Flying High - Thursday

A scruffily dressed man in his twenties peers in the office window. I’m sat at assistant manger T’s desk, as he’s out lunchtime shopping. He’ll come back with something else unnecessary on his credit card, no doubt.

‘Lettings customer?’ I whisper conspiratorially, to negotiator S. She looks up discretely and clocks the guy, who is shielding his eyes and looking in, grinning slightly insanely.

‘Bit judgemental isn’t it.’ Says S, looking towards lettings’s lush B’s vacant desk.B’s been out for over an hour, supposedly helping a landlord with a tricky check-out. Not sure who is checking who out, with B you never know.

‘More about his age than dress sense.’ I hiss, as the man starts chuckling to himself. Terrific, all I need is another nutter coming in. I often wonder if they bus them in for a day out from the padded cells.

‘Is he laughing at us, or himself?’ Whispers S.

‘Probably the asking prices.’ I reply, as the man moves away from the window and towards the door.

I sometimes wish there was a remote controlled deadlock I could activate, to stop the drunks and deadbeats coming in. I only just managed to get the keys in the barrel and the door secured, that time an angry evicted tenant turned up intent on breaking heads or furniture. Twenty minutes for the police to arrive - you’d have thought they didn’t like estate agents…

‘He’s coming in.’ Says S between a forced smile. ‘You want him, or me?’

I’d rather she spoke to the man if I’m honest, but then if it turns awkward I’m going have to go across anyway.

‘Me.’ I tell her and she visibly relaxes. Quite pleasingly, as it happens.

‘You lot trying to hurt the locals again?’ Cries the man, by way of a greeting. Wonderful. If I wanted an argument I could post something provocative on Twitter. I don’t need some grinning gonad with no job, and no prospect of any commission for me.

‘I’m sorry.’ I say neutrally.

‘I bet you are,’ continues the idiot. ‘You must love it every time prices go up.’

He couldn’t be more wrong.

‘No chance for local people to get on the housing ladder with your prices. We just have to buzz off!’

My back isn’t what it was and this bell-end has a couple of decades on me. I’m not sure I can throw him out on the street without embarrassing myself and with the time the constabulary take to arrive, I could be at the emergency dentist by then. And yet, I’m not sure this guy is a complete lunatic, nor can I smell any alcohol.

I rise and an awkward Mexican stand-off begins. I can see S has her hand poised over the fast-dial button but a pizza would get here before any help does. I need to deal with this myself. The man looks at me, then at S before turning back to me.

‘It’s a joke.’ He says, hands held wide.

‘The prices are dictated by the market.’ I tell him robotically.

‘No.’ Says the man raising his eyebrows as if I’m the shabbily dressed wastrel with no job and housing prospects. ‘In your window…’

‘In my window what?’ I snap.

‘There’s a wasp.’

‘That was awkward,’ I say to S after the man has left. ‘I thought he wanted a fight.’

‘Why did he bother to come in?’ Asks S bemused.

‘Some people just think they’re funny.’ I tell her, as I remember the number of times I’ve wanted to go into a baker’s shop and ask how much for the wasps buzzing around the pastries?

‘Could you get it for me?’ Asks S, as I locate the errant flying menace. Fittingly it has landed on an over-priced apartment with a short lease. Someone is going to get stung.

‘How stupid are these creatures?’ I ask exasperated, as the wasp refuses to be guided out the door by a copy of the local free paper. The angry insect just keeps banging it’s dozy head against the glass.

I know how it feels.

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Media Mogul - Tuesday

‘Usual crap?’ Asks H my vertically-challenged rival manager, as we meet in the hotel car park. For a moment I think he’s referring to my ageing company car - replacements delayed as part of the bean counter boss’s budget cuts - but he’s thinking about the forthcoming managers’ meeting. 

‘Nothing much is new.’ I tell H, blipping my remote and getting a lifeless soft-touch click in return. The battery has gone and I haven’t got round to facing the copies in triplicate grief, arranging a replacement will entail. Ignominiously I have to walk back to my car and secure the doors manually. H doesn’t help matters by clicking his Ultimate Driving Machine fob from several paces away. Higher office turnover, higher band and on the car list. It’s the only think lofty about the little twerp.

‘I reckon these are a waste of time.’ Pontificates H as we walk towards the entrance door, one of those intimidating revolving ones. I clutch my briefcase handle tighter still. The wedged document receptacle in a spinning lobby door incident, still hasn’t entirely faded from my memory. Expensive counselling might erase the trauma but I like to spend my time on vendors’ couches.

‘That’s what my staff think about my morning meetings.’ I tell H as we have that embarrassing will you, won’t you moment when the door spins our way. I end up in the same personal space as him and have to do the dolly-steps shuffle, keeping just ahead of the door panel snapping at my achilles tendon without entering the short arse…

‘I don’t bother with morning meetings most days.’ Says H, riling me unnecessarily. He already has the best catchment area and a lower rent than my office. If you asked me I could do better than him if we swapped places - but nobody asks me.

‘You need to plan and prepare, need to communicate to your team what you expect.’ I say, rising to the bait despite myself. H grins, nods to the Romanian girl on reception and says. ‘We’re too busy fielding offers to do all the crap you do.’ I should have shoved him into the door mechanism when I had the chance and claimed an industrial accident. I’ve thought of it enough, believe me.

‘Here we go.’ Whispers H as the bean counter arrives in the meeting room a few minutes late. If the roles were reversed I’d reprimand the figure-fiddler for tardy timekeeping. Sadly, it seems accountants, not the meek, are inheriting the earth - or at least what’s left of it once depreciation and dilapidation figures have been offset against built in obsolescence.

Ninety minutes in, the fatty bacon sandwiches churning in my stomach like a cheap tumble dryer, the bean counter gets to item nine on the agenda. I look again, intrigued, as he toggles his laptop and the heading Social Media rises from the bottom of the overhead projector.

‘Do we really need to be doing this?’ Asks the bean counter, as I think if only he knew.

‘Corporate blogs and dull product placement Tweets are worse than no presence at all.’ Suggests the woman just back from her second maternity leave. The bean counter didn’t like her being away twice in three years and word is he won’t recruit another female at management level if they haven’t passed the menopause yet. I’m hoping I can sit in the public gallery at the tribunal - heavily disguised of course.

‘I couldn’t think of what to say.’ Offers another manager. That’s because you have the charisma of a carrot, I think sourly.

‘And you’d have to vet anything you wanted to publish.’ Adds a third voice. ‘The slightest contentious point and some tool would want to sue us.’

That’s why I do it anonymously I think, trying not to grin.

‘Agreed,’ responds the bean counter. ‘But I still think we need to have a profile.’ He pauses before adding. ‘Would anyone like to volunteer to pilot it?’

‘I’m too busy.’ Says H woundingly. He managed to sit beside me, despite my best efforts. Just trying to make himself look big if you ask me.

Meanwhile - I’m keeping a low profile. 

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Until You Drop - Saturday

‘What do you think?’ Asks my wife. It’s a question more loaded than the potato skins I was daydreaming about, before she emerged from the changing room. My stomach rumbles and my brain stumbles as I try to take in the first dress she has tried on.  Unhelpfully another question forms in place of an answer: Does her arse look big in that?

I knew as soon as the shopping trip for a Christmas party frock was suggested I was on a hiding to nothing. I’m all for equality of the sexes but there are some things a man just can’t do. Like childbirth, advising on women’s clothes - unless you’re a camp fashion designer - isn’t something a male should attempt.

‘I like it.’ I say unconvincingly. I’m usually better at flattery. After all I value people’s homes six days a week. Something you learn fairly swiftly in the property industry is very few people want the unvarnished truth, when it comes to their number one asset.

‘You’re just saying that because it’s the first one I’ve tried on.’ Says my wife, spinning, quite elegantly I think, on her shoeless feet and disappearing into the changing cubicle. Another browbeaten bloke is sitting opposite me in those chairs I imagined were only for dizzy pensioners waiting for an ambulance, or perverts trying to get a glimpse through the curtains. The man is clutching a mass of expensively branded shopping bags. He clearly started earlier than me.

‘What can you do?’ I say with a shrug.

‘Just pay the bill.’ Answers the man ruefully.

‘I’d happily do that,’ I fib a little. ‘But she wants my advice.’

‘Poison chalice’ Replies the man with the sort of certainty drawn from bitter experience.

When this unwise expedition was first mooted and after I’d hoped the weekend staff would ring to say they needed me in the office, I turned to Twitter for advice from fellow members. The perceived feminine wisdom boiled down to: don’t ask the price, don’t ogle other women in the changing area and don’t expect to get home in under four hours. The blokes said: go to the pub then come back with your credit card when she rings.

‘There are no prices in the window.’ I caution, as we stare in Karen Millen’s shop-front. Top-end agents do that trick with country homes. One’s where they haven’t a clue on value, or where they want to deter time-wasters and dreamers. It’s called POA – price on application. The marketing thrust is, if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it. Now I can just about stomach that for substantial bricks and mortar and a forty acre estate with servant’s quarters, but for half a yard of taffeta and a few sequins I’m wanting to know the downside before I step over the threshold.

‘What about this one?’ Questions my wife, with a slow spin. We’re in a department store now on a floor I’ve never felt the need to visit. It seems each designer outlet has rented a bit of square footage so you can pad from one overpriced range to another without replacing your high heels. I haven’t been so out of my depth since that brief, dunk-a-baby fad of throwing learners in the pool so survival instinct taught them how to swim – rapidly. It was pre- health and safety rules, obviously.

‘Well does it flatter me?’ Continues my wife, as I splutter back to the surface, another unwanted childhood memory banished until the next nightmare.

It makes her look a little bit pregnant I think and the hesitation does for me. She spins, a little more clunkily this time.

‘Well you needn’t say anything.’ She huffs and disappears inside the curtained inner sanctum.

‘Are you waiting for someone sir?’ Asks a frosty, mutton dressed as lamb, assistant at the next emporium. My wife is in the nearby cubicle. I can see her ankles through the cut-off door. I put my phone away, realising it might look as if I’ve been taking surreptitious video clips for ChubbyCalfs.com. I tell her my wife is trying on a dress – her ninth.

We bought the first one.

Eventually.

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Love Lies Bleeding - Friday

‘These sales figure are just not acceptable.’ Grumbles the bean counter boss, as he clicks his laptop tracker pad angrily. The stark figures flash up on the collapsible screen and there is nowhere to hide. Under the cheap laminate hotel table isn’t an option and there is no under-stairs cupboard immediately to hand. Not any more.

One-by-one, the pernickety figure-fiddler, reads out the sales, lettings and financial services performances, office by office, as if we can’t see for ourselves - those not too vain to don glasses.

H my short-arsed rival manager sits beside me and grins. His office is top of the pile, about the only time he can claim to be higher than anyone else – unless the circus is in town. But even his lucrative patch isn’t generating the sort of figures it once was. His ex-wife won’t be blowing such a big bonus come year-end...

It comes to my office and after all this time I’m almost beyond squirming – almost. Tell him to go f***k himself urges that mischievous inner-voice that really should stay tethered to a blog or anonymous Twitter feed. As if he could do any better continues the gobby Gremlin, as I try to focus on the bean counter’s rhetoric about shaking trees and rattling something, other than begging bowls.

I offer up some platitudes about renewed effort, a tele-sales push and re-visiting failed valuations with more vigour than I can truly muster for idiots who want too much money and aren’t prepared to pay a fair fee. The spotlight moves on and I sit back, heart pumping, trickle of cold sweat running uncomfortably down my back. One day I really will just stand up and tell him to stick his budget projections where the sun doesn’t shine. I’ll march from the hotel room, head held high, muted applause from my colleagues urging me to the car park – where I’ll find my company car and a glove box full of failed endowment statements and my latest mortgage deficit – one day…

‘Anyone in this room can be replaced.’ Snarls the bean counter unpleasantly, as I wonder if people behave like this in the public sector? Those that are not on long-term, fully funded, sick pay.

He’s bullying the girl from the office at the bottom of the list now. I’d like to jump to her defence. A younger, more chivalrous me, a man who had yet to compromise his principles with credit cards, life cover and more debt than a banana republic, would be standing up for her, pointing out the office had a crap location, too many competitors and a poor housing mix – but then she’s just come back from maternity leave, so at least she’s had a break from this childish nonsense…

‘We can’t buck the market conditions.’ Suggests the girl weakly. It looks as is one of he breasts is leaking through her blouse, unless it’s a milky teardrop.

‘You need to up your penetration.’ Says H from alongside me. He can be such a big prick for a small man.

‘That’s right’, agrees the bean counter. ‘We must take market share from the weaker players. Let’s shut some of these other bastards down.’

And the local estate agents’ association wonders why nobody attends the monthly meetings.

‘How about another price reduction competition?’ I find myself suggesting, to groans from around the table. It works, it worked in the past, but it’s not palatable unless you can explain the benefits to all.

‘My vendors won’t reduce, they keep reading surveys telling them price are going up.’ Counters a manager with a town boasting near on full employment. God I wish I could ban, pointless, contradicting surveys by vested interests. Strange how owners never latch on to reports showing declining values.

‘I can sell everything I can get.’ Boasts H, as I use all my willpower not to stab him with the plastic knife I couldn’t cut the bacon gristle in my greasy sandwich with. ‘I just need more stock.’ Continues H from somewhere around my ankles. ‘There are plenty of mug punters.’

‘You alright?’ I say to the new mother in the foyer.

‘No.’

Me neither.

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