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And now he’s pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s disappointed I didn’t do my geography homework. “Samwise—”
“Don’t call me Samwise.”
“Don’t interrupt me. I took a chance on you…”—he gives a nasty little pause—“…Sam,because I thought you had potential. But I’m beginning to suspect that you don’t understand what the role requires.”
“It sounds like you’re saying you want me to treat the staff like crap.”
“I want you to prioritise targets.”
“I do prioritise targets,” I tell him. “I just don’t prioritise them over people.”
The expression on his face makes me want to shove a lot more than a pencil up a lot more than his nose. It’s the expression you get when your new puppy shits on the floor and you can’t be angry at it because you know it can’t help itself. “People don’t pay your salary. I do.”
It’s really tempting to point out he’s just said he isn’t a person. But I’m supposed to be saving my job, not scuppering it. “Well, I don’t want to teach my granny to suck eggs, but the people run the shop. The shop makes the money, and the money is how you pay me. So in a way they do.”
“And at the moment, those people are costing more than any other branch, bringing in less than any other branch, and—” He looks over at his monitor and for just a moment I see something. Something almost like caring. Only it’s explicitly about money. “It’s concerning, Sam. Genuinely concerning.”
Somehow, this is going even worse than I’d expected. I’d done alright at interview but then I’d not had much investment which made it easy to say all the right things. He’d saidwhat’s yourbiggest weaknessand I’d said some pack of bollocks likeooh well I’m just too focused on providing quality customer service in the field of bed and bathroom suppliesand somehow that’d worked. Now if I nod or smile at the wrong thing, I’ll be having to hike back up to Sheffield and tell the team they’re all taking pay cuts because this prick wants to buy himself another. “Look,” I tell him, “I can see where yez’re coming from, I really can. But do you not think a company has an obligation to its employees? I mean is it really worth making somebody’s life crappier than it needs to be just so we can shift a few extra duvets by the end of the quarter?”
It’s not what he wants to hear. But that’s because what he wants to hear isyou’re right about everything, I’ll go back home and start firing people. “Their lives will be even crappier if I have to close the branch entirely.”
“But you won’t have to, will you?” I’m pushing my luck now. My mam used to say she had the luck of the Irish and I’m really hoping it didn’t skip a generation. “You mightchooseto, but if you do, you should at least be honest about it.”
And maybe, just maybe, that gets through to him. Just not necessarily in a good way. If he was wearing glasses, he’d have pushed them up his nose, but he isn’t, so he just pulls his brows down and glowers at me. “I’m sure you think I’m an extremely selfish man, Sam. I’m sure you think I’m just trying to get you to squeeze more money out of people so that…so that…”
“You can buy an extra Ferrari?” I try, hoping that an adorable Scouse cheekiness will prove my path to salvation.
“Exactly.” He lets theExactlyhang there for a long time before he continues. “But Splashes & Snuggles”—the serious context makes it even harder not to giggle at the name, and I just about manage—“is a small fish in a big pond. We’re trying to compete with Dreams and Wickes at the same time. And Bensonsfor Beds. And all the local retailers. Even Morrisons are doing soft furnishings these days.”
“Morrisons don’t sell beds,” I remind him.
“They sell cushions and throws.” He’s not relaxed exactly, but he’s not giving off half the boss energy he was a minute ago. “You’re not going to go out of business because Morrisons sell a couple of pillows.”
“I’m aware. Just like I’m aware that I’m not going to go out of business because the Sheffield branch writes off”—he starts scrolling down what seems to be an ominously long document—“a fourteen-jet double ended LED-lit whirlpool bath worth one thousand, five hundred and ninety-nine pounds over anuncrating incident.”
That was code forBrian backed a van over it.
“Or twenty-two TheraPur memory foam ice pillows, priced eighty-five pounds apiece, over astockroom mishap.”
Brian again, and that one he’d never quite been able to explain, and I’d eventually stopped asking.
“Then there’s the fact that one of your employees has taken eighteen sick or personal days in the last twelve months.”
“She’s young and she’s on a course.”
Now Jonathan’s getting that business-owner aura back again and in some way I’m relieved. “And am Ipayingher to be young and on a course, or am I paying her to sell bed and bathroom furniture?”
“You’re paying her to sell bed and bathroom furniture,” I admit, mildly resenting—no, strongly resenting—Jonathan Forest’s ability to make me feel like a naughty schoolboy. “But…”
“But what?”
I don’t actually have a but what. “Could you not have told me all this over the phone?”
“I could.” He nods. “But I thought this would be better face to face.”
Fuck. He’s going to fire me, isn’t he? “Fuck, you’re going to fire me, aren’t you?”
“My ideal outcome”—he gets up from the desk and strides over to the window—“is that you keep your job, but you accept that you need to improve the efficiency of your branch.” He’s not looking at me now, he’s standing with his hands behind his back and looking outside like he’s some king surveying his domain. Which’d be a lot more impressive if we were in a skyscraper overlooking Manhattan, instead of a bed and bathroom superstore overlooking a car park and one of them yards that sells reclaimed wood by weight.
