It should be a bumper month - the past week at work

Monday

Somehow lots of little jobs have found their way onto my desk. Not that I particularly mind, as they are the sort of task that can be done almost without thinking. Like shuffling cards, I spend the first hour of the working week sifting and sorting all the papers into some kind of priority order.

Later in the morning I helped Kate identify sources of new business. We get on very well - probably I talk to her more than anyone else in the agency. She confided that she was unhappy and was applying for another job.

BBi is one of my more difficult clients. Every time my contact there rings up it seems as if he is trying to pick an argument with me. It doesn’t help that Paul (one of the graphics designers) has made lots of mistakes with their latest newsletter, and these were not picked up before the proofs went to the client (something else I am going to have to do myself from now on).

Tuesday

Tony W is the agency print-buyer. Except that he isn’t quite. He is employed by Alan (one of the directors) and has gradually extended his print buying to the other account teams including upstairs.

This has not been universally popular. Kate, for instance, still prefers to buy her own print as it gives her more control over when the job gets done (otherwise your job can get stuck in a queue). Both Alan and Tony W have complained to Ian about Kate’s unilateral behaviour (obviously if Tony W works for more than one team Alan can raise internal cross-charges to cover his salary).

Tony W is a bombastic individual, about thirty-five, very unfashionable haircut, wears chinos and coloured shirts (no tie), has a protruding beer-belly, goes red in the face when he is stressed.

I have had no choice about putting my print work through Tony W. It was made clear to me when I first arrived that Tony W would do my print buying. At first I went along with this, but recently I have been wondering whether I could break free.

Therefore when rep Jason arrives from Camel Print I make a point of talking to him and asking him for quotes. He comes in about once a week to see Tony W, but never seems to make any headway (Tony W brought his own printing contacts with him when he came to the agency). My plan is to wait until Tony W is snowed under with work and then use that as an excuse to place my printing with Camel Print (and once that precedent has been established, to go on doing so).

Jason is aged about twenty-five, spiky gelled hair, wears very smart suits (but with the sartorial error of short-sleeved shirts, even in winter). He tries to talk with a salesman’s patter, but can’t quite keep it up. Even so, he does a great deal of talking about his job, his poor relations with Tony W, his wife and baby son (“Often I get in, don’t feel much like talk, don’t feel like anything to eat, have a glass of wine or beer and then go to bed”).

Wednesday

A visit to new client Colchester Seals (based in Surrey). We discussed a new corporate image for the company (they are growing fast). The MD basically wants to steal the corporate style of a competitor (same colours, same typefaces, same staff uniforms) and I spent nearly two hours trying to persuade him it wasn’t a good idea.

On the way back through south London I called on freelance Joey at his office. This was basically a desk in a small office unit he shares with five other freelances. All the walls were glass except for the back wall (it was like a sort of modernistic lean-to conservatory). He gave me a mug of very strong coffee and we sat on stools (too high to be comfortable) discussing the catalogue he is doing for one of my clients. Afterwards we went to his “club” for a drink - a cellar bar with pool tables, a row of slot machines, lots of black and white (soccer) team photos on the walls. I was late getting back to the agency and Ian was fretting because he had been kept waiting (I had borrowed his car).

Thursday

I spent the day catching up with invoicing. I decide what to charge the client, and Janette (in accounts) enters it all on the system and sends the invoices out. We have some big projects being billed in February, so it should be a bumper month.

Two people told me, independently, that Kate is planning to leave. I didn’t let on that I already knew. Possibly the rumours have been started by Kate herself to try to pressure Ian into giving her a pay rise.

Friday

Client BQW are moving to new premises near Watford. We keep most of their sales publications in our warehouse in Stevenage (they pay us to manage this). I did an audit of stock and could reveal today that they have nearly half a million different items of literature, all of which will need to have the address changed.

The head of the BQW Move Committee almost wilted under the implications of this. A long meeting in the morning discussing whether to put labels over the old addresses (not really possible without looking tacky) or scrapping them all and starting again. No-one at BQW had given any thought to changing the address on company literature, and therefore the whole committee looked worried.

In the afternoon Kate and Clive (does TV commercials) were very late getting back to the office. At 4.30 a call from Kate revealed they were stranded at a filling station - Clive had put diesel in the car instead of petrol. All of today I have been trying to imagine what that scene must have been like (Kate does not suffer fools gladly).