Let's not do drinks

The beginning of my mental health issues

14 years ago this month I was at a low.

This had nothing to do with my mental health or any internal struggle as such though it undoubtedly started a process which ended up with medication and counselling.

I was working for a large publishing company and had just gone past my fourth anniversary. During that time the company had been sold, split into different groups and renamed itself. We’d also moved from Camden to, let’s just say West London, so it wasn’t the company I joined.

And my work had changed. Initially, I was selling on a building exhibition and then a plumbing show. By the time we moved offices I was on a renewable energy event which I enjoyed to the point of learning about the industry and its terms. I once gave an internal presentation about anaerobic digestion and held my own. I could talk to industry people and not seem ignorant of their issues.

In the bar at the end of my last day at the show, my line manager said we should chat about what I do next. I’d had a good year and maybe I could work on the bigger picture.

Then he left.

His boss, also a good man, was soon let go too. Just before he left he called me into a meeting to tell me that I was to be moved again, this time from energy to a huge retail show. Once more I had to learn about a new world. Within a month I was having conversations with wholesalers and vape companies.

I went to that show and rebooked many exhibitors in my halls, so was surprised to learn that I was to be placed on something called a Personal Improvement Plan. They had ‘concerns’ (industry term number one) about the structure of my sales calls. I’d been in sales since 1991. I think my new manager would have been about five years old back then.

I wasn’t alone in this. My former colleagues in the energy portfolio had been put on them too. This was no coincidence. This looked like a strategy.

I enjoyed my first years before the change but the culture became passive/aggressive. Company wide meetings (’Town Halls’ - term number two) were accompanied with whoops and cheers from the rictus grinned middle management. People stopped going to the pub and ‘did drinks’ instead. The soul evaporated to be replaced by a more LinkedIn vibe. High fives replaced standard office humour.

Then the meetings began.

‘We’re concerned about the lack of progress on your PIP.’

They had no concerns at all. I couldn’t improve as I was still selling, using the same technique I’d been using for 23 years. The same techniques that had twice earned me positions at a quality national newspaper and managerial roles at a couple of trade magazines, but that wasn’t the point. I could have sold all twelve halls of the show the following morning and they’d still have ‘concerns.’

This was escalated to HR so her concerns were registered. I was baffled by the whole thing.

I set up my own meeting with HR and sought advice. I was being pushed out for no apparent reason. From energy show to retail to door. Why?

HR were useless. Absolutely useless. I still remember the woman’s name and her expression as she more or less told me that they were very much on the management’s side. The HR team here worked for the company and rubber-stamped any decision passed down from on high.

I went back to work and dutifully made the KPI led two hours of phone calls a day. I didn’t drop my work rate as I knew they were looking for anything to help me go.

The manager of my part of the show was equally confused. One day he asked me to accompany him to a rival exhibition in France. My passport had recently expired so I asked the main boss if I could go down to Passport House for a couple of hours on the Friday morning and renew it.

‘You can go and take it as annual leave but we’re not allowing you to go to France anyway.’

There were numerous such incidents.

I had another meeting with my boss and HR in a glass office where I would receive a verbal warning about my performance.

I’m not proud of this but my confidence was shattered. I begged to the point of tears to be given a chance. I was proud of my CV and didn’t want a verbal warning on my record. I was sent outside while they deliberated.

Through the glass I watched them laugh and smile together while they shuffled papers. I doubt they were talking about my case at all. I suspect they were talking about ‘doing drinks.’

I took the verbal warning and was placed on a humiliating internal sales training course. They made no secret of this and made it known to the whole of the sales team. Again, I don’t know why they felt the need to debase me.

The overall plan was to make it clear that I’d be ‘dismissed’ (sacked) in two months if I didn’t reach an unobtainable level. There was no plan to do anything else.

A month later my written warning came, but I was past caring. They’d announced their intentions and I matched the contempt they’d shown me. That meeting lasted four minutes. I was handed an envelope. I didn’t open it and stuck it in my locker. It may well still be there.

I had four weeks to get another job and was lucky enough to find my dream job two weeks later. I didn’t tell anyone.

My boss went on honeymoon so it was time for her boss, a Director, to take over the ritual rictus grinned bullying.

I worked out that if I gave my notice on the Friday I wouldn’t have lost any wages, but on the Wednesday morning I was called in to ask if I were happy.

‘You don’t seem very happy here, Karl.’

Talk about subtle. She might as well as said ‘Look, why don’t you just make it easy on us and just leave.’

I’d had enough of the gameplaying, the charade, the rictus grin. I resigned there and then. Sod the loss of wages (my new job wouldn’t start immediately after my notice period), I just had to get out and repair the damage they’d done to my confidence.

I was having difficulty sleeping now. One day I got to work early just so I could just stand outside the office door to summon up the courage to go inside and not be late. I’d walk alone at lunch time just to wash myself clean of the place.

Again, I wasn’t alone in this situation. A former colleague on an energy show had been asked to write a warts and all opinion email on why he thought his show was failing. He cited a lack of publicity, zero marketing budget and a managerial team with no specialist industry knowledge. What’s more it didn’t help that the woman who I’d resigned to routinely mistook him for the Asian man who came in at lunch time to sell sandwiches. They fired him immediately. Sorry. Dismissed.

The big boss then told my team that I would be leaving (’We’re sorry to see him go,’) and that I would now be a volunteer at a charity. That wasn’t true. I managed volunteers and it was a paid post, but she couldn’t have been less interested in any of that.

Later that afternoon I was called into another glass office and given notice period options.

‘You probably won’t be busting a gut to sell on your show (correct) so why don’t you leave today and we’ll pay you two weeks money.’

But the threats were over now. I had a modicum of power for the first time in months.

‘My notice period is four weeks. I’ll stay and be paid for four weeks. I can’t afford to lose money before I start my new job.’

The rictus grin disappeared. Her eyes narrowed and she agreed through gritted teeth.

Instead I was told to move shows for four weeks. It would be with a boss and team I respected enormously - still do. I agreed. I even sold some stands.

When 5.30 came around on my last day I handed in my work phone and left for the final time. There was no leaving card, no gift or, probably for very good reason, a speech. I’d given them four and a half years of my life. My leaving do consisted of two pints with a mate who was about to go through a similar thing.

That was 14 years ago. I’ve been to one leaving do since then.

I was briefly part of a four man meet up with three others who went through a similar process, but I never went near the building or saw those managers again.

I still have friends there but we don’t discuss this. It took too much out of me.

That was the beginning of a decline in my mental health. And 2014 was great for me. I published my first novel, I worked as a football writer for The Times and began a job I could only dream about. It was a great year, but it was wasted on me. I was so low.

In January 2015 a very close friend asked me to see a doctor about my increasingly dark moods. I didn’t want to go but I didn’t want to let her down either. I was diagnosed with depression and it’s obvious where that all started.

I still think about those times every day without fail.

My main crux, the thing that keeps me awake at night, is that people, strangers in the main, held meetings to discuss my downfall. They made coffees and sat down to discuss a plan of action to end both my employment and well-being. Then they signed it off at HR level who gladly well along with it.

They wouldn’t have given it a second thought. I doubt they questioned their behaviour for a second and hadn’t considered it since. They got on with their lives the Monday after I left. The grins, the Town Halls, the drinks, the high fives.

And it’s not as though I was an awful salesperson. I’ve made money for people since the day I left University. I was just part of a wider plan and casualties were irrelevant.

I won’t name them here or the people involved. This post isn’t about revenge and I certainly have no interest in a reaction. My biggest nightmare would be to see them again.

I have a better job now and it still has a degree of sales attached to it. I work with better people now, people who don’t hide their inherent evil (which is what it is despite the smiles) behind a corporate process.

I’d like to think I’m good at my job too and the thing is, I was then too.

Maybe it was do with my age. I was mid-forties then and not as shiny as the younger staff. Maybe my face just didn’t fit, but what it was was a concerted effort to make my life hell and there were meetings held to do just that.