I'm OK!

Chapter 7

First thing I do the next morning is look up the details for contacting Mrs. Shaw…

‘Alice speaking…’

‘Ehm… yes, good morning Mrs. Shaw… this is Shawna Richards speaking…’

‘Ah, Shawna good morning! How are you today?’

‘I’m ok, thank you Mrs. Shaw for asking…. And how are you?’

‘Excellent, now that I have you on the phone… but please, call me Alice… this Mrs. Shaw is my mother in law, and you make me feel real old when you call me that…’

‘Ehm… Ok, Alice… The reason I’m calling you is the following… You mentioned yesterday that you need someone for running your UK office..’

‘Ah yes, I did… you in?’

‘Well, the thing is Mrs… ehm.,… Alice… I don’t really know what I want right now… My life is in a bit of a mess at the moment, and I’ve been given 3 weeks off from work to try and find out what I want… They offered me Linda’s job, and I don’t want to be ungrateful, but to me it feels like I’ve been doing that job for quite a while already… not much news, except that they’d finally start paying me for the work I’m doing…’

‘ah I see…’

‘Well, that’s not the only thing actually. What you mentioned yesterday, that the people were just looking on as Linda went all crazy biatch around me, well, that kinda shows how they’ve been treating me over the past months anyway… I mean, people must have noticed she wasn’t putting in her fair share of work, yet nobody ever came to talk to me about it… and nobody ever listened when I said I needed a break…’

‘So if I understand it correctly, you don’t necessarily want to keep your job…’

‘Yes…’

‘And you also don’t know if you want to start in another job…’

‘Indeed…’

‘So may I be so bold to suggest the following? You take these 3 weeks and come and try out our company. Consider it like a project. In these 3 weeks, you get all costs paid – within reason – for travelling to the UK, staying there, and trying to start up the office. We’ll need you to organize some things there, I’ve got a clear outline of where I want our company to be going there… We’ll need you to select facilities for baking the cookies and cupcakes, start up with a small distribution channel over there, well, you know most of the details already having seen your presentation yesterday…’

‘ehm… wow… that was actually what I wanted to ask you, if I could go for a trial run or something…’

‘Yes, find out if the grass is really greener on the other side… well, I can tell you, in UK the grass is always green… it kinda rains a lot there…’

‘So how do we do this?’

‘Come into my office this afternoon, and we’ll go over the details. Bring your passport and a small suitcase, you can buy the rest of the things you need in London… and 1 more thing…’

‘Yes mrs.. ehm… Alice…’

‘what is your favorite flavor of cupcake?’

‘ehm…. Probably caramel fudge… but they’re all really good so it’s hard to choose…’

‘Excellent answer… that’s the spirit I need… Ok I’ll see you around 2PM then? Does that work for you?’

‘Yes I’ll see you at 2PM… and Alice?’

‘hmm-mm…’

‘Thank you…’

‘oh, don’t thank me yet honey… we’ll see how things work out between us… it’s a good chance for me as well to give you a trial run! You never know if this change of environment is going to be a success…’