Animal Magic – Sandra 27

 

[For back story go here: Story so far at 17 Sept 2020 but especially this one.]

[Other back story through in-links.]

"A chicken?" said Sandra, again.

"Yeah," said Daniel on the other end of the video call. "Someone who's maybe a bit alarmed by it all, but preoccupied. Wants to complain but too busy working. Eating. Pecking."

"Have we ruffled their feathers?” asked Sandra.

“Spot on.”

Up until this point Sandra was feeling very pleased with herself. In short she had done it. For the time being she had dumped, or at least separated from Trinny, Together... Apart and the endless conversations conducted in emojis. She had been feeling free and light and that the world was her oyster and contactable in actual language. That was before she took the call with Daniel.

"And then there are Dolphins."

"Dolphins?" repeated Sandra deadpan.

"Fun and intellectual and playful, but fiercely opinionated."

"Dolphins are opinionated?"

"And elephants – slow and..."

"Never forget," offered Sandra.

"Right - grudging," said Daniel.

"I'm trying to work out how we field this to a user interface and what you think you're going to gain," said Sandra. "I mean if the app makes you feel like a crocodile, what does that mean?"

"You're annoyed – and snappy?"

Sandra felt she was about to look really puzzled and so she swiftly went on to audio only to save herself. "It's certainly different," she said, recomposing herself and coming back on video again. "Sorry," she said, "not sure what happened to my camera there.”

She had traded the weird world of a dating app that went viral over kittens in favour of a business oriented organising app that now seemed to want to turn itself into a menagerie. The world was getting weirder for sure, but this was another level, another realm, a place that Sandra was beginning to think either she had to flag as being completely off the chart to one of her most important clients or she would have to take a deep breath and embrace the madness as if it were common sense and straight-forward. And doing that may well be risking her sanity and business reputation. Again.

"So if fifty percent of users say they feel like an elephant – then what?” she asked.

"Then we're able to dig deeper," said Daniel. "What is it about the experience that makes them feel like that?”

"And that might be..?"

"Dunno – that's what we have to find out."

"And is there a creature you want people to feel like?" asked Sandra.

Daniel paused. “I think this is more about what we get from them to act upon rather than a box we want to put them in,” he said carefully. “It’s feedback. Innovative feedback.”

Sandra could see it was innovative, and it certainly was different but she wasn’t over certain it would be useful feedback. It was certainly fun and maybe for that she should play along with it, but she also sensed a huge mountain to climb to actually get any value from the idea. 

Regretfully she was feeling she’d have to get out of this job somehow, and she began to think of the heady days, back when she was just starting out when it was all as simple as working for a company where clients came in, wanted representation and representation was usually a question of copy writing and press releasing. You knew where you were and you generally knew where everyone else was as well. Nowadays every business was dispersed, every contact fought for because despite the proliferation of communications technology no one really knew where anyone else was or what they were up to. Working with global businesses was easy when the world wasn’t chasing its tail while trying to staying out of its own way.

Maybe she needed a straight-forward job again. With one employer. One boss. One email address. One set of rules to follow. 

"Let's have a coffee some time – in person – while we still can – if we still can," said Daniel. "I'll come across to you, maybe early next week?"

“OK, yeah, let’s do it,” said Sandra. “I’ll have a think about this and see what I can come up with.”

“It’ll be great,” reassured Daniel, “Just think of what you did with the kittens.”

Sandra hung up. She was having some very bad thoughts about what she’d like to do with the kittens, but that was in retrospect and would make very bad copy if she went into it with anyone.

There was a text from Frankie. 

‘Jackie from next door has tested positive,' it read. Followed by more sad faced emojis and poos than Sandra had ever seen in a Trinny communication. The meet up with Daniel was off for a start.