And then last year, ‘It’s easy for you, Jake! You’re naturally talented, you love your job and you’re paid loads to do it. I am average at everything. I have no hidden talents. What am I good at?’
‘Food. You just need to figure out a way to make it into a career.’
‘Yeah right, chip shop assistant number three, minimum wage and the boss gets to grope me behind the deep fat fryer …’
‘I don’t know. You could run your own café, do a mix of English and Italian classics, just simple, beautiful stuff. You’re such a good cook, and you love all that.’
‘Do you know how expensive it is to set something like that up? And do you know how many catering businesses fail in their first year? And if you think I’m busy and do horrendous hours now, what do you think that would be like?’
‘You could write a cookbook! Or do a recipe blog, or a blog all about pasta! That girl at work I was telling you about, she’s started doing a blog about make-up …’
‘Which girl?’
‘You know … my friend who does make-up.’
‘Who? Leyla Dempsey?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The one whose dad bought her a flat in Notting Hill and a Birkin bag, and pays all her bills for her, but you say she’s not at all spoiled and she’s really down to earth? That one?’
‘Oh Susie, stop it.’
‘Stop what? No, it’s fine. I’m glad she can afford to spend her days writing about eye shadow, I’m sure it’s deeply enthralling, but you know, my dad didn’t buy me a flat and he doesn’t pay my bills and buy me handbags that cost a year’s salary in the chip shop.’
‘Well actually you do live in a flat that your grandma gave you.’
‘No, I don’t! She did not give it to me, that’s ridiculous. I pay seven hundred and fifty pounds a month to my brother, I have never asked my parents for money since I was twenty-one and I never would. Not least because my parents would tell me to get stuffed, and be a grown up.’
‘Well, why don’t you?’
‘Why don’t I what? Ask them for money?’
‘No. Why don’t you be a grown up?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Man up. Grow some balls. Stop wasting your time in a job you don’t even like. You’ve got no respect for most of the people you work with.’
‘That’s because they’re all letches or bullies. Anyway I do like Rebecca. And Sam …’
‘You’d still be mates with them if you leave. They might leave before you. Have you ever thought about that?’
‘Sam’s never going anywhere.’
‘Sam’s a loser, but he’s not the point.’
‘Don’t call Sam a loser,’ I say. ‘So your friend’s blog, presumably she doesn’t make any money out of it, it’s just some little vanity project? Oh, that’d be a great name for a beauty blog, The Vanity Project …’
‘Stop having a go at some girl you’ve never even met just because she’s got off her arse and is doing what you want to do.’
‘Are you saying I’m jealous of some twenty-three-year-old who writes about bloody lip balm?’
‘I’d say you’re clearly jealous, yes. And a bit vicious as well.’
‘I think it’s a really good idea if I go to work now.’
‘Yeah, I think that’s a really good idea.’
‘Am I seeing you later?’
‘Not sure …’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s a work-drinks thing in Soho …’
‘Oh … the whole company?’
‘A few of us, yeah.’
‘Oh. Well let me know if you pick up any brilliant tips on how to apply mascara. Am I supposed to look up or down? Gosh, it’s all so terribly confusing …’
‘Go to work.’
Sometimes I have an overwhelming urge to call him, to tell him that I’m finally going to hand in my notice, as soon as they promote me. I want him to know that at long last I’m about to be brave, jump off this treadmill, very soon. I am. But then he’ll ask me when, and what I’m going to do instead, and I don’t know yet, so I can’t, and I’ll look foolish.
And also if I call him, he’ll think I want him back. Which truly I don’t. After what happened? I couldn’t forgive him. And also she might answer. And that’s one voice I don’t ever need to hear again.
Friday
Back to ‘the grind’. Forget jumping off the Boulot, I’d jump on the bloody Metro track if I worked at Fletchers’ Head Office, I think, as I walk into their lime-green reception and develop an instant headache above my left eye.
Whoops. I forgot. As of three months ago, no one is allowed to call Head Office ‘Head Office’. Why not? Because the word ‘head’ would insinuate some sort of ‘us’ and ‘them’ hierarchy among Fletchers staff, with ‘us’ being the two hundred people who work short hours in Head Office and get paid more; and ‘them’ being the eight thousand workers who work long hours and stack shelves and work tills and drive trucks and get paid less.
So Head Office is no longer called Head Office. No. It is now called The Building. That’ll fool them. Head Office is now The Building. Executives who work in The Building are ‘Friends in The Building’. The guys who stack shelves are ‘Stretchy Friends’. Guys on tills are ‘Customer’s Best Friends’. And the truck drivers are ‘Friends On Wheels’.
The worst thing about this? NMN came up with all of it over the course of a six-month consultation process, called, oh irony, ‘Cut The Crap’. Cut The Crap involved a lot of digital mood boards and much talk of empowerment. Fletchers paid us a £130k fee. Devron wrote the cheque in the same week Fletchers announced they’d no longer pay their work experience teens a minimum wage for shelf stacking, sorry, make that ‘Stretchy Friending’.
I tell reception I’m here to see Tom, get my security pass, then sit down and prepare for the wait. Regardless of who I’m meeting at Fletchers they will always make me wait twenty-three minutes in reception. I can set my watch by it. It’s a basic power play. I am an agency serf: they are the Client Masters. Therefore they will make me sit there while they’re sitting at their desks on Facebook or laughing about last night’s Made in Chelsea. And when their little egg-timer goes off at twenty-three past Meeting Time, they’ll saunter down, pick me up and never once acknowledge this whole charade. I once made the mistake of asking Berenice why we couldn’t just turn up twenty-three minutes late and I could see her right eyebrow twitching with fury as she struggled to restrain herself from slapping me.
The thing is, I don’t mind waiting. It’s a rare chance to have twenty-three precious minutes to myself. If Berenice were sitting beside me now she’d be on her iPhone, frantically mailing the office about Five Year Plans for World Domination. Thankfully she’s not, so I can relax. I consider trying to source a glass of water. Except that’s an impossible dream because I haven’t got two pound coins on me. Yes, that’s right. If you want a glass of water while you’re waiting in reception, you have to insert two pound coins into a vending machine, which then spits out a small bottle of branded tap water. The trout on the front desk will not give you tap water even if you’ve just run the marathon