Jenny caught a warped glimpse of
herself in the chrome of the cabinet handle in the staff kitchen door and her
heart sank again – she looked rough. She cursed the unpredictable nature of
common reflective materials after a ‘big’ night. She stared pathetically at her
mug and poured the water from the kettle particularly slowly almost so as to
revel in her state of misery. It had, to say the least, been a big night, no
surprise of course when it featured a large dose of ‘El Vino Classico’ hastily
acquired from the local corner shop. Initially, she had planned to meet some
old school friends for a chummy reunion at a Hungry Horse just outside Reading,
but realised at the last moment she actually didn’t like them and so decided to
stay in. Instead she cracked open one of her £3.50 emergency stock of ‘Classico’s’
and settled down to besiege Normandy on an early Call of Duty. Two and a half
bottles later Jenny decided she had killed enough Nazi’s and went to bed just
as the birds were starting to chirp. It wasn’t a badly spent evening Jenny
thought, just maybe not advisable the night before her big sales pitch to Collin
and head management.
‘J babe, you are looking dark and
broody today, what’s with the new look?’ asked Stevie as he glided into the kitchen
fresh faced, Kumquat smoothie in hand.
‘Ah no it’s not really a ‘look”,
Jenny sighed, ‘I’m just feeling a bit tired. Had a big night last night...’
‘Big night...right, right, right...yep,
say no more Jen, I know the story, I know
the story. Uncle Stevie knows the bloody
story you...you...you animal you!
Ha!’ said Stevie as he leaned back on the kitchen surface, allowing his gold
paisley shirt to hang lose around his chest so he could proudly sport his meagre
tangling of hair. He nudged his sunglasses down onto his nose and starred at
Jenny with a grin, ‘does he have a name then?’ Jenny paused for a moment and
contemplated stringing him along with a tale of forbidden f lust and romance
involving Vernon Kay, but decided that it would be akin to kicking a sleeping
baby considering Stevie’s low intellect and so she told him the truth. ‘Nazi’s
eh? A damn nasty outfit if you ask me. I don’t know what the hell they were
thinking. Bunch of bloody prongs!’ exclaimed Stevie.
‘Yea, exactly. So I spent the
evening doing that and now I’m shattered, basically’, said Jenny.
‘Don’t fret pet’, Stevie said as he
tilted his head to one side, ‘c’est la vie, right?’ he said, meaning to help
with wearing a painfully smarmy grin nevertheless.
‘I bloody hope not’, Jenny said.
‘Jen, don’t worry about it babe. We
all have our guilty pleasures right?’, said Stevie with his eyes widening at
Jenny, ‘yours is cheap wine from the corner shop and mine...well if I’m
honest...mine is probably original Motown 7 inches’, he said emphatically ‘yea can’t
get enough of that shit.’
‘I’m not an alcoholic Stevie I was
just...bored I suppose I have no ambitions or something’, said Jenny, but
Stevie wasn’t listening.
‘I mean historically I was always a
Jazz man: bee-bop, early big band you know, that kind of thing? But I have come
to see myself more as more of a soul man lately. Don’t know why really but just
can’t get enough’, laughed Stevie as
Jenny starred into her cold tea lamenting that fact that she couldn’t even hold
the attention of Stevie for longer than 5 minutes. Collin burst through the
door swinging his laptop bag by his side and ending a phone call.
‘Trust me, just trust me that
skimpy sells in the kitchen utensil industry...it just fucking does! Tell her to strip off or get lost, this
B&Q contract is gold dust!’ he ended his call angrily, partly annoyed at
the fact that there was no truly aggressive way to end a phone call on a touch
screen. He missed the days of the folding mobile phone. ‘Hi guys, what’s up?’
he asked absent mindedly as he rifled through the cupboards for coffee.
‘Erm, not much I...’, Jenny tried
to reply but was cut short by Collin’s early morning buzz.
‘Jesus fuck Jenny you look like
crap! What the hell happened to you!? Am I right Stevie? Am I right!?’ he
chortled nodding over his shoulder towards a grinning Stevie as he marched back
out of the kitchen.
*
The open plan office was crafted by
psycho-architectural ‘experts’ from San Francisco back when the company first
moved in 6 years ago. They had told Julian Jewson, the creative director of the ‘Sales
and Marketing’ division and part of the top management, that if their chairs
and desks and sofas were not organised correctly the life force of the company
would fall straight out of the window, and maybe onto the heads of unsuspecting
passersby. “Qi”, they had said, “is directly related to profit and profit
creates new energy. This is the cosmic business cycle which must be embraced if you are to succeed in what
is a murky plane of financial uncertainty.” Some charts might have been fitting
but it was possible they thought quantifying the meaning of life on an axis with
corporate profit might have stretched their credibility beyond breaking point. Julian
certainly embraced them and their huge
consultancy fees. He was currently sprawled on a beanbag taking off his socks,
engaged in some ‘blue sky thinking’ with two rigid and stuffy looking men from
accounting who felt uncomfortable on a bean bag and were certainly above
sprawling. ‘Mr Jewson...’, said the taller
one.
‘Call me Julian’, Julian interrupted.
‘Ok, Julian...’, the accountant
said.
‘Actually maybe call me Jules, we
need to break down some barriers here, straddle some communicative canyons yea?
We have to communicate together’,
there was silence. ‘Actually no, call me Julian.’ More silence, ‘go on’, Julian
finally said.
‘Julian, we understand that here in
‘Sales and Marketing’ creativity and the stretching or parameters is
encouraged, but in ‘Accounting’...’ the taller of the two accountant said, ‘in
‘Accounting’ Julian we stick to the rules.’ He allowed a brief smirk of
satisfaction to cross his face. ‘We stick to the rules here because without rules
we have uncertainty and with uncertainty comes chaos and chaos is bad for
business. So I must reiterate: we cannot afford to fund your spa trips any
more, the budgets simply do not allow it.’ He and his assistant starred coldly
at Julian as he sunk further into his bean bag allowing folds of fat to gather
around his neck.
‘But an army needs...’, Julian feebly
tried to say.
‘...needs a General. Yes, we know,
you have said already. But a General doesn’t need 7 spa holidays a year’, replied the same accountant curtly. Julian
huffed in acceptance, acknowledging the sad fact that he couldn't keep
offsetting his extravagant living costs onto the company. Sensing agreement the
three men tried to rise from their beanbags but Julian struggled and flailed
around awkwardly trying to disguise his struggle as an elaborate core stretch. ‘Thank-you
Mr Jewson’, said the same accountant as the pair walked off in sync. Julian
eventually rose from the beanbag and stretched his arms so as to release the
negative energy seemingly created by the accountants. He climbed onto a nearby
table, occupied by a new intern, flexed his still bare feet on the young boy’s
paper work and addressed the ‘Sales and Marketing’ team.
‘Brothers. Sisters. A moment of
your time please,’ he shouted to the entire office of 18 staff. ‘We
function...this office and these people function...not as individuals driving
independent micro-circuits...but as a real unified spiritual entity’, he paused for dramatic effect, ‘a spiritual entity. We are one body with
‘Sales’ as our ultimate horizon. Our goal. Our Mecca if you will, and Marketing...marketing
is our raison d’etre...our life blood...our daily nourishment. So you must feed, feed off the struggling helpless
antelope that is the common consumer, frenzy off their psychological reflexes
and unrealistic goals. You must sink your creative canines into their thighs
and tear the flesh of profit from the bone...’ Julian paused again, ‘feed, go
and feed!’ Clive, a relatively new recruit to the ‘Sales and Marketing team’,
dropped his Biro. Susan coughed. The intern gazed up at his flamboyant boss
with awe and confusion. Julian thought it was best to close his outburst with
an actual point, ‘Ok, remember: team meeting at 10.15. Senior staff only please
– strategic re-formulation imminent’. He clambered down from the table and put
his socks back on.
