Being Independent... Part 3

The next day I reached office at ten minutes to 9. P started the day with an orientation session. He took me around and introduced me to members of his staff. A small team of middle-aged to considerably old uncles and aunties formed his core team. There were 3 reporters, 2 graphic designers, 4 advertising executives, all of whom had been there for more than two years. The oldest ones were there for as long as 19 years! They had been with P since the inception of AV. The woman under who I was going to train was A, the youngest of all and P’s favourite employee.

When I came face to face with her I was a little shocked. Had I met her anywhere else, I wouldn’t have bothered looking at her. She was such an ordinary looking female with nothing particular that could interest anyone. She said hello to me and my head suffered from internal conflicts. How could this dame be P’s favourite employee? Some old romance.. I thought. But seriously, I got an improper vibe from her. I would have been happier had I worked with the south Indian chap who was smarter and pleasant to speak with. This woman.. boy.. I knew I was gonna have some major issues with her.. I just knew it!

P left me with her and she explained to me what was I supposed to do. I was basically going to call people for payment. In my hand was a list of more than 100 companies/shops/stores who had advertised with us but had not not paid up for a number of reasons.

S was right about A. He had warned me about her. She trapped people, made them sign on for full page/half page ads for 3/6/12 months, got first half of the payment. And when the clients did not get the required response, they stopped paying, she dint bother and the rest of the payment never came in. Like this, she had a long list of dissatisfied clientèle. She brought in the highest revenue for P every month, but only on papers. Thousands of pounds were still stuck but just because she had a clout, she was a sweet talker and had a brilliant network, P was only too eager not to let her go.

Anyway, as soon as I received the list, I knew S was right again. This woman was in deep shit but had somehow managed to keep her head from sinking inside it!

A – You will call them up and see to it that they send the payment across.

Me – Alright.

A – You will pick up calls for me. If I am not around dont ever pass the phone to anybody else. This is our clients understand. I will give a few subscriptions to you and a few smaller ads which you can show to P as your leads at the ends of three weeks.

Me – Ok.. thanks. That’s nice of you.

A – We are having a sales meet after lunch downstairs. You have to be there.

Me – Oh sure. I will be. Where exactly downstairs?

A – Just as you enter the office, you’ll see a set of stairs going down. Just climb down, that’s where we have our lunches. You know lunch is provided here don’t you?

Me – Umm.. no. I got mine today.

A – Dont get it from tomorrow. P’s wife cooks for everyone. But still.. come down and have your lunch with us.

Me – Sure, I’ll do that.

The lunch went alright. I did not eat much because I was thinking about my first sales meet. I don’t know why but I was nervous. I was not elated being part of AV. It was need that had led me to pursue this job. Until this time, I did not know what I loved doing the most, but I definitely knew advertising was not it.

At the sales meet P ran through the his revenue summary. A like always had generated the maximum. She seemed happy, the rest, maybe I imagined, dint care much. Everyone briefed P about their work. The meeting lasted for about half an hour. As we all began to disperse, P asked me to wait.

P – I want you to come up with a plan. A plan about how you can take AV forward. We are doing really well as a gujarati newspaper, but we need to come up with better English supplements. Your task would be to prepare a draft about the same.

Me – Sure, I shall do that.

P – I want you to do that by tomorrow.

Me – Sure. That will be done.

I had no idea what I was gonna come up with. I took away a few supplements for references. Spoke to S about it and somehow managed to come up with a list of ideas. P saw them, liked a few, frowned looking at some and discarded the few as he thought they were repetitive. I couldn’t say whether he was pleased or not. I was asked to leave the list with him. I did so and resumed work.

Cold calling is a waste of time. So is calling people on other people’s behalf for payment which they never bothered collecting because they were busy trapping other people who might/might not pay! But A dint come across as someone who really cared. She knew as long as the figures on paper kept rising, she was shining.

Her list was so long, I spent the rest of the week just calling people who asked me to call later in the evening or the day after or after two. Some even said they had made the payments. I noted every bit of it in a diary. I was more A’s secretary, coming every morning to the office, going through the list of people to call up, follow on, make another one for the next day and so forth and so on.

In between making calls, the only interesting thing I did was make advertisements. Yeah my first advert for this art/painting agency who wanted to sell their stuff online. I prepared a write-up for them, a nice little 100 words thingi which I even got appreciation for. It was published in the AV English edition and that was a moment of pride. Taking a detour here.. it was also my first time using an apple desktop.. I dint like it then though :P

Anyway, I was stupid! I had not gone there to write editorials nor was I there to make cold calls or follow on with A’s clients. MY FUCKIN’ JOB WAS TO HAVE MY OWN CLIENTELE, GET MY OWN LEADS AND GENERATE REVENUE..

Now this will sound like I’m blaming. Yes I am but my reasons are not unreasonable. I was new, I knew nothing about what was supposed to be done. I was training under her. She was supposed to tell me how to make new clients, get new leads, where to look, who to talk to, etc etc. She did none of that!!! Instead she had me wasting my time over her dead, gone, disappeared clients. I traveled two hours away from my normal office route to collect 70 pounds from some Indian mithai shop and when I returned P asked me – Did you get any subscriptions from there? I thought to myself – Was I supposed to? Haa well.. no appreciation..nevermind! I got on with more of the slack calling.

One day a black female called up A. She wanted to know if we would put her 'a kg for a pound 'worldwide freight ad in our gujarati newspaper. A gave me the paper she had written the matter on. I took it to the guy who translated it in gujarati. The black lady called up again to make changes in her adverts. This time she wanted us to say 'a pound per kg in Greenwich only. No pick ups from home.' The office was about to close, the paper had to be finalised. Everyone wanted to get his/her ad through. I pestered the graphic designer too much everyday because I ran to him every now and then for minor changes.

This time too, I was in line, hurrying to get the changes done. I got the first part of the ad right. I forgot to get the last line in and the ad went into print...