Double Top To Finish - Friday

Assistant manager T comes to have a word. He seems to have recovered from the highly questionable cold he started the year with, but from the look on his face he’s about to make me feel unwell.

‘You’re not leaving are you?’ I pre-empt, as he tugs the door shut behind him and sits gingerly in front of me.
‘I can’t afford to,’ he replies downcast, before adding. ‘Although if our commission payouts stay as grisly as the last three months I can’t afford to stay either.’

T looks at me ruefully, as if I have the answers just by virtue of staying on the planet a little longer than him. Welcome to my world chum, I think uncharitably, a little more upbeat now I realise I won’t be going through the nausea of staff interviews, with the extra paperwork the coven at personnel have now insisted on, to prevent possible discrimination claims.

My rival manger H, needless to say, has circumnavigated this additional administration by vowing to only employ blokes under forty with Anglo Saxon names, women past child bearing age, or nubile secretaries so air-headed and pliable that he’ll be the only one screwing them. One day it’ll catch up with him and no amount of penicillin will save the little sleaze-ball, particularly as his figures no longer make him fireproof.

‘What’s the problem then?’ I ask T dragged reluctantly back to 2009 and its grim realities.
‘It’s the target figures….’ Begins T hesitantly.
‘What’s the matter with them?’ I respond disingenuously. The matter is they are completely unobtainable, even now with the year barely started any rational commentator will tell you they are a joke.

I knew the budgets I argued with the bean counter over, were a nonsense even as I drew up the office and individual target figures, breaking the year end mountain into monthly, then weekly requirements. The viewing objectives, the valuation and instruction demands, and in particular mortgage man M’s written business levels - which like Government economy statistics, are a work of fiction.

‘Come on,’ urges T pleadingly. ‘You have to admit they are a crock of shit. We haven’t a hope in hell of making these numbers, so the quarterly bonus objectives are a….’ And he hesitates, as I only just stop myself from saying mirage? Just to help him out.

Trouble is, despite his faults, I like T and I ought to be honest enough to agree with him. Particularly as I said something similar to my wife when I pored laboriously through the budget spreadsheets over Christmas. Instead another little piece of my soul is chipped away as I give a stock management answer and urge him to redouble his efforts.

I can almost feel T’s respect for me ebbing away as he leaves my office with a shrug. I have to gird myself for the inevitable performance reviews that the bean counter will inflict, as the targets disappear over the horizon. In turn I’ll be expected to ratchet that disapproval up and pass it on to my staff, as surely as night follows day.

‘I bet you lot are under the cosh.’ Speculates a potential vendor breezily, as I sit to explain my valuation, one eye as ever nowadays on the swiftest exit route. As it happens he takes my suggested price with equanimity and suggests, rightly, that he’ll claw back any deficit on his purchase.

‘You’re fees come down as well, I expect?’ The man predicts, dispelling my theory that he possesses some financial acumen in a stroke. The fact is with every commission pound counting, and values dropping, we’re shoving fees as high as possible. We’re also flogging home information packs with a tidy mark-up, despite my loathing of them.

‘You guy’s just milk it no matter what.’ Grumbles the owner. ‘Like cockroaches.’ He states, before noticing my stiffening body language and adding unconvincingly. ‘No offence.’

The man has a point, last time around it was survival of the fittest and once the high street had been decimated, the agents who survived were leaner and meaner.

Trouble is, I’m carrying too much weight, going soft in the centre and have a feeling the principal target is attached to my back.

Watch this space.