Free Less Than Perfect by Ber Carroll Page B

should have looked at the name card. They thought all their Christmases had come at once!’
    Being a government department, the Roads and Transport Board’s food budget is basic: sandwiches and fruit at lunch, no morning or afternoon teas, and certainly no bacon-and-egg breakfasts!
    â€˜Don’t worry.’ At last I can genuinely smile. ‘It was an honest mistake. I hope they enjoyed it.’
    Back upstairs, I read and respond to emails until it’s time to leave my desk again for the biweekly sales meeting. The only good thing about the sales meeting is that it isn’t on every week. My male colleagues, Gary, Chris and Nathan, have adapted their styles to suit Jarrod’s, discarding any sense of humour in the process, and are extraordinarily dull to listen to. Zoe is a relatively recent and much more interesting addition to the team. It’s rather nice having another female around, and even nicer that she can be relied on to view things from a completely different angle to everyone else. She’s the only bright spark in the entire two-hour-long meeting.
    Finally I escape and return to the sanctuary of my desk, free at last to work on the Telelink proposal. The spreadsheet already has preliminary figures and key assumptions, some of which I now update. I detail the timelines, room availability and technology, working across a number of linked worksheets. When everything is complete, I run a sensitivity analysis to see howmuch negotiating space I have with the discount. I love this part of my job, playing with the numbers, coming up with a proposal that can’t be knocked back by either Jarrod or Derek, the grudging admiration that comes over their faces as they see the extent of my work and the depth of my knowledge.
    I continue until a feeling of light-headedness reminds me that it’s lunchtime. Somewhat reluctantly, I save the file and close it down. Grabbing my bag, I pass by the ladies room on my way out. My hand has a slight tremor as I apply some lip gloss. I smooth down my hair, prick my skin in its usual spot and leave the light-bulb brightness of the toilets for the sunshine outside.
    â€˜Chicken on brown with Diet Coke?’ The girl at the deli knows my order but not my name.
    â€˜Yes, thanks.’
    While I wait for the food, I’m still thinking about the discount and where I should initially pitch it. I’ll finish the proposal this afternoon, mull on it overnight and then get Jarrod’s seal of approval before sending it to Derek tomorrow. Derek will respond in a few days’ time with some nitpicks. I’ll take him out for dinner and drinks and he’ll hold out until the end of the night before stating what he really wants: a larger discount. With a great show of reluctance, I’ll meet him halfway, we’ll shake on it, and then I’ll finally get the order. Five million dollars! My sales target will be blown through the roof. But it isn’t just about the target, or even the commission cheque that will follow. There’s more to it than that. Much, much more.
    It’s taken me a relatively long time and a lot of hard work to become established in my career. My ascension up the corporate ladder has not occurred in leaps and bounds; it’s been a slowand sometimes difficult progression. I’m good in interviews – friendly and outgoing and charismatic, the right personality for a career in sales – but employers want letters after the names of their employees, particularly for roles that have a measure of responsibility or autonomy, and so my abandoned degree has come back to haunt me over and over again. Whenever I’m ready to change jobs, I resolve to look into how I can complete at the University of Melbourne what I started at Queen’s University, Belfast. In moments of honesty and clarity, however, I doubt I have it in me to study again. Do I have the focus, the concentration required? Could I tolerate the