Andrea was furious - the past week at work

Monday

At the agency I was absolutely staggered to walk through the door and meet Duncan, a new “trainee” appointed by Terry (our MD). We had only just severed trainee Nigel’s position on Thursday, and now Terry had appointed another “Nigel” without consulting anybody. “Andrea is not going to like this” I said privately to Louise and Denise (admin assistants).

Andrea was furious when she came in at ten and met Duncan. She immediately went upstairs to talk to Terry. When she came down she told me “It’s okay, he’s just a temp Terry thought might be helpful”.

Duncan has a diploma in PR and marketing. Aged twenty-one, he is tall, athletic build, with longish blond hair (over his collar). He has a frank and confident way of talking to people but this may just be a front (later in the day he told me “I’m not so tense now that you’ve shown me how the office works”).

Is it kinder to make Duncan realise that there is no future for him at the agency? Andrea is clearly not going to want another member of staff pushing up the overheads. Or should I just keep out of things and let events take their course?

Despite being a Monday things were very quiet. All we seem to be doing are speculative presentations, which gives the illusion of being busy but do not add any income to the bottom line. Andrea had a heap of ads she had ripped out of various magazines, and intends to contact the companies telling them how they should do things differently.

At lunchtime Duncan, Rachel (Account Executive upstairs) and myself went to a local café. Toasted sandwiches and a cup to tea. Duncan talked about his diploma course. Rachel dropped various hints about Andrea (the two of them do not get on).

In the afternoon Andrea had a childish tantrum with admin assistant Denise (Scottish, sober, big-eyed behind her thick spectacles). Denise’s quiet responses seemed to enrage Andrea even more (“Why do I have to always ask twice before you do something” she raged). After this incident everyone was quiet for the rest of the day.

Tuesday

I was a little late getting to the office, although that hardly seems to matter now, with so many support staff in the agency. An important financial account indicated they might move to another agency (not as serious as it sounds as they have had almost no budget for advertising since the credit crunch). Andrea rang them up and offered to go and see them, but they said no.

Denise and Louise did some cold calling to potential clients and actually managed to get a few appointments (I hadn’t thought this would work – it seems too easy to just ring companies up and get in the door). Andrea was excited at this news and praised them both (praise from Andrea is very rare). Later she gave some training to Denise about what marketing managers are looking for in an agency.

Duncan came into my office (hardly really an office – it’s a small room I share with the part-time lady who does the accounts) and told me he thought Andrea was ignoring him. He sat in the armchair by my desk and confessed (he is a great one for confessions) that he was having second thoughts about staying at the agency. As I listened to him I thought that possibly this was the first time in his life when the things he wanted were not handed to him easily.

Wednesday

Another quiet day, although I had heaps and heaps of things to do. Before I had time for my first cup of coffee Terry came to my office and we talked about a client of his that we are doing the advertising for. Various things have gone wrong, so it was not an easy meeting.

Sheila, who was a temp for us a few weeks back, dropped in with some chocolates (a tall container of chocolate orange segments).

Paul de Lion, a new account executive upstairs, came in and gave us a big campaign that entailed a huge amount of last-minute media research (and the stupid man wants to go on radio, which is completely unsuitable). Paul de Lion was arrogant, moustached, wearing a navy-blue suit with wide stripes. In manner he is instantly “everybody’s mate” but personally I don’t trust him an inch.

At the end of the day Andrea called a meeting of all our staff to “clear up misunderstandings”. It went quite well, although at one stage Andrea seemed to be on the defensive. Afterwards, as we were leaving the building, Duncan said to me “I think you should be head of the agency” (this is the most alarming thing anyone has said to me for quite some time).

Thursday

Duncan was at a loose end so I gave him an ad to do for a golf club magazine (this was sponsorship rather than serious advertising). He did everything from “booking” the space, to coming up with a concept, to briefing a designer in the studio upstairs. He took a great deal of time over this ad, and went into the greatest detail.

I gave Louise some media research to do, and she did it quite well and seemed interested.

I had to go to Terry’s office to talk to him about advertising for his clients. While I was there he asked me what the atmosphere was like in our sub-agency. I avoided saying anything.

In the evening I stayed late to watch a two-thousand letter mailshot being churned out by the printer – I could have just left it running, but whenever I do that it always jams. Thus I was still at my desk when the cleaners arrived (a husband and wife team). Andrea had left a long list of complaints about the poor standard of cleaning and they exploded with anger, standing in my office for over forty minutes hectoring me about what they have to put up with.

Friday

An air of crisis in the agency when Andrea opened a newspaper and saw an ad from one of our bigger clients. As we had not placed this advertising it indicated the client had moved to another agency without telling us. Andrea immediately rang them up, but the response was lukewarm.