The first proper job I ever had was...

The first proper job I ever had (I’m leaving out of the ‘proper job’ reckoning various stints as a tractor driver, warehouse operative, roadsweeper, lawn turf salesman, van driver, marquee putter-upper etc. etc.) was such an outlier in my career that I don’t bother listing it on my CV. Yet, looking back on that experience from a distance of 30+ years, I realise that I learned some worthwhile lessons from it – which, in traditional LinkedIn style, I’m going to momentously reveal in bullet-points at the bottom of the article as if they constitute rare and unfathomable wisdom of a kind that no one’s heard of before.

It was a temporary position as a stock controller for a small firm in southern England that, among other things, sold Christmas hampers. In essence the job was simple: buy in and store the produce to put in the hampers, which would be sent out to customers in the run-up to Christmas.

However, because this was a rapidly expanding venture, we had very little idea of how many of each type of hamper we were going to sell. And there were far too many different ones on offer: the firm was taking a scattergun approach because it hadn’t figured what its winners were yet. This meant that we also didn’t know how much of each type of produce that went in the various hampers to order in. And those different types of produce needed to be stored under different conditions (smoked salmon in the freezer, cheese in the chiller, booze anywhere you could put it). And they had different shelf lives – you can store a bottle of port for years, but cheese, salmon and high-end chocs don’t last too long. And there was limited storage space. And limited money to buy produce in anticipation of future orders. ??

Then we had to factor in how long it would take for suppliers to deliver. And try to figure out whether we would have sufficient storage space at the time when the delivery was made. And what to do if a supplier ran out of stock or went out of business.

On top of all of the above was the fact the picture changed from hour to hour as orders came in and stock went out. One minute I’d think everything was in hand and the next minute the warehouse foreman would come in and say we’d run out of vintage port. Or stilton. Or gravadlax. Or handmade chocolates. Or whisky marmalade. Or the whole sides of smoked salmon but not the half sides (sample response: ‘Have you thought of putting in two half sides instead? No? Well, do that.’).

And on top of that was the fact that this was 1992 – not a problem in itself, particularly if you liked ripped jeans, flannel shirts and grunge – but there was hardly any tech available at that point. The equipment on my desk comprised a huge order book covered with near-indecipherable scribblings, a landline phone (no mobiles back then), a selection of ballpoint pens and a mug of instant coffee (the fact that other and better forms of coffee existed hadn’t yet been discovered in the UK at that point). We did have a computerised record system, but it was so cumbersome to use that as soon as things hotted up I relied on pen, paper and visual inspection.

… The point I’m making is that the job was basically impossible (despite being simple in theory). I’d try to plan ahead and keep on top of things, but those plans could never keep pace with the speed at which the picture changed. And yet without a plan I’d have been even more lost. It was also important to communicate the plan, as well as the myriad ways in which it was going wrong, to everyone who needed to know about it – because nearly all the arrangements with suppliers were made on the phone and on the fly, I had to keep reminding myself that although I knew what was going to happen, my colleagues weren’t telepathic. So a lot of hurried conversations that went like this: ‘I’ve just spoken to X and she says they can deliver Y by Z but they’ve run out of A’.

Momentous bullet-points (naturally there are five of them):

·?????? Failure is inevitable, but you can learn from experience. The Samuel Beckett mantra is invaluable: ‘Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’

·?????? You’ll be lost without a plan but events will come and tear holes in it, like some ghastly monkey (i.e. you have to be ready to react and improvise as unexpected developments emerge).

·?????? Communication is important. That cliché about managing clients’ expectations applies in almost every sphere of life. Conversely, it’s also the medium of the art of the possible: when suppliers initially told me that such and such a thing couldn’t be done, it was amazing how often just keeping the conversation going and chucking in a few ‘what ifs’ and ‘how abouts’ would eventually lead to a solution.

·?????? Keep calm, maintain perspective. There’s a great Samuel Johnson quote that I can’t find now (you’ll either have to trust me or take a gentle canter through his collected works until you find it – good luck!) where he responded to a friend who was lamenting over some minor catastrophe that had occurred with words along the lines of ‘Come now sir, consider how little you will think of this in ten years’ time’. Everything passes.

·?????? Have a magic button you can press (but not too often). Ours was a clause in our T&Cs that said that we reserved the right to substitute items in the hampers for others of equal value. So one more than one occasion when stock couldn’t be delivered in time, we’d rush out to the local supermarket and scour the shelves for a suitable replacement. Getting the job done by any means possible was the order of the day.

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