Determined to be upbeat I leave early, once the ice has cleared from the car windscreen. A few shivering neighbours, those working in the private sector, with the biggest mortgages to service, are out scraping at the frost with credit cards they’ll not be using for anything else for a while.
As the car slip-slides its way towards the gritted portion of road, I pass the rather poignant piles of rubbish waiting to be collected. Here and there colourful Christmas wrapping paper the town hall Hitlers’ have decreed can’t be recycled is poking redundantly from the detritus, and even more forlornly a few needle-less trees are piled optimistically alongside the conventional rubbish. The dustmen won’t take them, wrong type of leaves.
My mobile bleeps and I decide to risk a quick listen to the message as I’m stuck at the junction waiting for a slow moving procession of commuters, peering through letterbox-style gaps in their screens, to pass. It’s assistant manger T calling in sick.
‘When was the last time I was off with a piddling cold?’ I ask the Today programme presenters angrily, as someone finally flashes their lights to let me out. The new years resolution to stop ranting out loud didn’t last long.
‘Where’s T?’ Asks negotiator S, who is looking fitter than most, when she finally realises our assistant manger isn’t grouped round the morning meeting table.
‘A sniffle apparently.’ I grump as trainee F sneezes theatrically into a linen handkerchief. I’ve told him about disposable tissues but his mother insists on boiling up the unsavoury cotton squares. I make a mental note to never eat at her house, no matter how desperate it gets.
‘It’ll be man flu.’ Suggests lettings lush B scornfully. ‘Blokes never just have a cold.’ S nods enthusiastically - and movingly - in agreement, and I feel the first stirrings of a hot flush. Hurriedly I move on to my motivational speech, the one I woke-up at four o’clock in the morning and reluctantly, sleep no longer an option, began to prepare in my head.
‘It’s not rocket science.’ I conclude having reminded my lean and straining sales team – okay not fat mortgage man M – that we need to get back to agency basics. To identify motivated sellers and buyers, give them the time and attention they deserve and to only piece together sales with committed participants. Then spend the effort and expertise to nurse the transaction through, chain hic-cups, finance famines, survey problems and dilatory solicitors, to completion.
Momentarily I think I’ve moved and motivated my staff, until F unleashes another trumpeting sneeze and I think I detect the spatter of moisture against my face, despite his belated raising of the bedraggled snot-rag.
‘Do you have to spread you infections all round the town?’ Snaps B angrily before rising and click-clacking her heels across the peeling laminate. In her wake M and I exchange the briefest of glances and I give him an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Just don’t go there.
The phone rings and S snatches it up enthusiastically, repeating the corporate greeting, before looking disappointed and announcing it’s my short-of-stature, big of ego, rival manager H ringing.
‘Happy new year.’ I tell H, hating the Tourettes-like tic that I’ll be repeating unconvincingly, knee-jerk style, to every new caller for the next ten days.
‘Nothing happy about it.’ Responds H with a growl. ‘Have you heard the redundancy rumour?’
Ten minutes later we’ve aired the latest scare stories in a sort of mutual cathartic couch-session, only without the fees and ink splodge cards. We see the management accounts every month and whilst I’ve been shoving water uphill for some time now, the severity of the situation only hit H’s previously buoyant office, less than a year ago. Now his sales pipeline, like mine, is looking as threadbare as the earlier Norwegian firs, he’s finally realised the party is over.
‘I’m thinking maybe a change of career this year.’ Announce the poison dwarf hesitantly. ‘What do you think?’
Seems I should have tried harder with the resolution to keep my comments to myself. As it happens the circus won’t be in town until the summer anyway - and by then I might well be the clown.
As the car slip-slides its way towards the gritted portion of road, I pass the rather poignant piles of rubbish waiting to be collected. Here and there colourful Christmas wrapping paper the town hall Hitlers’ have decreed can’t be recycled is poking redundantly from the detritus, and even more forlornly a few needle-less trees are piled optimistically alongside the conventional rubbish. The dustmen won’t take them, wrong type of leaves.
My mobile bleeps and I decide to risk a quick listen to the message as I’m stuck at the junction waiting for a slow moving procession of commuters, peering through letterbox-style gaps in their screens, to pass. It’s assistant manger T calling in sick.
‘When was the last time I was off with a piddling cold?’ I ask the Today programme presenters angrily, as someone finally flashes their lights to let me out. The new years resolution to stop ranting out loud didn’t last long.
‘Where’s T?’ Asks negotiator S, who is looking fitter than most, when she finally realises our assistant manger isn’t grouped round the morning meeting table.
‘A sniffle apparently.’ I grump as trainee F sneezes theatrically into a linen handkerchief. I’ve told him about disposable tissues but his mother insists on boiling up the unsavoury cotton squares. I make a mental note to never eat at her house, no matter how desperate it gets.
‘It’ll be man flu.’ Suggests lettings lush B scornfully. ‘Blokes never just have a cold.’ S nods enthusiastically - and movingly - in agreement, and I feel the first stirrings of a hot flush. Hurriedly I move on to my motivational speech, the one I woke-up at four o’clock in the morning and reluctantly, sleep no longer an option, began to prepare in my head.
‘It’s not rocket science.’ I conclude having reminded my lean and straining sales team – okay not fat mortgage man M – that we need to get back to agency basics. To identify motivated sellers and buyers, give them the time and attention they deserve and to only piece together sales with committed participants. Then spend the effort and expertise to nurse the transaction through, chain hic-cups, finance famines, survey problems and dilatory solicitors, to completion.
Momentarily I think I’ve moved and motivated my staff, until F unleashes another trumpeting sneeze and I think I detect the spatter of moisture against my face, despite his belated raising of the bedraggled snot-rag.
‘Do you have to spread you infections all round the town?’ Snaps B angrily before rising and click-clacking her heels across the peeling laminate. In her wake M and I exchange the briefest of glances and I give him an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Just don’t go there.
The phone rings and S snatches it up enthusiastically, repeating the corporate greeting, before looking disappointed and announcing it’s my short-of-stature, big of ego, rival manager H ringing.
‘Happy new year.’ I tell H, hating the Tourettes-like tic that I’ll be repeating unconvincingly, knee-jerk style, to every new caller for the next ten days.
‘Nothing happy about it.’ Responds H with a growl. ‘Have you heard the redundancy rumour?’
Ten minutes later we’ve aired the latest scare stories in a sort of mutual cathartic couch-session, only without the fees and ink splodge cards. We see the management accounts every month and whilst I’ve been shoving water uphill for some time now, the severity of the situation only hit H’s previously buoyant office, less than a year ago. Now his sales pipeline, like mine, is looking as threadbare as the earlier Norwegian firs, he’s finally realised the party is over.
‘I’m thinking maybe a change of career this year.’ Announce the poison dwarf hesitantly. ‘What do you think?’
Seems I should have tried harder with the resolution to keep my comments to myself. As it happens the circus won’t be in town until the summer anyway - and by then I might well be the clown.
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5 comments:
agency basics = correct pricing!!
It was never any different
S.A.
pricing has little to do with it in my humble opinion,housing transactions are down to affordability and availability of credit. there are not many rational people who will pull 200,000 thousand pounds out of their back pocket to buy an average pile of dross, but tell em they can have it for 1100 quid a month n they will happily sign up for 25 years.
Correct pricing? - Back to basics - 'a thing's woth worrit'll fetch'!
Maureen said...
Correct pricing? - Back to basics - 'a thing's woth worrit'll fetch'!
9:58 PM
sounds like a good Yorkshire expression! but is attributable to Keats who followed it up with [which takes its reality from the ardour of the persuer]
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