The past week at work

Monday

Bitterly cold winds when I went out to my car this morning, but I felt the cold was cleansing.

At the agency building work over the weekend has resulted in our suite of offices being joined to the empty one next door by an arch. Yvette (our MD) now has a new office. But this has increased the lines of communication and nothing is to hand.

A proper “studio” has been created, headed by graphics designer Neil (the most amiable person in the agency). Duncan has also been put in the studio as copywriter, although he can’t write. His ego is so large he doesn’t realize he can’t do the work and that Yvette is setting him up for dismissal.

An overwhelming amount of work to do today. This made me feel depressed as it was clear that no matter how hard I worked I wouldn’t be able to finish anything. Andrea (former agency head, now demoted) has grown very lethargic and has taken to disappearing during the day, so that I often have to take calls from her clients.

Tuesday

One of the most demanding aspects of the new regime is the incessant meetings that Yvette calls. Andrea and myself were summoned to her office for a lunchtime meeting that went on for two hours. At least food was provided – prawn cocktail baps and cans of fizzy drinks (instead of drinking from the can I poured the liquid into a mug, provoking a derisive jeer from Yvette “You’re such a gentleman”). Once again we were belaboured for not generating enough income. I pointed out that although we were handling double the number of clients, double work was not leading to double profits, which suggested inefficiency. Obliquely I was suggesting that the higher overheads from Yvette’s arrival were soaking up too much money.

Yvette told jokes about a client meeting she had yesterday: “He kept talking about his mission – I said do you mean the one in the Old Kent Road…” (we laughed politely).

Wednesday

I made a terrible mistake that resulted in an advertisement appearing in the wrong publication. This could have been very expensive for the agency, but I rang the client up and persuaded her that the alternative publication was worth giving a try. With luck the ad will work and no-one will be any the wiser.

A lost client that had started placing ads themselves (always a perennial problem) called me asking to sort out a mess they had got into. I was able to do this easily, and they were suitably grateful. Whether that gratitude will result in their coming back to us is anyone’s guess.

Yvette has brought in (from her previous agency) a big Belgian/American industrial client opening a market in the United Kingdom. She wanted Andrea and myself to meet the Belgian marketing manager, the meeting taking place after five o’clock. The initial part of the meeting took place in Yvette’s office. The client was short, aged about fifty, with short black hair. He asked us to call him “Wim”. His accent made it difficult to understand what he was saying, and it was embarrassing when he began chortling over the many spelling mistakes in a media report he had been given (and which Andrea had typed up herself).

After the meeting we all went to the Italian restaurant for dinner. There was a lot of shop-talk between Yvette and Wim about the senior hierarchy at the Belgian-American conglomerate, and she began inanely boasting about how well she knew various individuals (“At Henley I ended up with the MD’s wife’s raincoat round my shoulders…”). Wim seemed a bit awestruck by these silly witterings.

As an hors d'œuvre Yvette ordered asparagus, and when this dish arrived I advised her it was impossible to eat asparagus without tongs. I don’t really know why I said this, as I do not care about table etiquette, and still less do I care how Yvette eats her meals (she could bend her head over the plate and scoop the food up with her hands for all I care). But my remark seemed to touch on Yvette’s feelings of social inadequacy (which I have noticed before) and she left the buttery dish untouched despite everyone saying “those things don’t matter anymore”.

The food was good, and there was lots of it, but there was no avoiding the fact that we were working. The meal ended at 10.30. It was gone midnight by the time I got home.

Thursday

Because of the late night yesterday Yvette told us to take the morning off and come in at midday.

I placed an ad in a Swiss publication, which was a new experience, but so good was their English I might have been ‘phoning Eastbourne.

Upstairs there are more resignations and Patricia (PA to Terry, our ultimate boss) is going soon. Her assistant Katherine has been offered the job. Later I heard that Patricia had been very angry at this news and had made Katherine cry.

Duncan had written some copy (long copy) for a magazine ad and wanted to know what had become of it.

“Yvette’s going to sleep on it” said Eleanor (office assistant).

“That means you’ll get it back extremely crumpled” said Neil (Yvette is a big woman).

Friday

The sharp cold of the morning was very refreshing.

After arriving at the agency I had some coffee and looked through the sports pages of all the newspapers for updates on the John Terry situation.

Most of the day taken up with a client meeting - with Terry in his Jag we drove out of London to Buckinghamshire and a meeting with our toy client. The showroom (trade only) was in a post-modern neo-classical pavilion. In the Boadroom, surrounded by toys, we discussed the schedule for 2010.

We were also given their German campaign, which seemed like easy money for a morning's work.