How quiet it was - the past week at work

Monday

When I arrived at the office this morning news that our Belgian oil client had cancelled their Spanish advertising late on Friday after I had left. This call from Belgium had been answered by Julie (account executive), last in the office, and she frantically tried to contact myself, then Yvette (agency Head), without any success. I had to explain to Yvette why my mobile was not working, and I could tell that she was unconvinced by the (true) story - that I had lent my mobile to my brother who had gone out the previous night and got extremely drunk, had been unable to work the device in this inebriated state, and had thrown it into the river in a mixture of anger and frustration.

In the post arrived a letter, supposedly from a member of the public, absolutely scathing in its criticism of the copy on some ads we have done for our breakfast cereal client. The copy had been written by Yvette, and she became very quiet (always a bad sign) when the letter was put on her desk. Andrea (fellow account manager) told me she thought the letter had probably been written by someone connected to the agency that had previously held the breakfast cereal account.

Lunchtime, and slices of hot pizza in Yvette's office while she held the weekly meeting.

No new work came in from my client list today, although one of the charities made a promising call about a future campaign. As the afternoon progressed, the silence in the offices became noticeable. Every few minutes someone remarked on how quiet it was.

Tuesday

Because things were so quiet I helped Chris (part time lady who does our accounts) with credit chasing. And because they were not expecting me to be chasing money the gatekeepers at various back-sliding clients put me straight through to their finance directors (instead of the usual excuses about them being away from their desk / in a meeting / gone away for Easter). From one client I got not only the money they owed us for February, but March as well.

Eleanor (trainee account executive) was going through a crisis. So overloaded with work (which no-one could really help her with, she muttered obscenities about Yvette. Later she threatened to walk out.

A rep from one of the tabloids dropped in, bringing with her copies of the newspaper for everyone. She disappeared into Yvette's room for most of the afternoon. She came out just as Andrea's dry cleaning was being delivered, and expressed astonishment that anyone could spend £50 on dry cleaning ("doesn't she know there's a recession on!").

Later there was frenetic activity as we all helped Yvette put together a presentation.

Just before five o'clock Yvette gathered us all together and announced that Chris (accounts) had resigned because she could not take all the pressure being put on her (this was Yvette's interpretation). Chris, who works part-time, had already left for the day but will work out her notice. Everyone seemed shocked by this news.

I was the last in the office and met new cleaner Rosemary who started on Monday. Elderly and very frail, she told me she had a long bus journey to get to the office from where she lived. She lives alone and had come out of retirement so that she could meet people to talk to.

Wednesday

My last day in the office before the Easter break. The whole of the morning consisted of a mad rush to get ready a presentation Yvette had promised yesterday to a client. Because it was done at great speed some of the information in the presentation was highly suspect.

A rep from a new magazine came in and talked to Andrea, Eleanor and myself about the new publication.

"You were giving him a hard time" Eleanor said afterwards.

"I thought I was being particularly nice" I said.

Yvette had gone off to deliver her client presentation, leaving us to produce hard copies of the presentation reports (ten of them, with colour illustrations which took ages to print out). We had to send them across to Yvette by courier so that they arrived before the end of her meeting. When the courier arrived to pick them up he spent ages flirting with Andrea ("they've taken me off the bikes and put me on the vans...") so that I had to break them up and virtually push him out of the door.

Yvette came back in a very good mood, so obviously the presentation had gone well.

The final calculations for March had been done (there is a complicated formula which allocates overheads), and the agency has hit its target for the last quarter, which put Yvette in an even better mood (especially as Terry, our ultimate boss, has approved the budgets for the new financial year).

The afternoon was very quiet in the account execs room and a sense of laziness crept over us all. Neil (graphic designer) came in to join us. The day ended with a presentation to Eleanor, whose birthday is tomorrow - Neil had hand-drawn a witty birthday card which we all signed, and Yvette gave her some (supposedly genuine) Eric Clapton memorabilia.