For the next eleven months, first thing Monday morning, I listened to the moustachioed sales manager reeling off the figures before disappearing into his office. Each week, there were those whose heads dropped... There were those whose heads dropped over a period of two or three weeks consecutively... There were those who would suddenly be absent...

For the next eleven months, I was deafened by the drone of a robot. Every twenty minutes or so, the robot would stand up with a pre-contract and head off down the corridor to notch up a new sale.