delivered to your desk, ‘Risotto to Go for the Days When Risotto is too Slow’; a vintage brooch dealership, this was very niche but at the time I lived in Ladbroke Grove, and admired Portobello market. I wanted to be one of those cool, bohemian women in long fur coats who sold knick-knacks and nattered to one another all day. That was the thing with cool jobs. They were often poorly paid. Though some would claim my job was cool too, I guess.
Whilst it wasn’t as bad as some industries, marketing could still be a relatively sexist industry. If you were a woman, it made sense not to put your neck out or say anything too controversial. If you were a man you had to do the opposite. Early on in my career there’d been a male colleague (long gone now – he’d been head-hunted to work in advertising), who constantly scratched his balls whilst waiting by the printer. After scratching for a couple of minutes, he’d then lift his palm and sniff. It was a low-down, dog-like behaviour, but nobody said anything as he was seen to be a ‘creative genius’ and said ‘fuck’ a lot in boring meetings, which created a lot of excitement. I knew early on that this tactic wouldn’t work for me.
A woman scratching herself and swearing wasn’t the done thing. It seemed like men had more leeway to be themselves. Swearing became a bit of a trend. The ball scratching didn’t take off but instead there was lots of expansive body language that the men used to take up as much space as possible. The women who did well were of two ilks; pretty and hard-working to the point of nervous breakdown, or un-feeling and robotic. I had built my career on being sort of okay-looking (blonde, blue eyes, enormous arse), and saying ‘that’s interesting’ a lot. I made very high quality cups of tea.
I listened to boring men and told them they were right just so they’d shut up. I sometimes imagined what size penises they had. Other times I drew pictures of penises on my writing pad as they spoke. It was a small form of rebellion. It was a counterpoint to being so nice and not itching my fanny by the printer. Phoebe was different of course, because she had the stamina of a horse, and didn’t buy into the whole people-pleasing thing.
If people were thirsty in a meeting then their mouths could remain dry and their spittle stuck in the corners. If a man swore then she mirrored this language right back to him. She was the only woman I knew who could actually play golf (and enjoyed it). She was old school in that way and had gotten into it to infiltrate the old boys’ network (most male clients still loved golf). She also did long distance running. If I ever worked late (this was rare), I’d catch her running past with her laptop jiggling up and down in her rucksack, wearing a neon T-shirt that said ‘LET’S DO THIS.’
Overall at Mango-Lab, even if you set the sexism to one side, the priority was ‘high-quality strategic thinking’, which basically meant well-written decks on Pot Noodles, fizzy drinks and eye creams, peppering these presentations pulled together on PowerPoint, which we called ‘decks’, with one or two words that the client didn’t understand, so they came away with the feeling that you were cleverer than them and they were lucky to have listened to you for well over an hour.
Phoebe and I were the same age, but she came across as far more put together.
I really wasn’t happy this particular Monday. That wasn’t unusual.
I had a creeping sense of unease. I had become a ball of the stuff.
A FEW HOURS HAD passed and I was trying to write the final presentation for a project I’d just finished.
The client wanted to launch a wipe that cleaned a baby’s bottom and also made them fall asleep. The name of the product was ‘Goodnight Bum’ and there was some mocked-up packaging and a potential scent idea (Lavender and Tea Tree oil). It was ambitious but had legs, or at least that was my argument. You see parents will always seek out anything that promises sleep, and nowadays we all believe there’s a product that can fix anything. I’d interviewed twelve groups of mums in focus groups. They all reacted the same way. At first, they’d found the idea appalling (they were worried about the cleaning/sleeping benefit – was there some secret/toxic ingredient?) but I needed to come up with a positive slant for this presentation. Clients don’t like to be told that their idea is shit. It’s just like when a child holds up their drawing for approval. You try and be diplomatic and find something you do like – You’ve drawn a cat with eight legs. How lovely! It’s a spider cat. Don’t cry, love. It’s brilliant!
‘The ‘Goodnight Bum’ proposition is both challenging and disruptive,’ I typed into PowerPoint.
I sipped my coffee. I didn’t have my headphones on, but there was complete silence in the office. I often wondered why we didn’t all work from home. It would save a lot of money and wasted travel time. At least the quiet afforded me some thinking space.
‘The challenge for ‘Goodnight Bum’ is to find a sweet spot between calming and cleansing.’
My phone buzzed with an incoming text. ‘Bella has sustained a small head injury whilst hanging off the climbing frame but we applied a cold compress and she seems to be in good health,’ it said.
I felt a surge of panic. Nursery had been sending texts for some time now. I still felt it was more appropriate to speak to the parent, but then I also acknowledged that speaking was becoming far less common because it was so time-consuming. I resisted the urge to Google ‘minor head injuries in small children,’ and tried to focus. Bella was that kind of child. She was boisterous and outgoing. She loved to try new things. Hopefully she’d never experience the slog and sheer averageness of my own life. She was in good health. All was well.
Back to the presentation and the phrase ‘sweet spot’ was a good one. I used it a fair amount. It made me think of ‘G-spot’ and was just as mythical – it was where the truth lay, where an idea suddenly sprang into life and resonated, where it made people orgasm. In life, I’d failed to find this blissful truth for myself. For now, I could hear the boy next to me playing MC Hammer through his headphones. It brought back memories of a night in South London in my youth when I’d snogged a boy called Freddie. Freddie had been a very good dancer but a terrible kisser. I’d gone out with him for four months before finally realizing the truth. I wondered whether this music had come back into fashion, or was it part and parcel of this irony thing, where anything shit was cool? What was Freddie doing these days? Had someone taught him to snog properly?
Was he working on a ‘disruptive proposition to send a baby to sleep whilst you cleansed its bottom?’
‘Bella is still in good health,’ a new text buzzed.
‘Thanks for the update,’ I replied.
‘Log onto our portal for updates on our menus this week,’ the next text said.
Was this a real person?
And would they text me when they took her to A&E? Or when she was in intensive care? I needed to call them to check she really was okay but that would mean staying an extra half an hour, and missing bedtime. Bedtime was the key objective – if I could get home by bedtime then my life wasn’t completely messed up.
I tried to get back to work again.
‘The idea is overwhelmingly negative,’ I typed as this was closer to the truth, but this sounded, well, rather awful. ‘The idea works on some levels,’ I concluded.
I looked up and the MC Hammer fanboy was wearing a baseball cap with the word ‘TWAT’ emblazoned across the front. He looked up for a second and then back at his screen. Many of these young folks thought I was an elderly person hired by the company to help with our diversity initiative. He had no idea that back in the day I’d been a hot shot. No, that wasn’t true. I’d never been a hot shot. I wasn’t strategic enough and I worked hard but not so hard that I ended up in hospital with nervous exhaustion.
A proper sissy pants, me. Besides not all of us can be Phoebe-Sheryl Sandberg-BIG-BOSS-PANTS. Not