"I've got to do what??"
Bernice knew that being part of large organisation like Wright's meant that she would inevitably be drawn in to its bureaucracy. But she hoped that if she kept her head down she would be largely ignored by the juggernaut as it rolled by on its journey. So when she was called in to Martin's office the day after Yasmeen went on her overseas press trip, she was not amused to find that her involvement in the planning process for the next financial year was to be considerable.
"In case you hadn't noticed, Martin," she said with that hard-set look on her face that Martin had encountered once or twice before, and which meant that he was in for some management tussling, "I have a magazine to get out every month. First of all I'm lumbered with an utterly impossible schedule - "
"Which you met, magnificently," said Martin.
" - God knows how. And that with two" - she was about to say 'passengers' but thought better of it, not wanting to damn Dave and George more than was necessary, and certainly not prematurely - "three people not of my own choosing -"
"Who seem to have responded to your leadership admirably," said Martin, trying again to pacify her as much as possible.
" - Well, that's as may be, but anyway, and with Christmas coming up " - this was not a desperate exaggeration on her part, as Martin well knew. Even though they were in the middle of producing the January issue, due out at the beginning of December, she was already starting to put together the contents of the following month's magazine. Moreover, the Christmas period represents one of the most difficult times of the year for a monthly magazine, since around two weeks are taken out of its normal schedules which means work must somehow be crammed in elsewhere.
" - Which happens to fall particularly conveniently this year," riposted Martin, who had been checking the schedules only recently.
" - There's convenient and convenient," she said, somewhat deflated by this. "The fact remains that we are hard up against it, and now you want me to waste hours of my valuable time filling in bloody forms."
"These are not 'bloody forms'," he said, annoyed despite himself at her swearing, "these are PIDs - Planning Input Documents. They are absolutely vital to the running of the business. I'm surprised that someone as acute as you" - she hated it when he went into his lecture modes - "should not be aware how crucial the planning of the coming year's activities are. Perhaps I should write some articles on it for you," he said, really annoying her with this condescending tone, "otherwise your readers - our readers - will be missing out on an important aspect of business. Don't forget," he said sententiously, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it."
"What's that got to do with it? Or did you just read that off your Wright's Calendar Thought for the Day?" she said nastily.
"That's enough of that, Bernice," he said, quite angrily. More so because he had actually read it as yesterday's thought for the day, and because he knew that it wasn't really relevant but had felt the urge to say it nonetheless. He wondered why.
"The simple fact is that these forms have to be filled in. Look on it as an opportunity rather than a problem - and no, I didn't get that from my calendar, I got it from Charles -" he threw in with perfect timing, causing Bernice to smile despite herself. Yes! he thought to himself, it's all right, "in the sense that you can review where you've come from and look at where you're going."
Somewhere else if this continues, thought Bernice, still annoyed at all this extra work she had to do. She glanced at the forms Martin had given her.
"How can I put in editorial pagination if I don't know overall issue size?" she asked triumphantly.
"You go along to Bob and ask him how many pages he expects to sell for the next financial year, then work it out on a 60/40 ratio as usual, rounded to a multiple of eight." Martin was conscious that this was a rather feeble answer, given that Bob was likely to be almost the last person to know how many pages he would sell. Which reminded him...he scribbled down a note to himself.
Bernice snorted.
"Look, I have to do not just one plan, but four of them, and for all areas of the book."
"But that's your job, Martin," she retorted as reluctantly she took the input forms. Or if it isn't, God knows what is, she thought as she left Martin's office.
It was true, planning and the monthly forecasts that were compared against the plan formed a large part of his activities. And though he knew it would have been useless telling Bernice, he had to say that he really enjoyed the process. It was like writing a novel, or a screenplay, he imagined himself saying to the now absent Bernice: you had to make sure all the elements, the characters, the plot and so on, were consistent and led to a conclusion the intended audience found satisfying. It was a wonderful mental exercise. In fact it was more than that: planning was really about second-guessing the future - like some holy seer or prophet. Or perhaps, he continued, getting quite carried away by this pleasant if pointless meditation, it was more a question of drawing up an agenda, a statement of intention, a declaration of what he, through the application of his will, would make happen - rather like Cortes, in fact, he concluded with satisfaction.
But he had to admit that he had certain advantages when it came to putting together plans. Notably his spreadsheet. This sacred piece of microcomputer software was perhaps his single most important management tool. It let him do electronically all the usual kind of planning and forecasting that he used to do on a piece of paper, soon worn thin by having figures rubbed out again and again, but on the screen of his micro. He loved the way that when he changed one number the changes rippled their way automatically down the screen, obedient little green figures winking at him as they did their duty.
And it gave him such power. If he ever wondered how much money a magazine would make by putting up the price of an issue by 5p he could find out just by doing it. It was magic. And for this reason he felt slightly ambivalent about the idea of Bernice having similar technology on her desk to help her with inputting figures. In a sense, the possession of the spreadsheet was in part what made him the publisher, and her the editor. He knew well from his many years in the company that what really distinguished one level of the corporate hierarchy from another was simply knowledge: the more senior person must always know more than the more junior.
To give technology to the workers - to Bernice, even - was to give them access to more knowledge and hence more power. This would necessarily diminish his power over her and her ilk, something he could not view with equanimity for all his nominally liberal principles. And so he felt himself caught between a desire to expound on the glories of the technology he had, and the need to play down its importance so as not to encourage demands for it from further down the chain of command. Ultimately, though, he knew he was being a Luddite in this; as prices fell, more and more of these micro things would be introduced, and the power that came with them would be spread more widely. He wondered what then would become of his position.
Bernice decided she would try to get these 'bloody forms' out of the way immediately, so as to leave the rest of the time free for concentrating on more important matters. She therefore went back to her tower, passing not to her office, but instead along the corridor to Bob's to get his figures for ad pagination next year.
Bob had his own office next to the that of the ad team. Bernice too, as editor, was 'entitled' to such a separate office, but had refused it on principle, just as she had refused a car. She knocked briefly before entering. Normally Bob was slouched in his chair, smoking a cigarette, and engaged in some nefarious deal. Today though, he was not in his chair. With eyes widening in disbelief, Bernice saw Bob's legs emerging from behind his desk; and emerging either side of them, were the legs of a woman.
"I'm - " but words failed her. She beat a hasty retreat and stood outside the door. What should she do now? Go away and pretend that nothing had happened? Tell Martin?
Her indecision was resolved for her as Bob's door opened. Out of it came Becky, the advertising department's secretary. Brown-eyed, with short dark hair, she was extremely tall - even taller than Bernice, who therefore found herself looking up to her slightly - and very young, wearing the insouciance of real youth like a protective cape. As she smoothed down her tight, short dress, she said: "Sorry about that, Bob can see you now," turned on her heel and walked past the dishevelled Bob back into the main ad office.
Once more, Bernice wondered what she should do. If it had been a simple matter of shopping Bob, she would have had no problems. But seeing that young Becky was involved - someone for whom she felt no especial concern other than a general one of solidarity with her sex - she suspected that Becky rather than Bob might have the worse of it. And since the former seemed disconcertingly undisconcerted by the whole business, perhaps she, Bernice, had better just leave it. And so with mixed feelings she went in to see Bob, now increasingly loathsome in her eyes.
"And what can I do for you?" he asked with a horrible emphasis on the word 'you' as if trying to draw her in to the situation, to create a complicity between them. She noticed that Fivepence had now shaved off his moustache as well - or perhaps it had simply fallen on the floor amidst all the excitement.
"I've just seen Martin," she said shortly. "The plans - " she said as if that explained it all.
"Yes?" asked Bob, worried that there might be new plans about which he knew nothing and in which he did not figure.
"Next year's plans," Bernice explained, still half-paralysed by the memory of what she had seen just a couple of minutes ago. "I need your figures."
"And I need yours," said Bob ogling her disgustingly, "I mean I need your thoughts on paginations so that I can gauge mine - paginations, that is." Without a moustache his face seemed even sweatier than usual, as if conscious that it had nothing to hide behind anymore.
"Martin said that you would give me the figures first so that I could then do mine. If you like we could both go to Martin to discuss this matter..." she felt like threatening him, she was simply fed up with his greasy innuendos and gross incompetence. She rather wished it had been Martin who had walked in, not her.
"N-n-no," said Bob hurriedly, "that won't be necessary. I'll see what I can, er, knock up..."
Bernice left without saying a word.
