At the margins
- Posted:
- 00:00 13 Aug 2002
Grant has been cured of his 'goodness', Janine Cropper and detective constable Mark Dennis have plans, Dennis Doors and Jeff Coulter are talking to cyborgs. And if you're wondering about Roger -
Roger Callard and Harry Bleeker-Hoare settled down into their seats. Harry loved these industry affairs, especially when the vendors spent a healthy amount of money on them. To Harry that meant a classy meal, free-flowing wine at the table and an unlimited bar.
Others liked to gauge an event's prestige on the status of the entertainer/guest speaker booked for the proceedings, but Harry's classification system didn't care if it was the sales manager of Sellyourgranny Computers or a top class comedian (sometimes, in Harry's eyes, they were one and the same) doing the talking, so long as the bar didn't close until his eyes did. And it stayed free.
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And although he wouldn't admit it to Roger, who Harry always felt was a little bit of a stuffed shirt about these kinds of things, he always liked to round the evening off with a bit of a small-scale ruck, which was why he always insisted on bringing Dan from the warehouse. One thing he had learned was it was always useful to have someone handy with their fists - and their feet - at the end of the night.
Tonight's festivities, the Sellyourgranny Computers channel awards, were seasoned with an undertone of potential violence, especially as the seat planners had put Callard Computers next to one of their bitterest rivals, Sloe-in-the-Wold Systems. Although they had initially been on good terms, the atmosphere had soured after Sloe-in-the-Wold Systems stole one of Callard Computers' largest accounts amid allegations of skulduggery and downright cheating.
The sense of impending violence was sharpened by the knowledge that both had been shortlisted for the Sellyourgranny Computers' corporate reseller of the year award. As far as Harry could work out, the main criteria for shortlisting appeared to be to have sold a system, any Sellyourgranny label system, to a corporate customer in the past year.
Added to all of these factors was the sickening discovery that the tables were limited to half a bottle of wine per person and there was no free bar. While understandable given Sellyourgranny Computers' precarious financial position, Harry felt an almost poisonous rage towards the company. Resellers had helped build up the vendor in the UK, the least it could do was give them a bloody good party.
All of these things were swimming around in Harry's brain in a melting pot of resentment, anger and disappointment. Anyone could see it wouldn't take much to push him over the edge. So when the sales director of Sellyourgranny Computers, Mark Smarm, announced Sloe-in-the-Wold Systems had won the Corporate reseller of the year award, something snapped in Harry. Before he knew what he was doing, he was at the Sloe-in-the-Wold Systems table.
"Cheats," he hissed, before picking up one of their bottles of wine and taking a healthy swig.
Afterwards, when the hotel damages bill had pushed Sellyourgranny Computers into receivership and it emerged in the administrator's report that Mark Smarm had given a series of supply deals to Sloe-in-the-Wold Systems for no other reason than his girlfriend's father owned the reseller, many would praise Harry and the Callard Computers staff.
As for Harry, while everyone else had been throwing punches, glasses, chairs and award statuettes, he had been sneaking around all the tables, stealing as many wine bottles as he could.
Thus it was that while the attendees straggled homewards like the remnants of a defeated army once the police restored order, Harry and the Callard Computers staff had a party - in the warehouse.
Will Mark Smarm's girlfriend dump him for another vendor's sales director? Can Callard Computers win back customers from Sloe-in-the-Wold Systems? Don't miss next week's At the margins.
