Life's Work – Daniel 30

 

[For back story go here: Story so far, and maybe this one.]

[Relevant back story links also within text.]

Daniel sat in the large airy atrium of the office block where Crown Apps rented two rooms on the seventh floor. He was under explicit instructions not to try and visit them and the instructions went on to detail where he should now sit and that he should do so with a mask on. Despite working for Crown Apps (on and off) for a year now he had never actually had his own desk in this building, although he had hot-desked once, royally annoying an admin interim whose interpretation of hot desking was at odds to his own.

"But I always hot-desk there," he had told Daniel, with no hint of irony.

As a sales professional Daniel realised, indeed welcomed the fact that his life should be on the road (or train, or plane or now more likely zoom call) to get face-to-face up close and personal or acceptably socially distanced from the people for whom Crown Apps could deliver a tangible difference. He was later told he couldn't hot-desk from either of the rooms any more, a fact which he was certain the admin intern was happy about and would possibly even have had a say in. 

("I'll only work under these exploitative conditions on the condition that I alone get to ignore the hot-desking requirements," Danny imagined him saying, before neatly classifying the intern as a particularly fussy hermit crab.)

Despite the airiness of the atrium and the extreme lack of people buzzing in and out of the building there was a palpable sense of nervousness across the site. There were certainly more people heading out of the building than coming in and many of them carried boxes and files, as if there'd been a mass redundancy programme or everyone was auditioning for a stock photograph of someone looking for a new job.

Daniel breathed as deeply as his mask would let him to try and calm his nerves. Sandra hadn't really given him anything to go on and had then resigned her commission. Daniel was flying alone now, a relatively new experience for him. He needed to prove himself somehow and convincing himself he could do it was the first step. 

Eventually, among the exiting office staff Daniel spotted his boss Wendy. She was on time, also masked up and already with a coat on.

"Nice mask," she said by way of greeting and Daniel realised he'd been sitting there with his skeleton grin on. He swapped this out for a more sober looking dark grey number and immediately apologised noting that he wouldn't, of course, make such a mistake were he meeting with a prospective client. Wendy laughed and smiled – he hoped – beneath her mask and said they should walk round the block while they talked. "This place is so..." she said, searching for a non-dramatic word, "Stuffy."

Thankfully the storm force weather of the past few days had eased and they could successfully wander around the tower blocks and along the designer waterways quite comfortably.

"So," said Wendy, "Here we go again. Four weeks – do you think it'll stay at that?"

Daniel shrugged, "Who can tell?" he said. "Playing everything week by week at the moment."

"That much?" said Wendy. "I can't sometimes manage day by day but usually it's hour by hour."

They swiftly batted around Daisy’s current fortunes, her health and welfare before landing back at Crown Apps.

"Your work," she said. "I like it on the whole. That so called shark in accounts for example. Not sure whether it’s game changing…"

"I do have other ideas," blurted Daniel, already wondering what his other ideas might be.

"Right, but me too," said Wendy. "And mine might be worth listening to before you introduce me to another puppet, say I'm a hyena or try reinventing the wheel."

Daniel decided to listen.

"We're heading into lockdown, everyone's going into lockdown – apart from the frontline workers, some shops and a few other businesses, right?"

"I guess.."

"So that's who we need to go after.”

"Go after?"

"We need to make Crown Apps part of the next step for everyone – going into lockdown and coming out.” Daniel processed this a much as he could. “So for the next few weeks I need you to find and line up as many businesses and business areas as possible that we can start approaching.”

“Am I still being innovative, or am I back in sales?” asked Daniel.

“Bit of both,” said Wendy. “Think of it as playing to your strengths. But two rules.”

“Yes?”

“No ambulance chasing. Literally and figuratively.”

“OK.“

“And no more animals.”

They circled back round to the building and bid farewell at a still safe distance.

“Was there nothing in my innovative ideas that you liked?” asked Daniel, a little downbeat.

“Yes, there was,” said Wendy. “Biscuits. We’re going to send everyone biscuits. To keep up morale. And energy. And to give everyone something to do while they’re on mute during video calls.”