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Bringing hope, peace and unity to the good brethren of business supplies Father P muses on the intriguing dynamics of coffee shop working in the face of our ever-changing work practices
A
t one stage last month, every member of our staff was in a different coffee shop at the same time. They were all sitting there with their laptops open at some website - which made it look like they were contemplating something important - until the next email came along and they could, once again, touch the keys and look busy. People have had to train themselves in this particular aspect of coffee shop remote working. It’s okay to sit at your desk in the office and stare dreamily into the distance with your colleagues - I mean, they all know the score; there’s no point in doing anything when there isn’t anything to do - but it’s a different matter when you are surrounded by people you don’t know, and you imagine that they are all wondering why you are sitting there in the first place. We love the remote working model at Clip Office. It really does make you think about what we were actually doing in the office for all those
[38] SUMMER 2023
www.dealersupport.co.uk
years, standing around in the kitchen moaning about our career choices and discussing Dickinson’s Real Deal. Really, we should have been at least trying to get new business, or to keep the current customers happy against all odds. Mrs O’Reilly, who looks after our logistics, marketing and biscuits, doesn’t like the coffee shop remote working model at all; she likes to sit beside the fax machine in the office all day. Moreover, none of the coffee shops seem to have a fax machine she can sit beside, and she’s very against the reps having the freedom to move around the village without her having any sort of control of their start and finish times. We’ve tried to explain to her that the working model has changed - but
she’s having none of it. The reps are now complaining that they can’t really relax over their coffees because she can appear at the shop window at any moment, looking at her watch and staring them out until they get in their cars and start prospecting. Lots of our working practices have changed over the last couple of years. We spend a lot more time sourcing product, and making sure that the customer is happy to get the wrong product delivered, whilst paying twice what they used to for it - and we seem to spend a lot more time selling products we know absolutely nothing about - but at least we are still here, and operating, even if it is a bit tougher and involves a lot more coffee-drinking now than in the past.
We love the remote working model at Clip Office. It really does make you think about what we were actually doing in the office for all those years