I like to get in early in the morning. I don't officially start work until 9.30 but there's something restful about the hush of an eight o'clock office with nothing but the hum of the printers to accompany that gentle first coffee buzz.
Often Mr T is typing furiously in his Office, and more often than not MD's bike is already leaning drunkenly against the wall in the entrance hall with its handlebars ready to goose you as you walk past, but on the whole it's only the core four - an editor, two publicists, and a senior representative of the sales department wafting in for whichever party she has been to the night before. I usually burst through the door at about quarter past eight on a good day, when publicity are already deep into the newspapers, sales half way through either a bagel or a brace of Paracetamol (depending on the party) and the editor buried behind a wall of manuscripts, detectable only by her cinnamony perfume. And so it begins...
...usually with me, as this morning, in mid rant about anything from the Republican Convention to the lack of telephone manners amongst the dialing public.
I mean, nothing makes your job worthwhile like having a caller spit his number disdainfully down the phone at you then carefully annunciate his message, each word spread with a thick layer of scorn, after you've told him the person he wants to speak to is in a meeting (ie not in his office, outside having a fag, in the loo, standing five feet away from you talking to an author, not in the building yet, or indeed really in a meeting). There's something so life affirming about being spoken to like an idiot by someone who assumes you're subnormal just because you momentarily stumble when dragging your attention away from juggling the Frankfurt Book Fair schedule (which believe me is like Air Traffic Control with publishers).
However, even the subnormal can make assumptions.
I take down names on my rude hit-list and write them in my little mental black book, and am just licking the tip of the imaginary pencil adding another whilst pointing my finger in the air giving a good impression of Sarah Palin censoring libraries (and who has so obviously been to Specsavers) when, yawn, the door swings open and in comes one of the convivial Chiefs. He does his morning stations of the cross - editorial (nobody - the early morning editor is hiding in the conference room), Mr T's office (empty), kitchen (no coffee, no milk). MD's office (in India) and then rounds the filing cabinets of the open office looking for cheery conversation, just as I'm delivering a final jab of the index along with a diatribe on the last caller's piggery (they assume I'm an idiot, I assume they are mean and sexually inadequate).
He looks surprised, his eyes popping as his head recoiled from the invective.
'You've interrupted our morning moaning session,' I tell him, lapsing (reluctantly) into silence. The last caller, after all, had been for him.
'It's the bitching hour,' says Fran, who to be fair, rarely does more than frown when irritated.
'We like to use this time to let off steam and ease ourselves into the day,' says Alice, at which point we all smile at him, sweetly benign, and wait for him to go.
Which he does.
Reluctantly.
With a worried backward glance.
A room full of irritated women must be fairly intimidating to a lone man who has left the comfort of his nice, safe, paper-barricaded room with a closeable door, to brave the oestrogen of the open office plains. It's like being a Mormon with none of the benefits. One can only imagine how our newest member of staff who arrived today must feel because, yes indeed, strangely enough, he is also male.
'A man?' went the chorus of nine female voices when he was hired as Contract's Manager. 'What will it be like having a man in the office?' someone (okay it was me) wondered aloud, before being reminded that both Mr T, MD and the Ubereditor were, in fact, all men.
'Oh yes,' said another looking thoughtful, 'I suppose they are.' But in Pedantic Press, you have a closeable door first, and a Y chromosome second. Or you work in accounts which is a different country, far far, and many continents away on the other side of reception.
Luckily our new man is upstairs in quarantine until he's acclimatised to our womanly ways (also with a closeable door) which seems to be the unofficial holding cell for new recruits. We all loved Octavia, his predecessor, who though she did have the female advantage, also had another professional negotiating skill much prized at Pedantic Press.
Homemade chocolate chip cookies.
I'm wondering if Mr Contracts is much of a baker. If not - a word to the wise.
Hobnobs.
