I knew immediately what was going to happen

Once again I made the journey to the company where I am “temping”. In fact, so on-going has the work proved to be, that I have been occupied there almost full-time, and have been so busy I stopped looking for other jobs (I reasoned that there were enough projects to keep me going until the end of the year). I seemed to have slipped into a comfortable limbo where there was no reason to stay, but there was no very great reason to leave either.

The company is very different from my previous place of work. Instead of being in a suburb of a big city, it is in a small country town, being the biggest employer in that town. The journey from my home is almost exactly the same distance as before, except that it is in the opposite direction. The company is part of a big plc (ie listed on the London Stock Exchange) but has all the aspects of an independent enterprise (it had been a family-owned company until about five years ago). About a hundred people work for the company, and as well as the Head Office there are two smaller branches - one in St Neots in Cambridgeshire, the other in Southend in Essex. Most of the employees have worked for the company for many years, and there is a marked culture of resenting outsiders (I suppose that comes from being located in such a small town).

From the main road the appearance of the Head Office is deceptively low-key. A two-story range of buildings (very 1970s in appearance), with a big warehouse behind. This was the old Head Office. As the company expanded it outgrew this accommodation, and in the late-1990s a dazzling new office block was built on a field behind. Because the ground slopes away from the road you can only see this new facility once you have driven round the old buildings. I say it is dazzling, because that’s the effect it had on me. It is a post-modernist glass and brick structure, rising three storeys, big landscaped car-park in front of it, big “state-of-the-art” (as all the Operations people will point out to you) warehouse behind.

My (temporary) desk is located on the first floor (in America it would be called the “second” floor) to the left of the grand staircase that rises the whole height of the building. On Tuesday I went in as usual, a little after nine (I have become careless about my time-keeping - as a temp I can theoretically pick my own hours). I sat at my desk which is in a back corner, glass windows on two sides, tinted glass partition on another, monstrous green plants screening the side that is open. I worked through the heaps of paper I had left the evening before, made some phone calls, sent a great many e-mails. At lunchtime I drove off site and found a quiet place where I could sit and read, trying to ignore the heat (very noticeable after the air-conditioned offices - as I went out of the door a wave of heat seemed to roll over me). In the afternoon I more or less repeated the activities of the morning, in a slightly different order, and by the time four o’clock arrived I was beginning to feel bored.

It was at that point that the telephone rang. It was one of the PAs on the floor above, asking me to go up and see the Managing Director. I knew immediately what was going to happen.

The floor above (over my own floor) is reserved for the Directors. It comprises a lavishly appointed Board Room, a tiny kitchen (out of bounds to staff - it is intended to be used only for preparing Board Room lunches), a large office shared by two PAs, and beyond this two enormous (ridiculously large) offices for the two Directors of the company. I went through the PAs office (neither of them looked up from their work) and into the office of Marco Botoni, Managing Director.

Everyone says that Marco Botoni is a “funny little man”. Despite his Italian-sounding name his accent is broad Lancashire (he was born and brought up in Bolton). Aged in his mid fifties, his hair (worn a little on the long side) is still completely black with no trace of any grey. Short in stature, his face has heavy lines either side of the mouth, and when he isn’t smiling he looks very severe. I entered the office and began to cross towards his desk, but he looked up and told me to sit down at one of the four armchairs. As well as Marco Botoni’s huge desk and the four armchairs there was also a table and eight chairs, and two big glass-fronted display cabinets. All the furniture was very good quality Regency-reproduction, the luxurious style more suited to a house than an office (one of the warehousemen told me that the previous owner of the company had accepted it as part-payment from a creditor who was going bankrupt). Marco Botoni smartly shuffled some papers and left his desk and took one of the armchairs opposite me. They were grey leather armchairs, impossible to sit up in, so that we were both slouching (a very uncomfortable position in which to face a Managing Director).

He smiled at me benignly, and asked how I was getting on, and told me that he had been keeping an eye on me and had received good reports about my work. He leaped up from his chair and called out to the PAs, asking for two cups of coffee to be brought in (the door was open throughout our interview). We then began talking about marketing, and I was surprised at how agitated he started to become. At one point he told me honestly: “No-one here really understands marketing. It’s all smoke and mirrors to me. But I know we’ve got to do it.” The meeting went on for three hours, and at the end of that time he offered me a job with the company, saying that he was creating the role of Marketing Manager especially for me (there was a little haggling over the title - at first he wanted to slot me into a Business Development vacancy so he wouldn’t have to report to the plc an expansion in the headcount, but I held out for a properly-designated role).

The site was almost deserted as I left the offices and went out to my car. There was a sense of anti-climax as I drove home - since my first week with the company I had half-expected to be offered a permanent role. And I couldn’t help wondering: where will this latest episode take me?