Work Wife Balance

by Jo Edwards

It took well over a week for the audit report to drop into my inbox. What on earth did the audit team do with all their time? There were four of them, how could it possibly take so long to knock up a draft report? As it was, the day had already started very badly as I’d arrived at the office and noticed, with dismay, that I had a “colleague coffee morning” scheduled. If only it were the kind held at local community centres up and down the country, where you turn up for your cup of coffee, a piece of homemade cake, and a nice chat about the weather and your dodgy hip. Not so. Perypils encouraged (forced) its managers to hold these sessions with a selection of colleagues once a month, so they could raise and discuss any issues or concerns in an open forum. It was always the negs and dregs that turned up for a general whinge; they never ever wanted to ask anything interesting or insightful. It was just a complete waste of an hour.

  I entered the meeting room and, true to form, looking back at me were about fifteen of the department’s finest loud-mouths. The first question was always the same: “So when is Brett coming down?” I sighed inwardly and stirred my coffee very deliberately, looking into the brown ripples as if the answer might be found in there. If I could dive into my coffee cup and emerge somewhere else, a bit like Mr Benn, where would I want to be? Venice, I decided, on a gondola, wrapped in beautiful cashmere blankets, being serenaded by a gorgeous Italian and floating past the Rialto Bridge. Brett would be stood on the bridge ordering me to get back to work and I would raise two fingers up at him as I passed underneath.

  Back to reality. When would Brett the Boss make an appearance? I really didn’t know, so, as usual, attempted diplomacy.

  “Well, I know he hasn’t been able to get here in a while, however he does have several sites to manage and he needs to be in the ones where his support is needed most.”

  The question-raiser, Kathy (well-built, cropped hair, very scary) wasn’t satisfied.

  “But it’s been months since he was here,” at least four I reckon, “it feels as if he doesn’t care about his teams on this site.” He doesn’t. “There’s a lot of bad feeling about it from the staff, everyone thinks he favours the other sites over us.” General nods and murmurs of approval. Oh grow up.

  “There’s a lot going on, Kathy,” I said, fixing her with one of my firmest stares. “The fact that he considers he doesn’t need to be here very much is a great credit to our site. It means he trusts us to get on with things,” pause for dramatic effect, “without moaning and complaining.” Surely they wouldn’t swallow that shite? They seemed to! “Next question,” I said brightly. They were:

  “Are we closing?” Always gets asked. Always truthfully reply “not to my knowledge”.

  “Why is this building so cold?” Guess what they ask in the summer!

  “Can the smoking section outside be made any bigger?” Don’t know, don’t care, it’s a disgusting habit, why don’t you give up? It would improve your attendance and you wouldn’t smell so bad.

  “Why aren’t there enough parking spaces for everyone?” There never have been, why are you still asking this after 22 years? There’s plenty of parking elsewhere, you just have to walk a bit further you lazy gits.

  “Why doesn’t Perypils sponsor the Kingfisher roundabout any more?” Doesn’t it? Hadn’t noticed. Reducing costs probably.

  “So does that mean we’re closing?” Same answer as five minutes ago.

  “When will the windows be cleaned?” Why would you ask me that! I’m not in charge of the cleaning! All the windows are covered in blinds anyway, what difference does it make?

  “Can the canteen make more soup? By the time the late shift gets there it’s all gone.” Well go and ask the bloody canteen then!

  “There’s been a dead pigeon lying in the car park for six days, when will it be removed?” Lucky thing. I might go and join it.

  I sloped wearily back to my desk when the hour was up. Emails were piling in and I saw that the audit report was amongst them. About time. I opened it up. The front of the document had the word “Draft” stamped right across it. It was also headed up: Code Red. That must be a typo. You only coded a report red if there was something seriously wrong. I read the first page. Oh Jesus. There was something seriously wrong. The report stated that the audit team had identified an SBI in my department. That stood for “Serious Business Impact”, but you may just as well translate it as “Severe Bollocking Imminent” because of the excitement they caused - and not the good kind of excitement.

  With a feeling of dread, I read on. The team had apparently come across serious discrepancies in the way sales cases were being recorded on the team’s database. Some of The Climber’s team had told them that they often “made things up” if they couldn’t find the exact information required. Oh Jesus Christ. The report stated that this breached the financial regulations for the recording of insurance sales and distorted the official Perypils’ sales data. The report also said that the team manager, The Climber, had an extremely poor understanding of the sales process and was not close enough to her team or its methods. The report also referred to “self-inflicted poor communication” between the team manager and the department manager as being a contributing factor to the SBI.

  It was a disaster. I felt sick and cold and shaky. That evil little shit Gizmo, telling me there were a few “minor transgressions” and then sending this bombshell through. I’d told everyone the report would be good, that the audit had gone well. I’d spent £33.40 on cakes to celebrate, for Christ’s sake! What a tit I looked now. I picked up the phone and dialled Gizmo’s mobile number. I was going to have it out with him. It went to voicemail, so I left him a message saying I was extremely disappointed to have received this report, felt that he’d misled me and asked him to call me urgently. I left a message for The Boss to call me too. He would find out soon enough; better it came from me.

  I called The Climber over. I sat her down in front of my desk and turned my screen around so she could read the report. I didn’t say anything else, but asked her to read it and let me have her comments. She went white, then red, then a strange greeny-grey colour.

  “But I don’t understand!” she wailed. “How could they have written that, after all the help I gave them! We all went out together, we got on so well. We, we, we gelled. And how could my team say that? Why did they say they make things up? I try and help them if they come to me, I always do my best for them, always!” She covered her face with her hands, got up and stumbled towards the toilets in tears. The department went quiet for a moment as everyone watched her and wondered what was going on.

  My mobile rang. Oh no, it was The Boss. I took a deep breath and answered.

  “Jesus bloody Christ, Kate” he said angrily, “I thought you told me it was going to be a good report! It’s coded red for fuck’s sake, fucking red! Is that your idea of good, because the last time I looked red meant fucking awful!”

  “You’ve seen the draft copy then?” So much for it just going to me first.

  “Seen it, read it, wiped my arse on it,” Brett snarled. “You know I told the Chief Exec that it was going to be a good report don’t you? Because you told me it would be. Now I’ve got to show him this shit - he’s going to hit the roof. And so will my balls by the time he’s finished with me.”

  “I’m sorry Brett,” I said, cringing, “But the lead auditor told me he’d only spotted a few minor transgressions, he didn’t say-”

  “Well I’m going to be sorting that jug-eared little runt out, don’t you worry. You just sort your team out, Kate. What the hell were they thinking, telling a team of auditors that they make things up? Eh? Had they gone stark staring mad? For Christ’s sake, who’s using the bloody brain cell in Cheltenham at the moment?”

  He had a point. I hung up miserably and went to find The Climber. She wasn’t in the toilets. I eventually found her in the meeting room. She had a carton of sandwiches, a cheese scone and a Twix in front of her. She looked up at me with a tear-stained face.

  “I’m co
mfort eating,” she said. Good. With any luck she’d get all fat and spotty. I sat down opposite her.

  “You’ll be comfort-vomiting soon if you got that sandwich from the canteen.” I tried to make her smile but she just fiddled disconsolately with her Twix.

  “I can’t believe they’ve done that to me.”

  “I did try to tell you that they weren’t here to make friends,” I said, as gently as I could manage. “I warned you several times not to get too close to them, but unfortunately, you chose to ignore me.”

  “But we all got on so well,” she persisted. “They said they’d write nice things about me, bought me lots of drinks, said I really impressed them. How could they do that?” It’s called getting shafted, it’s a common enough management technique.

  “You’ve been a bit naive, Amanda. You need to learn from this experience, and you need to learn to listen to advice.”

  “Have you spoken to Brett?” she asked, pulling at the sandwich carton. “I bet he blames me.”

  “It’s not about blame.” And if you believe that you’ll believe anything. “Anyway, the buck stops with me. I’m the manager.”

  She looked a bit brighter. “I don’t know why my team said they make things up. Why would they say something like that? I’m quite sure they don’t make stuff up. Obviously they’ve misinterpreted my instructions or something.”

  “Amanda,” I said, leaning forwards, “your team saw you being friendly and cosying up to the audit team like they were your best buddies. So they felt safe with them too - they got lulled into a false sense of security and thought they could say whatever they wanted.”

  She didn’t respond, concentrating on getting a sandwich out in one piece. The carton said it was Coronation Chicken. Chunks of grey meat fell out onto the desk. The chicken had probably been alive at the coronation.

  I tried again. “This is really serious Amanda. We’ve been given an SBI which means all eyes are going to be on us, for all the wrong reasons. You need to focus fully on your team now, spend much more time in the process, understand what is going wrong and put it right. And for us, well, we need to talk to each other more. You need to tell me what’s going on, ask for help if you need it.”

  “Was Brett very cross, what did he say?” She bit into her sandwich, which I noticed had begun to curl at the edges.

  I sighed.

  “I really don’t think you’re listening to me at all, are you?”

  She tried to protest, but her mouth was too full.

  “Never mind about Brett, that’s not your concern. He’s my manager, not yours. Your priority is to get stuck in and get this issue sorted out as quickly as possible. Then Brett will be happy with us both. Do you understand?”

  She pursed her lips and looked about to say something else, but in the end just nodded. I got up. “And for God’s sake don’t eat that cheese scone. It’s going green.”

  By the time I got back to my desk the shock waves from the report were already being felt. I could see I’d missed several calls, and emails were coming in from all directions - everyone asking similar questions about the SBI. How, when, why - what were my plans to address it? The Perypils risk team had invited me to a teleconference at 6 pm to discuss. 6 pm - what a cheek!

  My working day finished at 5 pm. My paid working day anyway. Managers didn’t get overtime. I’d calculated that on the hours I was currently working my hourly rate was less than the minimum wage. Why was I working for nothing? Why was I such a mug?

  The next few days were utterly hideous. I was placed on “daily reporting” by the sales risk team which meant a teleconference each morning during which I had to give them an update on the issue. I then had to complete a daily written report and send it to The Boss so he could send it to The Big Cheese (the Chief Exec). This would then be returned to me with numerous questions which required detailed responses from me. My responses only served to generate additional questions. I was bombarded with emails from not only the risk team for sales but also the regional risk team, the national risk team and the executive risk team. They all wanted to know something slightly different and each sent me a different proforma to complete detailing the issue. Why couldn’t all the risk teams speak to one another? Why not just have the one generic form that they all shared? I would have thought that having hundreds of different forms was a risk in itself. Perhaps that’s how they kept themselves in business.

  By the end of the week I was close to melt down. I had shouted down the phone to someone from ‘process’ risk who’d called me for an update: “For Christ’s sake leave me alone for five minutes, can’t you? How the hell do you expect me to manage the issue when all I’m doing is answering the phone to you idiots?” I was working until midnight in the attempt to clear down my email inbox, but by the time I’d arrive at work in the morning there would be another ten emails all relating to the same issue, all wanting additional information.

  The Husband was not at all impressed with my long hours and having to cook for himself in the evenings. By the time I got home I felt too sick from stress and nervous exhaustion to eat much, so I was getting by on a bottle of wine and a marmite sandwich. He wasn’t at all sympathetic to my issue, simply grunting if I tried to tell him anything about it. I knew he was being particularly grumpy as he’d been going to the gym almost every night but still hadn’t managed to lose any weight. He thought it might be his thyroid.

  My brother called one evening to make sure I wasn’t upset about not being a bridesmaid. I said “I’m 42, so no, I’m not upset.”

  He explained that they needed to keep costs down, so it would just be Georgia. Was I ok with that? Yes, I’m 42, who the hell has a 42 year old bridesmaid?

  He handed the phone over to the Bunny Boiler, who slurred some more apologies to me, told me I was like a sister to her already and that she wanted me to play a special part in their wedding. Oh God. She said she wanted to go shopping with me so we could look at wedding dresses and “going away” outfits. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to do together? No, it bloody well wouldn’t, I can’t think of anything worse. Cornered, I agreed on a date to meet up in a couple of weekend’s time. With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t remember the conversation.

  The torture at work began to abate when the Climber eventually managed to get to the bottom of the SBI. She discovered that the sales database wasn’t fit for purpose and hadn’t been for quite some considerable time. Her team had therefore been making do, and where they didn’t have the right information they had been ‘best-guessing’. It was pretty hard to believe. I asked the team why they hadn’t raised this before. They shrugged and looked blank. I asked why they’d waited until a team from audit came in before they had chosen to sing out like canaries? More shrugs. I couldn’t get the theme tune from The Muppet Show out of my head.

  It became apparent that it wasn’t just my team in Cheltenham that was affected by the database issue - it was across the company. And nobody had noticed. I assumed that meant that everyone else’s sales data was corrupt too - it was clearly a massive issue. The risk teams went very quiet for a period of time, and then I was told that the database was in the process of being rebuilt. I could consider my issue closed and was asked to destroy the audit report along with any copies I had made. It seemed Perypils now wanted to keep a lid on the whole thing for fear of being hauled up in front of the regulators. I’d heard that all the fingers were being pointed in IT’s direction and they were getting it in the neck now - in this no-blame culture that we operate in.

  I stared at my reflection in one of the mirrors in the Ladies. I looked grey and exhausted, with heavy, dark circles under my eyes - this whole audit business had robbed me of much-needed beauty sleep and given me many more white hairs. I could easily pass for The Climber’s mother, if not her grandmother. I would certainly be on TLS George’s “not” list. The “not even with a paper bag” most definitely not list.

  Chapter Seven