Shadows & Whispers

Ring, ring, ring, ring.

"Erin, thank goodness you answered. I need your help please."

Here we go again, I thought as I rolled my eyes.

"How can I help?" I answered politely.

"I don't know what I've done but my excel has lost all its formulas. I can't get them to work when I put them back in." The employee panicked.

I asked them to give me 10 minutes and I would go and have a look.

"Oracle to the rescue again?" Cleo laughed.

"Honestly whoever came up with the nickname, needs sacking!" I joked back.

Don't get me wrong I loved my job as a team leader in account management at Written Ink printing. The only downside is that I have been here longer than almost everyone in the office which means I know everything there is to know.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, I'm also a computer whizz. I know near enough every formula going to get us through anything we need. I hate blowing my own trumpet and I hate being the center of attention. But when you're known as 'the oracle', it means I have enough people blowing my trumpet for me anyway.

I headed off to one of the other offices to leand a hand. As I came back from my next Cleo had a strange look on her face.

"There's a big town hall meeting in 20 mins," she's explained

"Oh."

We have all been waiting for this moment. With the change of the world these days, most people are moving to digital and the print industry is starting to struggle. We knew this day was coming but what we didn't know was what was going to happen. Everyone in office was quietly waiting. Cleo and I stood together and everyone in the office followed our lead.

As we entered the big meeting room, we saw a few chairs left, so we quickly grabbed them before anyone else did. With only standing room left, everyone squashed in around the back of the room and tables that had been moved out of the way. Our MD entered with a group of new faces behind. The meeting started a few moments later.

"As you may all be aware, with the increase in digital print, the physical print industry is taking a hit. You will have seen a downturn in work running through the business and that is across the whole of the country. I am here to squash all rumours. The factory is not closing. I won't lie we have some work ahead of us but if we all stick together and work towards the plan we will not only stay open but we will be more profitable than we have been in a very long time."

There were murmurs through the room as figures were put up on the board. He talked through the figures and the future plans. It was all standard expected things. They were going to put more people into the sales team and get out there and push the best packages we offer. They were going to get better processes into the working environment on the floor and follow that up with daily and weekly checks. The next part we were told shocked us all.

"Within the plan there will also be a shake up in management. We are going to merge our site with the Written Ink Printing site based in Yorkshire. With this it means both sites will help each other. If you don't have capacity then the first port of call is Yorkshire. If they have the same issue their contact firstly will be you. We will all work as one united front. With the plan the total profit aim should be easily achieved. The shake up does mean there will be redundancies here on site at a higher level along with brining in managers into brand new roles to push our new goals."

There were gasps around the room as questions broke out left, right, and center.