My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.
Ed Furgol.
Young Executive
Sharon Conway was cheesed off. As a young up and coming executive in the well known firm of Ball and Socket, she had been given the task of launching their new product, a left handed automatic assembler. It was a fantastic product that would be a boon to the flat pack industry. With one of these marvellous gadgets in every pack, those tables, cabinets and cupboards would practically build themselves in minutes and best of all there would be no missing or left over screws.
It was indeed a fantastic product, but like everything new it need to be fine tuned, then brought to the attention first of all to the manufacturers, then the public and Sharon had been given the task of bringing all this about. It was just the chance she had always dreamed of and she tackled the job with gusto. For a month she had liased with engineering, development and sales and finally the bugs had been ironed out. Next came six weeks of liaison with the airy-fairy team at Dream World, the companies chosen advertising agency.
Now finally with all the hard work behind her, she had to make her presentation to her senior manager Hillary Spence – or Horrid Hillary as he was known in the office. Sharon had spent last night in rehearing her PowerPoint presentation and it was three o’clock before she was satisfied enough with her performance to crawl into bed. This morning she had risen at six, taken special care with her make up, dressed in her best blue outfit and driven to work. Upstairs in the demonstration room she spent at least an hour ensuring that everything was in place for her presentation later in the day.
After a late lunch, Sharon was sitting by the projector in the demonstration room nervously twiddling with a pencil, when the door burst open and Horrid Hillary strode into the room, ‘Afternoon, Sharon,’ he boomed.
Sharon jumped at the noisy greeting and after a pause said, ‘Good afternoon Mr Spence.’
‘Right,’ said Horrid Hillary, ‘I’ve only got fifteen minutes to spare, so let’s get down to business.’
Sharon was appalled, her carefully rehearse presentation lasted double the time she had just been allotted.
‘But sir my presentation takes half an hour at least.’
‘I can’t help that Sharon you’ll have to cut it down, just give me the salient points.’
Sharon tried her best, but with half the information missing it was turning into a shambles and she still hadn’t finished when Horrid Hillary looked at his watch, stood and headed for the door, ‘Times up Sharon, got to dash.’
‘But sir what about the launch?’
‘Sorry Sharon, it doesn’t sound like much of a product to me, just scrap the whole thing.’ And with that he was gone.
Sharon was devastated, ten weeks work down the pan and a brilliant product scrapped, just because Horrid Hillary was in a hurry. ‘Bastard!’ she screamed to the empty room, as she cleared away the equipment. I wish I could take this to someone higher up, she thought, but Horrid Hillary would soon put a stop to that. If only she could bump into the C. E. O. but there wasn’t much chance of that.
She finished putting away the equipment, closed the door, made her way to her desk and it was only when she got there that she realised that it was Friday afternoon and everyone had gone home. She tidied her desk, switched off her computer, turned to leave and spotted the C.E.O. standing in front of the shredder looking totally lost.
Sharon smiled; this was the answer to her prayers. She would offer to help, the C. E. O. would be grateful, they would chat and then she would tell him about the product. It was a piece of cake, he would sign off on the launch and Horrid Hilary could take a jump.
She walked over and said, ‘Can I help you, Sir?’
‘Yes, er…?’
‘Sharon Conway, Sir.’
‘My secretary normally does this,’ said C. E. O. ‘but she’s gone home and it’s very important that this is done straight away.’
‘No problem,’ said Sharon and taking the paper from C. E. O’s hand, she placed it in the slot and pressed the button.
‘Thank you, Miss Conway,’ he said. ‘I only need the one copy.’
