Leftovers by Stella Newman

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