Congratulations On Your News - Wednesday

Sat at the morning meeting aiming to motivate and energise my staff, when all I really want to do is go back to bed. My plaintive parting shot to my wife of: ‘Why did you let me open the second bottle of wine?’ Having been rebuffed with a less than sympathetic. ‘You didn’t exactly ask me.’ Followed by a rather curt. ‘And you didn’t exactly share much of it either.’

My head has that dull throbbing ache that presages a day of feeling increasingly ropey until that magic time - about three-thirty in the afternoon on my body clock - when you finally start to feel a little better, to the extent that you might consider just a little glass of something medicinal with your supper when you get home.

‘Here she comes at last.’ Says assistant manager T, bringing me back to the present and I look up to see B our lettings lush wobbling across the road towards the door.
‘Oh-oh, she looks a bit grim,’ opines negotiator S. ‘Nothing worse than a middle aged person who can’t hold their drink.’
‘Or hold on to their men.’ Chuckles T, as I swiftly make a mental reminder – still can’t work out how to do the automated one’s on my phone – to just have soft drinks, at least until Friday stats come around.

‘Morning.’ We all chorus as B stumbles across the threshold and murmurs a return greeting, before heading straight for the ladies.
‘Probably going to throw-up.’ Suggests T caustically.
‘Do you reckon she’s got one in the oven then?’ Asks trainee F to derisive looks all round. But although it’s almost certainly too many gin and tonics, I can’t shake the unlikely suggestion.

‘Even she’s not that stupid.’ Suggests mortgage man M in between mouthfuls of a giant breakfast pasty that could feed an African village for several days. ‘Mind you, that’s all we need,’ he continues. ‘A bloody maternity leave con where we all have to pick up her phone calls and hassle for months and try and fill the post with some useless temp who isn’t good enough to get a proper job themselves.’

‘Hey, you can’t say that sort of thing.’ Snaps S in a sudden show of sisterly solidarity, before she looks at me for support. I make the right human resources by rote mutterings to a pastry-filled leer of disgust from M, all the while hoping, as every line manager does in private – particularly the one’s who did the shagging – the test comes up negative.

Over the years I’ve lost numerous excellent female colleagues who, when just trained and out-performing the majority of the males, declare with a faint flush of excitement they are up-the duff. Hopefully my exclamations of feigned delight appeared genuine, but inside I was cursing my luck.

‘You lot all milk the system,’ continues M moving on to dangerous ground as he continues to tease S. ‘Say you are coming back so we have to hold the post open for you, then at the last moment, surprise, surprise, you discover you’ll miss posting pointless pap on Mumsnet, and resign.’

‘That’s sexist.’ Snaps S as B meanders back into the main office face whiter than M’s flabby arms. Fat men in short-sleeved shirts not a good look. ‘Just telling it like it is.’ Bats back M, as I glance across at B again and re-double my resolve to keep off the sauce. Her standards seem to be slipping as calamitously as a pensioner on an icy pavement. Despite sometimes yearning almost masochistically for an end to all this, I’m still not ready for the fall.

‘What you all looking at? Snaps B, and F clears his throat. I should have been quicker in hindsight and it’s not as if I don’t know. I’ve still not got over having to explain, as the nights started drawing in and I mentioned we were heading for the shortest day, that in fact each rotation was still twenty-four hours.

‘I didn’t expect her to cry.’ Mumbles F lips trembling, after B has returned to the ladies, S in her wake. ‘I thought it might be something to celebrate.’

A pregnant pause followed.

Built In Obsolescence - Friday

I limp from a valuation knowing it hasn’t gone too well, but hoping against hope they might instruct me anyway. I tried all the usual methods of engagement. Commenting about photographs on the mantelpiece, enthusing over the décor, ghastly as it was. I even resorted to patting the salivating dog as it drooled something unspeakable down my trouser leg. Nothing, no real connection, just the likelihood of someone else’s board going up - and another dry cleaning bill.

My back is as stiff as an ironing board and a numb tingling sensation is coursing down one leg ominously, as I ease butt-first into my car seat and turn like an octogenarian, knees jamming against the steering wheel, all flexibility vanished in the spasm. Then a new plate minor model BMW turns up and a lithe senior negotiator from one of our competitors arrives at the same house. I try to sink lower in the seat but it’s as if some spiteful road cleaner has left a broom handle on the squab. As it happens the young buck doesn’t even notice me as he skips towards the doorstep.

‘Hope the dog bites you.’ I growl uncharitably, as the door opens and the wife gives the lad a mega-wattage smile and he stoops to pat the hound, then let’s the flea bag lick his face.
‘Christ no,’ I mutter to the headlining as I fell a potentially dangerous fur-induced sneeze brewing. ‘I don’t need the business that badly.’ And as I watch the opposition disappear inside and try to staunch the back-wrenching nose explosion arriving, my mobile phone jangles that irritating tune I can’t work out how to change.

‘Bad news I’m afraid.’ Announces assistant manager T down the crackly line, as I wonder why tell me now? Why not wait until I’m back in the office? It’s as if by unburdening the problem to his line manager, like some sick pass the parcel game, T’s involvement in the collapsed chain will no longer be his responsibility.

Trying to retain a modicum of managerial dignity, instead of sobbing down the phone at the potential loss of half a month’s income, I issue curt instructions to re-market the three homes we have in the aborted transaction. Then reluctantly undertake to ring and soothe the owners myself when I get back. At least one of the three has already packed the bulk of their possession into boxes against my advice, so that will be a fraught conversation. It’ll be the agents fault, it always is.

Phone call over I thump the roof in frustration and am rewarded with a sharp knifing sensation in my coccyx. I figure it’s about the same time the young stud in the house opposite is finishing off a sole agency agreement with one hand, while charming the wife, answering his BlackBerry, and pleasuring the dog with his free hand.

‘I’m too old for all this.’ I grizzle to the instrument panel, as I ponder once again if I should actually pay the absurd contract price for one of the ever-available e-mail machines. But in truth if I can’t get the wretched Boyzone jingle off my old Nokia without my son’s help, I’m not about to master multiple applications on the City Boy toy.

Technology waits for no man, and I still struggle with the floor plan application on our own in-house system, but I can’t help feeling like some failed eighteen-century entrepreneur who has mortgaged his house and his soul acquiring a second hand Acme spinning wheel, just as the new cotton mill opens in town.

Unwisely I tug the sun visor down and slide across the cover. The light illuminates unkindly as I stare back at the old git in the mirror. I barely recognise the gaunt-featured man with more wrinkles than an elephant’s arse and a hairline rising faster than a kid’s lost balloon. ‘You look like shit.’ I mutter before firing the engine and heading back to make those phone calls.

Halfway across a box junction unwisely entered, the sneeze arrives like a roadside detonation. I’m pretty sure a camera flashed me. Perhaps I can use the photo on my emigration application.

Blue Monday

Drive to work station hopping on the radio, but each presenter or track just serves to annoy me. In the end I punch the unit into silence and brood as the traffic clogs once more.

Maybe it’s just me – my wife is pretty sure it is – but I can’t help feeling there’s more to life than a never ending series of rolling targets, a perpetual procession of time-wasters, promise-breakers, chancers and out and out fraudsters. I’ve speculated before that a salesman’s shelf life is finite and since the New Year it’s as though some unseen persecutor has been hanging successive weights onto my soul. As if a rancorous shopkeeper with one of those old fashioned sets of scales, has been progressively adding another disc of doom to see when I’ll tip.

‘F**k!’ I scream at the windscreen as I look up and see nothing but red taillights. And I brake, I brake with all the power I can muster, as my stomach rises rapidly in my throat and the anti-lock system judders rapidly under my shoe, in time with my thumping heart. ‘You’re losing it. Get a grip.’ I mutter face flushed with embarrassment, as the car rocks on its springs, inches from the bumper of the car in front.

Momentarily I think nobody has noticed, until the driver ahead turns angrily in his seat and mouths a laminated-glass-filtered obscenity at me. Then for good measure, mimes a particularly vigorous act of self-abuse through the heated rear screen. All I can think of is how much grief I’d have had from the bean counter boss if I’d totalled the company car. The associated paperwork doesn’t even bear thinking about.

‘Nearly had a prang on the way in.’ I mention in passing to the team, once the formalities are out of the way and the refreshments distributed.
‘About the only way you’ll get the motor replaced at the moment.’ Chortles assistant manager T dryly.
‘Things will get better.’ Suggests negotiator S sweetly. ‘It’s just the time of year and the weather.’
‘My boyfriend’s not returning my calls.’ Sulks B from her lettings desk. I’m tempted to ask which one, but have already diced with danger once this morning. ‘I hate January.’ Continues B moodily. ‘Got to be the worst month of the year.’

I can think of eleven others that have their downside, but decide to keep my own counsel. January does drag you down though. Payday is a long way off, with the Christmas excesses hitting the credit card statement alarmingly, and if you are commission based in a difficult market, bumper remuneration statements are a distant memory.

‘Today is the crummiest day of the year.’ Enlightens mortgage man M as he munches on a custard cream and sheds bits all over the carpet, without a hint of irony.
‘Because we had a sale fall-through?’ Asks trainee F vapidly.
‘Hell no,’ sneers M. ‘You lot have that most days. It’s officially the most depressing day in the calendar. Heard it on the radio this morning.’

Must have been when I turned off that annoyingly upbeat presenter, I think fleetingly, before concentrating on M’s telling dismissal of his workmates as: “you lot”.
Therein lies the difference between residential sales staff and the slightly aloof financial services brigade. Just because they are licensed and we’re not, they think they’re better than us. And as if to confirm it, M wipes little flecks of cream filling from his face – possibly not for the first time – and reads from a memo he’s just opened.

‘I’ve been instructed to hold weekly sales training and coaching for you guys.’ He pronounces pompously, as an absurd out of control plan to lace his hob-nobs with hemlock skids through my brain. ‘You’re just not giving me enough quality leads.’

And just as I did earlier, as my life briefly scrolled before me while my worn tyres scrabbled for grip and the rear end of a Ford Mondeo raced towards impact. I bite my tongue.

Unless the fat fool intends to train how to consume twice as many calories as recommended, or coach how to wipe doughnut jam from a face with your suit sleeve, he’ll be running on empty.

Just like me.

Linear Logic - Friday

‘Got a valuation for you.’ Calls negotiator S as I hustle through the door, stomach rumbling, but unlikely to be satisfied by the low-calorie offering I’ve picked out from well-known retailer’s ‘fat bastard’, three for two range. A range that ironically mortgage man M our own porky illegitimate, has yet to savour.

‘Where is it?’ I ask, always keen to spend time with S, purely in a motivational/mentoring capacity, of course. And she reaches across to her filing tray, causing a distracting gravity versus blouse material phenomenon that would have focused Isaac Newton’s attention more forcefully than a Cox’s Pippin smacking him on the forehead.

S tells me the address and I groan. It’s a soulless bland-faced blemish, the sort of character- free rabbit warren that appealed to all the amateur buy-to-let investors who piled into the market and bought off plan a few years ago, when they realised some light-fingered chancellor had raided their pension funds.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’ Chuckles S her chest heaving with mirth. I swallow harder than I’m likely to when I chew on the paper-like nourishment of a no mayonnaise chicken and sweetcorn sandwich, in a moment.
‘Pass it over then.’ I say reluctantly and she hands me the valuation form, a whiff of her perfume comes with it and briefly distracts me from the fruitless task ahead.

‘You should have an apple or something with that.’ Suggests S, looking at the thin offering in my hand, balanced against the plain yoghurt and pre-carbonated flavoured water. An absurd and potentially ruinous vision of a teacher’s pet and some extra-curricular activity the training department would definitely not approve of, dances before me - unless I’m hallucinating from hunger.

To get myself back on track I read the information she’s culled from the potential vendor. She’s good, but then I’ve taught her all I know – well most of it anyway.
‘Only bought it a couple of years ago.’ I say gloomily, realising that no matter how slick my pitch the owner will be disappointed with my likely price suggestion.
‘Yes but they are keen to sell.’ Chirrups S. ‘They’re fed-up with the tenant and the economy, and want to buy abroad.’

I’m hard pushed not to laugh in S’s face. But it’s not her fault I’ve heard it all before. One property recession was bad enough. Two is just an unwelcome reminder I’ve not progressed at all. I’m still making all the same mistakes the owners do.

The block I’ll be visiting could be in any town in the country. No hint of a nod to regional styles or materials, just flung up in a mad dash to what seemed like a one-way bet for instant no-risk profits. I’ve built Lego constructions with my sons, with more architectural merit than this vacuous concrete and glass excretion.

‘Are they realistic about the market for these places?’ I ask S vainly.
‘Oh yes,’ she gushes. ‘They know they have to price sensibly if they want to sell.’
I seriously doubt their realism will match mine when push comes to shove but it’s not S’s fault, so I smile thinly and trudge to my office to try and break into the plastic meal packaging, without using an audible swear word.

As I pick unenthusiastically at the food, I rustle up some comparable evidence of recent similar sales to underpin my price recommendation. If they really want to shift the box and not still own it when some myopic local historian pleads to have the carbuncle Grade Two Listed - alongside a 1960’s multi-storey car park - a sharp dose of realism will be needed.

I’d speculate I have nothing in common with Prince Charles other than male genitals, but I’m broadly with him on a dislike of balance sheet driven aesthetics in construction. I’m just not sure who’s the bigger prick.

‘How much?’ Snaps the vendor angrily as we stand in a sterile magnolia-washed rectangle, a few hours later.
‘There are three others on the market in the building for similar prices.’ I respond. And the man utters a familiar well-worn phrase, just as my lunch semi-regurgitates and a lump of sweetcorn rises uncomfortably in my gullet
‘I’m not giving it away.’

No, you’re not.

Love Hurts - Tuesday

Out for a quick gulp of very fresh air at lunchtime. Have to battle my way through hoards of shoppers either scavenging like gulls on a tip, through the sale rails, or panic buying in the convenience store. It’s easy to fall out of love with humanity when you see them day-in, day-out, at their belligerent, avaricious, argumentative worst - but enough about my staff.

The pavements are still lethal of course and now there’s a rumour circling the offices that if you show a modicum of initiative and clear the ice-rink outside your own door that you could be sued if someone falls base over apex. And as if to confirm the world has lost its marbles, the bean counter boss generates a nonsensical electronic memo cautioning all staff members not to interfere with the weather-induced, natural pavement hazard scenario.

‘Have you seen what this arse has sent now?’ I ask when I check my e-mails and see the offending missive, on my return from shopping Armageddon.
‘He’s a tosser.’ Replies B from her lettings desk in a rare show of solidarity, just as assistant manger T squeezes through the door weighed down with half a dozen bags.
I scan the retail outlet names and shake my head and do the muttering thing I’m prone to, apparently. Half of the shops I couldn’t enter without my kids as a cover, and the other half I’m too parsimonious to patronise, even with a final 25% off all sale items.

I scan the diary and see, with a fleeting wave of surprise, that T has booked me a valuation late afternoon, presumably before he went on a credit card melting spree.
‘What’s the catch with the four-thirty?’ I ask T and as he’s still relatively inexperienced, he has the good grace to blush slightly.

All agents are targeted, it’s something you have to live with - or leave. T needs to secure new instructions just as I do, and although a debate rages in the industry as to whether individual or team targets are the most successful, he has a monitored objective to achieve. I smell a rat.

‘I’m double booked.’ Pleads T as B stifles a snigger of derision. ‘Ok,’ T admits knowing he’s been rumbled. ‘It’s a matrimonial,’ he gives an unconvincing smile. ‘And you’re best at handling those.’
‘Nobody is good at handling those.’ Growls a rueful voice, and I turn to see mortgage man M waddling from his office to the kitchen. He still hasn’t got over his wife shafting someone else before shafting him. I still haven’t got over the pair of them selling their house through another agent.

‘God I hate matrimonials.’ I say to myself as I hurry across the darkened park, late afternoon.
‘What’s that?’ Calls a voice from a nearby bench. Now I’m thinking out loud, it’s a slippery slope. Just like the path I’m on.
‘Nothing.’ I spit back in reply and press on before the bench-dweller pleads for Pilsner money. I negotiate the car park, to a background jangle of bottle bank deposits and distant tills ringing like a call to last Mass.

After an uncomfortable fifteen minutes of small talk on the woman’s sofa, a car’s headlights illuminate the room and minutes later there’s a rasping knock on the door.
‘Daddy!’ Calls the little girl who’s been perched on a familiar step on the stairs waiting expectantly. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be a reconciliation if he no longer has his own key. A prediction confirmed by an atmosphere frostier than an Eskimo’s fridge that descends once the pair sit, with me in the middle like an impotent tennis umpire.

The girl clings to her father’s legs, limpet-like, and I’m reminded painfully of a similar child half a lifetime ago. The outcome will probably be the same.

‘No way.’ Exclaim the couple in what I suspect is a rare show of unity, when I suggest a sensible asking price. And for a moment hope flares in the little girl’s eyes, until the mother looks at her ex and snarls.
‘You’ll just have to stay in rented.’

The damage that we do.

Take Aim Fire - Thursday

No sooner has the morning meeting stumbled to a close than the bean counter boss rings.
‘Put him through.’ I tell negotiator S wearily as I traipse to my office with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man en-route to the gallows.
‘Maybe he wants to wish you a happy new year?’ Suggests S naively.
Sometimes her innocence can seem sweet, sometimes grating and misplaced.

Shutting the door and firing up my computer screen, so at least I can appear vaguely knowledgeable when I’m cross-questioned, I wonder, not for the first time, if any man’s capacity for top-down micromanaging is finite. Is it a fleeting few thousand years of civilisation stopping me from tearing the little number-nuts to pieces next time he questions my manhood, or an over-inflated mortgage and a crap endowment policy? Questions, questions.

‘A few queries for you?’ Begins the bean counter in his weasel drone. ‘First I don’t seem to have your target breakdowns.’
‘Really?’ I respond feigning fake surprise and imagining, like many salespeople must do, if a life on the stage wouldn’t have been as bad a choice as the career teacher suggested.

‘You sent them didn’t you?’ Growls the bean counter, causing all thoughts of applying to Equity for my actor’s card to evaporate.
I bluster something unconvincing, and not too well scripted, about the unreliability of the computer system at the moment.
‘Did you ask for a read receipt?’ Quizzes bean counter insistently.
You can see why the little binary bastard got where he is, I think sourly, as I promise to send the figures just as soon as the system re-boots our end.

Truth is I’m still struggling with the breakdown, no, not that one before you ask. Without becoming too technical, estate agency yearly targets are usually reduced back via key ratios, to monthly, weekly, daily and individual goals. Exciting challenges such as number of valuations, new instructions, viewings, offers, gross and net sales, along with financial services objectives, are all diluted to their constituent parts.

My advice to any youngsters out there, advice my own children have eschewed, is to enrol on a science or maths based study path. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but I have a feeling, judging by the number of accountancy geeks in the nations’ boardrooms, that spreadsheets trump manuscripts every time.

Trouble is you are either a word or a figure person as far as I can see. The gift of the gab hasn’t got me too far in truth and the only consolation is, with my income, I won’t need the services of an embezzling accountant in a hurry.

Damn that moron of a maths teacher for being so inept. He still haunts me nearly forty years later. Sometimes I wonder if he’s still alive. Occasionally, as I walk past the somnolent stillness of a sheltered housing dayroom, resident manager alongside, I feel like braving the fug of liniment and stale urine to see if I can find the wastrel. How I’d love to tax his fading brain with an impenetrable algebra equation.

‘Sir, so glad I found you. You won’t remember me, but if four pensioners are sitting in high-backed chairs, each needing liquid-nutrition every five hours. And if Dorota from Poland can feed Ethel and Edna in Y minutes but Margaret with her catheter problem takes X. Now, factor in a health and safety requirement of A minutes rest, per B units of staffing time, and the requirement for Natasha to enrol female Philippine weight-lifting champion Dalisay, to help hoist Norman out of bed at Z seconds per 100 cm’s of elevation - got that? Now, calculate how long until the ex-maths teacher has his incontinence pads changed.’

It seems vindictive but teachers, like parents, shape your future. And because that man had the communication skills of a mute railway announcer and the charisma of a conveyancing clerk, I’m marooned in a numerical black spot. Every morning I endure a more rigorous pat-down than an Amsterdam airport provides, as I check and re-check suit pockets to make sure I have my comfort blanket calculator with me.

The only consolation is I’ll probably never know when my number is up.

On Your Marks - Monday

I’ve been awake since the small hours just watching the clock radio ticking off long minutes to the appointed time. Of course when you first wake up there’s that fleeting hope it might be Sunday, or you might have had a full nights sleep. Only you squint at the numbers to realise your eldest son is probably still out clubbing, then try in vain to halt the brain.

Hopeless, the cogs start whirring and malevolent spreadsheets scroll through your head mocking your inability to grasp the detail other than to know it’s a huge uphill struggle again. Then you think the central heating has kicked in early, until you realise it’s your stomach churning like a tumble dryer someone’s left some small change in.

‘Good luck.’ Offers my wife, the eternal optimist, as after a mute breakfast I hesitate on the threshold of another year in sales. The road is sheathed in ice, as is my car, and a cold wind is blowing literally and metaphorically. ‘It’s not about luck.’ I tell her sullenly and all the light goes out of her eyes. I should apologise for my surly retort, it’s not her fault I’ve underachieved. But instead the schoolboy inside wells up, and a frightened lad in itchy grey uniform, aches to say timidly. ‘ I don’t want to go.’

Eventually I peck her on the cheek and shiver as I step into a new fiscal year. Five minutes of scraping and spraying and I come back to collect my briefcase.
‘I feel like Ranulph Fiennes.’ I tell her searching for jocularity.
‘You look fine.’ She says. ‘You just didn’t sleep very well.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ I snap back icily. ‘But thanks for the encouragement.’
‘You mean the cold weather?’ She tries valiantly.

Mountain to climb, I mouth to myself as I wave goodbye and she retreats into the sanctuary of home, mountain to climb.

‘Happy new year.’ Calls some other wage slave as we slip-slide across the skating rink of a car park. And our eyes meet momentarily. I don’t recognise him and he surely doesn’t me, or the empty greeting would be replaced by something more vitriolic.
‘Happy new year guv’nor,’ Entreats a bunch of rags from the park bench, as a claw-like hand extends. ‘Spare some coppers for a cuppa?’ Nothing changes.

Nothing changes apart from waist size, I think morosely, as I catch a glimpse of myself in the shop windows as I gingerly navigate the lethal untreated pavements. I’m looking portly which means most of January spent nibbling at those low-calorie meal deals, if I don’t want a load more redundant suits hanging in the wardrobe. The ties eventually come back round but a 32-inch long, is unlikely to return.

As I fumble with the office keys and circumnavigate what looks like frozen puke underneath the ice-glazed pavement, a woman tumbles to the ground behind me with a startled yelp.
‘Not often an estate agent gives you a helping hand.’ She jokes, face crimson with embarrassment, as I lift her up.

She’s unharmed apart from her pride but there’ll be plenty of fragile-limbed pensioner’s hitting the deck if it stays this cold, I think with a fleeting cheerfulness. All we need is the Swine Flu promise to come good and there’ll at least be an influx of probate work to swell our tired register.

Halfway through checking my e-mails, post to follow, when the team start to arrive.
‘Do I look fatter to you?’ Asks negotiator S as she sweeps off her coat and does a fetching pirouette.
‘You look fine.’ I say as non-contentiously as possible. One practical resolution, to stay clear of the coven of politically correct witches in human resources this year.

‘I’m watching the calories as of now.’ Announces B from lettings as she hurries inside. That’ll be diet tonic with the gin then, I think, but don’t say.
‘Off to the sales at lunch time.’ Pronounces assistant manager T. ‘Fancy a new suit or two.’
He looks a slender as ever, so it’s just a fashion thing.

‘Any chance of a cuppa?’ Wheezes portly mortgage man M as he balloons through the door. ‘Three sugars.’

Then trainee F rings in sick. Here we go again.