by Jo Edwards
The Husband and I met up with our friends Karen and James at the pub on Friday night. We were all sharing the horrors of our working weeks, trying to out-do each other in the attempt to claim the title of “Shit Muncher of the Week”. Karen was halfway through a story about bogeys on her blackboard when the Husband suddenly exclaimed “Oh look, there’s Debbie and Paul at the bar!” and he waved them over to join us. Great. We all made the usual noises such as “What a coincidence” and “Great minds think alike!” and I managed to shuffle quickly round the table to position myself as far away from Boring Paul as possible. He sat himself down next to James. Sorry mate, but I had to save myself. I asked Debbie who was looking after Chloë (the devil child) and she said “Oh we’ve just left her to fend for herself!” and she trilled with laughter. The Husband joined in with a burst of phoney laughter that I hadn’t heard from him before. Karen rolled her eyes at me and buried her face in her wine glass.
Despite the uninvited guests, it turned into quite a jolly evening. I tried to stick to orange juice after my ghastly hangover experience, but I soon grew tired of that and got stuck into the Rioja with everyone else. I asked everyone to name the first record they’d ever bought, going first with mine - “Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M. As soon as I said it, everyone burst into song; James even stood up and did the hand movements. Karen said hers was “Crazy Horses” by the Osmonds, but we only knew the screechy bit and that practically cleared the pub. James’ was “Under The Moon of Love” by Showaddywaddy, which was absolutely brilliant to sing to, and Debbie claimed hers was “Some Might Say” by Oasis. I looked at her with some suspicion and Karen pretended to cough whilst saying “Bullshit” at the same time. Paul, the boring old fart, said he couldn’t remember what his was and Karen cheerfully cried “Well make it up then! Just like your wife did!” Fortunately, Debbie didn’t hear her. Or possibly she chose not to.
The conversation turned to holidays and Debbie asked us where we were going this year. That was a bit awkward as we hadn’t actually discussed it, so I slurred “Oh we usually go to one of the Greek islands in September, you know, do a last minute thing.”
The Husband could have left it at that, but no, he had to chip in saying “I’m so bored with holidays where you just sit on your arse on a sun lounger all day.” Since when? “I’d like to do something exciting just for once, an activity holiday or something, you know, actually do something for a change.”
I stared at him. An activity holiday? The closest you’ve ever been to active on holiday is when you once had to hop over hot sand because you forgot your flip flops. You never move from the sun lounger from ten in the morning till six in the evening, wearing your mirrored sun glasses so you can perv at all the young beach babes without them knowing. You make sure you don’t drink too much so you don’t have to get up to go to the loo, and you moan like buggery if I ask you just to rub sun cream on my back because it’s too much bloody effort to sit upright.
“Oh yes, I know what you mean,” said Debbie. “We can’t sit around when we go away, we’re real activists aren’t we, Paul? And Chloë is too, we took her to Center Parcs at Easter and she was in her element, she did all the activities over and over.” I expect she’d scared all the other kids away and had the place to herself. I hated Center Parcs; too many cagoule-clad, pretentious twat-couples who named their children Horatio and Portia and whose poo was 100% organic.
“We’re going surfing in a couple of weeks,” said Paul. “We go every year, two weeks down in Devon. My parents come too, so they can help look after Chloë whilst we’re surfing.” Yes, God forbid you’d have to look after your own child on holiday.
“Ooh!” shrieked Debbie, “I’ve had an idea!” Tell us quick before it dies of loneliness. “Why don’t you all come too?” Eh? No, no, no!
“We stay in this massive house, there’s plenty of room for everyone and we could teach you to surf! You’d love it and it would be such fun! Oh, go on, say yes, say yes!”
For a woman who’d drunk the best part of two bottles of wine, Karen’s quick thinking was impressive.
“Oh, what a shame,” she said, “but we’re off on hols ourselves shortly, so we couldn’t possibly take any more time off work. What a pity.” James nodded vigorously. I wasn’t quite so quick on my feet, and whilst I was thinking of our reason not to go, I heard The Husband say “Oh, that sounds great! How fantastic, I’d love to surf. Are you sure you guys wouldn’t mind?”
How could he - we hadn’t even discussed it! Karen looked at me and opened her eyes wide. Help me, my eyes pleaded with her, help me.
“Wow, Kate,” she said, standing up a bit unsteadily. “Imagine, you on a surf board! Wearing one of those horrid blubber suit thingies. Brilliant, just brilliant.” She tottered off to the Ladies, where I could hear her laughing out loud.
“She means a wet suit,” said Debbie, patting my arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry, they’re not that bad, you soon get used to them.” No, I won’t because I’m not bloody going. I said very pointedly to The Husband that we’d talk about it at home, and he nodded “Yes, yes” but I could see he was sold on the idea. No way was I going to spend two weeks of my precious holiday with the most boring man in the world and his spooky staring child, not to mention having to wear an unforgiving blubber suit and the very small matter of drowning. Surfing was for brown-limbed, tousle-haired, care free youngsters, not the likes of me. I was 42, I worked in insurance, I owned Laura Ashley gardening gloves for Christ’s sake - I’d no business getting on a surf board.
We said goodbye to everyone outside the pub, and The Husband and I staggered home. He was extremely excited at the thought of going surfing in Devon and banged on and on about it. I just listened, made encouraging noises and took care not to poo-poo it straight away, as I knew that would be likely to provoke a row.
When we got in, I made us a cup of tea and opened a bag of Maltesers as he carried on enthusing. I threw a few spanners in, such as “Of course, you can never trust the weather in this country, can you? Imagine surfing in the wind and rain, it would be horrid!” Then “Of course, we’ve never met Paul’s parents. I mean I’m sure they’re ok, but you never know, do you?” and then my piece de resistance “Of course, we’d be staying in the same house as a noisy toddler all that time, what’s her name, Carrie?”
“It’s Chloë,” he corrected, and he looked thoughtful. I held my breath - surely that would put him off, he couldn’t bear kids. It very nearly worked, but instead, I found myself agreeing to go down for a “long weekend” to see what it was like. At no point did he ask me if I actually wanted to go, which I thought was very selfish of him. As soon as I’d said “Well, um, I suppose so...” he whizzed off to the study to Facebook the good news to Debbie before I could change my mind. I texted Karen about the weekend.
She replied: “U shood practice dont want to look like a tit. Squeeze urself into a condom & lie on the ironing board.” Ha bloody ha.
Wednesday
I was holding on the phone for Human Remains. I was trying to sort out a colleague’s pay that they had completely cocked up. The first person I’d spoken to (after being in a queue for forty minutes) had told me that the team I needed were all at lunch, could I phone back in an hour? I said no. I asked why the team had all gone to lunch at the same time. He’d put me through to his “supervisor” - who uses the word supervisor anymore? She had told me that they wouldn’t be able to deal with my query today as they had “other priorities”. I asked her to explain to me what was more important than a colleague not being able to meet their living expenses because their salary hadn’t been received. She’d said she didn’t much care for my tone. I’d told her it was pretty obvious her team didn’t much care about anything at all. I was now waiting to speak to her manager.
My mobile rang. I looked at the caller, it was The Boss. He never called me - it must be bad news. I let it go to voicemail and played back the message whilst hanging on for HR.
“Kate, I need to talk you
. Kevin’s PA has been in touch with me and Kevin wants to arrange a visit to the Cheltenham site next Monday.” Oh shit. “I know it’s short notice, but he was due to visit Bridgend and that’s had to be cancelled. So he wants to go to Cheltenham instead. Can you call me as soon as possible, we need to get prepped. Cheers.”
Oh my God, that was all I needed, a visit from The Big Cheese. Visits such as these had to be planned with paranoid precision to make sure that visitors only saw what we wanted them to see. I needed sufficient enough time to be able to cover up/hide/destroy any detritus - this included some of the staff. This paranoia was based on past experience of visits going a bit pear-shaped, with career-threatening “findings” being shared publicly right across the company. You rarely recovered from poor feedback dished out by a high profile visitor. My predecessor, when faced with a similar visit, had made the fatal error of saying “Oh sod it, they’ll just have to take us as they find us.” She was never seen again. I felt extremely concerned by the timing of the visit, what with all the restructure and closure rumours. What was the real purpose of his visit? And why had he cancelled on Bridgend? Or was he deliberately not giving us much notice so he could catch us out in some way, provide himself with the excuse he needed to close us down?
I liked the way The Boss had said “we” need to get prepped in his message, as if he was going to help. Not a chance in hell of that. But anyway, that was the rest of this week completely stuffed for me. I had a flick through my calendar while still holding on for HR. The next few days were completely chocka, with six meetings scheduled in for tomorrow alone. I was going to have to re-arrange what I could, and would probably have to work through the weekend to catch up. Bugger bugger bugger. The Husband would not be amused with that. I really did need to get better at prioritising. The trouble was, if I declined a meeting, some little weasel would be straight on the phone to The Boss saying I was being “obstructive”. I ended up accepting everything and therefore totally over committing myself. I just couldn’t win.
The line had gone very quiet. I looked at my phone turret - the call had been disconnected! You bastards.
I gathered my team managers together to inform them of The Big Cheese’s impending visit, attempting to sell it to them as a fantastic opportunity to show our Chief Executive what a great team we are. Interesting reactions:
The Rock: “Whoopee! I’m on holiday next week!”
The Snake: “He never visits here, the teams will wonder why he’s coming down, there’s bound to be speculation.”
The Climber: “Can I take the lead on the visit?”
The Drain: “I think I’ve got a hospital appointment....”
TLS George: “Whilst we’re all together, is it ok if I leave early today?”
I wanted us to get organised. I was about to decline The Climber’s offer to lead the visit, when a thought struck me. The Big Cheese was known to be a bit of a womaniser, there’s nothing he would like more than to be shown around by an attractive young female. Was I prepared to pimp out The Climber? You bet I was. I accepted her offer and also suggested a few colleagues that we could introduce to The Big Cheese to show him some of our initiatives and achievements. All the colleagues I suggested were pretty young females. The others didn’t seem to notice this. I didn’t feel at all proud of myself. In fact, I felt positively grubby.
I gave The Climber the task of organising an agenda for the day, keeping in mind The Big Cheese would also want to visit Cruella’s complaints team at some point during the day.
“Stick her in after lunch,” I suggested. No one liked this time of day, when energy levels were sapped and the department stank of canteen soup and oniony burps. With any luck, he’d yawn and guff his way all round her department.
I gave TLS George a task, just because he hadn’t volunteered to get involved with anything, and I wanted him to pull his weight too. The Big Cheese’s PA had asked for a “one-pager” to be sent through before the visit, summarising what we did at Cheltenham. I assumed that was to avoid our Chief Exec looking like a div when he turned up. I asked TLS George to put this together before Friday, with a warning not to delegate it to someone else. In front of the others, he readily agreed, saying “That’s easy enough.” After the meeting broke up, he came over to me at least three times to ask what he should put in the summary, and then to moan about the “value” of the task, saying “Surely the Chief Executive knows what his own teams do?” Hollow laugh.
Thursday morning
I went through the proposed agenda with The Climber and emailed it to The Boss. He seemed pleased with it and emailed to say he would be down on Monday to support us with the visit. The Climber was in her element, bossing everyone around and indulging in some serious hair flicking. I overheard her making an appointment for herself at a waxing salon. Blimey! That’s pretty impressive attention to detail.
The teams started removing all the tat from the walls, such as out of date lunch rotas and dodgy team night-out photos. They replaced these with morale-boosting Perypils posters and our impressive performance statistics.
I asked the guys in facilities if they could do anything about the blu-tak stains on the walls. They said it would have to be a paint-job. I thought The Big Cheese would be smelling enough “wet paint” when he arrived so I decided just to put up more posters to cover the stains.
Thursday afternoon
Chased TLS George for his one pager at 12.30 pm, 2.00 pm & 4.00 pm.
Prepped (instructed) all colleagues (Pretty Young Things) involved in the visit on what they should talk about and what statistics to show The Big Cheese, plus a bit of leg or breast hopefully, though of course I couldn’t say that. They were full of nervous excitement, the poor deluded things. Lambs to the slaughter.
Planted a Tic-Tac under my desk to test the standard of the overnight cleaning.
Friday morning
Tic-tac still there. Called facilities to complain.
Chased TLS George for the one pager at 9.30. Told him he had until 11.00, or he would have to personally phone The Big Cheese to explain why he hadn’t received it.
Commenced frantic tidy-up. All colleagues were asked to clear their desk areas of personal items. Jesus, the moaning that caused. Why are people so sensitive about their square foot of space? I only asked them to hide a few bloody gonks away for Christ’s sake. One woman burst into tears because she was asked to put a photo away in her drawer. It wasn’t even a photo of a family member - it was of her dog, an afghan hound. (Although at first glance it did look like it could have been a picture of her husband in the seventies).
10.58 Received the one pager emailed from TLS George. I read through his summary. It contained 67 spelling mistakes. This included 12 occasions when he’d started a new sentence without using a capital letter. I called him over, and held out a printed copy like I was holding a turd.
“George, why have you sent me this - is it supposed to be a joke and you’ve got the real one saved somewhere else?”
George had his mutinous face on.
“No, it’s not a joke. What’s wrong with it?”
“Have you heard of Spell Checker?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you use it, then?”
“I did. Well, I thought I did.”
“Do you have any problems with reading and writing? Any problems with your eye sight?”
“No.”
“So you’re just lazy then?”
“It was just a first draft, that’s all. I’ll do it again after lunch.”
I took a deep breath. I felt like strangling him. “You’ll do it now, George. I don’t expect you to go to lunch until it’s done and done properly and I certainly don’t expect to have to chase you twenty times just to get you to do something I’ve asked you to do. This visit is extremely important to us, you know that. Everyone else is mucking in - I don’t want anyone letting the side down.”
He went off in a huff. I would have to do something about him - I’d p
ick it up after the visit was out of the way.
Afternoon
The Boss emailed to say he wouldn’t be down for the visit after all, as he was going to a Britney Spears concert at Wembley on Monday night. I emailed back saying I was disappointed but that I understood, assumed his daughter had been looking forward to it for some time and that he wouldn’t want to let her down. He emailed back to say he wasn’t going with his daughter. I didn’t email him again on the subject.
The Rock finished up and left for her week in Corfu, bidding me good luck and grinning inanely. I nearly threw myself at her feet, held onto her ankles and begged her not to go. Don’t leave me.
Chapter Fifteen
