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“I’m not saying that we couldn’t be more efficient.” I’m beginning to feel like the bastard’s pushed me into a corner. I’m just saying that the only way to make it more efficient is to make it a much worse place to work.”
He’s still doing emperor pose. “Not my concern.”
Sigh. “So what is it you actually want me to do? Because all I’m hearing isbe better,and if you don’t mind me saying that’s not very effective management.”
“Firstly”—he turns back from the window like Medusa turning to face him with the sandals—“I do mind you saying. Secondly, I’ve checked the numbers, and you need to do exactly this: you need to get your team to sell more protection and service plans, replace your lowest-performing salespeople, stop permitting hourly paid staff to take breaks during their scheduled hours, implement the company policy regarding sick days, and fix whatever is causing you to lose quite so much stock. Once that’s in place, we can talk further.”
“So be a dick, basically,” I say.
To my surprise, Jonathan Forest almost smiles. “A right royal dick, if you want to put it that way. It’s how you run a business.”
I don’t agree, but it’s not the time. “My worst-performing salesperson,” I tell him instead, “has an elderly nan to look after.”
“So do I.”
“Yes, but you’re a fucking millionaire.”
“My personal finances are no concern of yours. We live in uncertain economic times.”
I think I might actually scoff. “What, and you’re worried that your extremely lucrative bed and bathroom empire is going to disappear overnight, and you’ll be out on the street busking to Ed Sheeran?”
And though I don’t expect it, that brings him up short again, makes him waver a moment. Like I’ve breathed too hard on a candle. “Worse things have happened.”
“Not to the likes of you they haven’t.”
Jonathan’s eyes narrow. “You should really think about the way you speak to your boss.”
“Why? You’re already threatening to fire me, and I don’t see how minding my Ps and Qs around you will help me sell more CoolTouch cloud elite mattresses.”
Having stood up for the drama, he can’t really sit back down, so he just hovers. “Perhaps. But if you’re this insubordinate with me, that suggests you let your team be insubordinate with you, which would explain…well, quite a lot of your issues, frankly. At the very least it explains why your staff aren’t motivated to meet their targets.”
When I first got this job, Jonathan sent me on a short training course because I didn’t have management experience, and they talked a lot about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. What I took away from those three days in a conference room in Burnley was thatintrinsicallymotivated salespeople are pricks who’d sell their own nan to somebody who already had a nan of their own, just for the buzz, andextrinsicallymotivated salespeople won’t be able to feed their kids if they don’t make commission. I didn’t want to hire the first sort or exploit the second, which is how I wound upwith Brian. “How about,” I try, “you give me a year to get my numbers up, and if my way doesn’t work, we talk about replacing people.”
I open with a year because I expect him to come back with three months so we can shake on six.
He doesn’t. “It’s gone too far for that.”
Has it fuck. But I don’t say that. It gets to the point where pushing your luck crosses the line into just being a pillock. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” He sounds all take-charge like in a way that would probably be a lot more attractive if it wasn’t going to fuck up my life. “Today, you’re going to shadow me around this branch so you can see how I run things. Tomorrow, you’re going back to Sheffield where you will start making immediate changesincludingreplacing underperforming staff. Do you understand?”
I do. I don’t like that I do, but I do.
I follow Jonathan Forest around until lunch, from his all-business morning briefing (here’s the new stock, sell it, fuck off) to his rounds of the store’s departments where he sniffs out insufficiently-hustling workers like some kind of predatory animal that feeds on slacking. It’s not the only thing about him that’s got a werewolf vibe—his thick eyebrows and permanent scowl make him look like any moment he could snap and grow claws and start ripping your skin off. Or maybe just your clothes, if he’s more like the ones from those books that Claire says she only reads ironically.
Eventually, we take a break for lunch. He doesn’t offer to take me anywhere or show me anything, probably because this is stilltechnicallya disciplinary meeting and while he’s meant tobe helping me learn and grow as a manager, he seems to think the best way to do that is to keep subtly reminding me I’m scum.
Because Croydon is the head office, it’s in a slightly nicer retail park than our home store up north. It’s not quite a proper shopping centre like Meadowhall back in Sheffield or Liverpool ONE back home, and it’s certainly not an American-style “mall”, but they share a car park with a Vue cinema and there’s a PizzaExpress a few doors down, so compared to our branch it’s practically on the Champs-Élysées. I’m not really in a pizza mood, though, so I slink next door and grab a cheeky Nando’s without the lads. Not that I’ve got lads in Sheffield either.
I’m shown to my table by a nice lass named Rita who asks if I’ve been to Nando’s before and talks me through the menu even though I say I have. Once I’m settled in, I whip out my phone and use the app to order a Fino Pitta with Smoky Churrasco sauce and a corn on the cob. Because there’s something about fast food chicken places that mean you have to have a corn on the cob, just like you have to have candy canes at Christmas.
While I’m waiting for my scran, I ring Claire so I don’t look too much like a lonely bastard.
“Everything’s fine,” she says straightaway. Too straightaway. Way too straightaway.
“It’s not, is it?”
“It’s mostly fine.”
