The past week at work

Monday

There was a good atmosphere in the agency this morning.

"I'm in such a good mood that not even Yvette's rudeness can upset me" said Andrea (Andrea is Account Director, Yvette is agency head).

"She's in love" said Eleanor (trainee account executive).

Andrea did not deny the statement.

No work to do today. I had to make myself look busy. It is impossible to know how well we are doing towards our monthly targets.

"It's getting so quiet my desk is beginning to look tidy" said Andrea.

The planning meeting was cancelled without any reason being given.

A little flurry of work in the afternoon when an ad came in, then it became quiet again.

Tuesday

Yvette was out of the office most of the morning.

"I get the feeling she is building up to some kind of explosion" said Andrea.

In the afternoon I went with Kennedy from the PR division upstairs to visit one of his clients. The client is a scientific institute of dubious morality, and I would have preferred not to have had any dealings with them. As well as a PR campaign, they wanted to place some recruitment advertising (which was the reason I was there, although we don't really do recruitment ads - Yvette says they look tacky on our client portfolio).

Wednesday

In the back office we hardly see any of the hot sunny weather. All the desk fans had disappeared this morning so that Yvette had to go upstairs and get them back again. The heat was almost unbearable.

The weekly planning meeting was held this morning. Jonathan (copywriter) came under attack from Yvette for the poor work he is producing. "That favourite has had a swift fall from grace" said Andrea later.

Most of the day I spent doing the recruitment ads for the scientific institute.

Also I wrote the creative brief for a campaign for our oil client. I took care over this brief as Jonathan and Neil (graphic designer) have complained to Yvette about the poor creative briefs they have been getting, especially from trainee account exec Julie. As I wrote the brief it occurred to me that it would be quicker to simply write the copy myself and tell Neil how I wanted it to look.

Thursday

Yvette was late in this morning, admitting that she had overslept. She gave everyone a bar of chocolate. I had to put mine in the fridge for an hour as it was almost melting.

Eleanor was ordered about to such an extent by Yvette that she became disgruntled. Eventually Yvette and Eleanor went off to visit the London office of our oil client. Everyone seemed to relax once they had gone.

At four o'clock an ad came in that had to go in a French national newspaper the deadline being tomorrow morning (which effectively meant it had to be written, designed and approved this evening). For the next two hours things were extremely hectic, especially as we had to find a (competent) French copywriter. For once things, went smoothly, and the working day closed with everything falling into place.

Friday

One by one we were called into Yvette's office and asked what we thought of the new profit-sharing scheme. I was non-committal, although privately I think it is a farce. Eleanor was more blunt - she told Yvette the scheme was irrelevant as she didn't intend to stay until the end of the year (that must have given Yvette a shock).

In the afternoon I did some copywriting for our breakfast cereal client, wading through lots of notes about what sort of people eat porridge products.

At the end of the working day Julie's brother Martin arrived to wait for Andrea. He was wearing jeans, a maroon t-shirt with a big army badge on the front, and what looked like desert boots. Sat in the account execs' office (Andrea was in with Yvette) he was half-embarrassed, half-anxious, not knowing what to say to us but feeling he needed to make an effort (I wanted to tell him there was no need to say anything as we were completely unimportant).