ian Murray (Operations Manager) very polite, very focussed on practical issues, taking me into the Drivers’ Room to introduce me to some of the operatives and telling me “our staff are genuinely friendly and have old-fashioned ideas about service”; and finally Antonio Colaco (Planning Manager), an incomer like myself, with a gurgling sort of laugh that implied he found the whole company slightly ridiculous. It was Malcolm Jeffery who told me the recent history of the company - it had been run by Nicholas Cain, a patriarchal figure and successful entrepreneur whom staff looked up to and respected, but he had retired and his son Terry had taken over and almost bankrupted the firm by building the luxurious office block in which we were sitting, precipitating the sell-out to the plc: “This block has been known as Terry’s Folly ever since”). I held these meetings in the Board Room which I can get to easily by a little-used door adjacent to my desk (this easy access is a two-edged sword - Managing Director Marco Botoni often uses it when he wants to cross from his office to see me about something, almost always at moments when I am obviously not doing anything).

At the end of all these meetings I looked at all the paper I am accumulating on my desk and was struck by self-doubts. Do I really have the enthusiasm to put together a Marketing Plan for an organisation where morale is so low and most people, in the words of Sue Napier, are “just waiting for the axe to fall”? The company has the appearance of being modern, dynamic and successful (an image created by the office block, which is as impressive as anything being put up in the City) but in reality is very narrow-minded and inward-looking.