Bty Forrest Clancy

Why You Can’t Label Customers by Postcode 

Sarah, 24, female, has been a personal assistant for two years now. She could tell you a bit about why she got into the film business, but it would read more like a six word story than anything else. Safe to say she has greater aspirations and isn’t keen to stick around. In fact, she is tremendously unmotivated to do her job. The only force that drives her is fear. Fear of her boss screaming at her, or worse, firing her. She spends much of her day browsing job search websites, or the homepages of companies she dreams of working for. When she’s not doing that, she’s fantasising about new ways to kill her boss, or her bosses dog, who shits on the office floor every morning. At the very least, she could intentionally mess up a booking before shredding her bosses’ passport, ID, bank card and everything else that matters, before making it rain printer paper and walking out. Instead, every morning she walks the dog, gets a round of coffees, organises her bosses desk and files paperwork for the rest of the day. Intermittently,  she might book restaurants and taxis while scrolling through the Opening Ceremony website, but doing her actual shopping on the H&M Website. 

The last time she went on holiday, she ended up staying in her hotel room all weekend either working or crying on her boyfriend’s shoulder. Her boss was punishing her for stapling her notes instead of fasting them with a paperclip. One of her *greatest* responsibilities on the job. A week later she sent her a bottle of Dom Perignon to say sorry. So, sadly, in her fucked up world, this ended on a sweet note. 

In her dreams, she’d drive around in a chauffeured Black Car, with her former boss, now her assistant, trailing on her heels. Her boss would design Sarah’s agenda for her, plan her lunches, confirm all of her meetings, and make sure she knew where she had to be and when. All day, every day. In return, she would dump hot coffee on her when he put full fat milk inside. 

Bex, 35, is a film producer… She claims. Bex used to be an account manager at an an advertising agency. “A massive one,” as she describes its, “but it liquidated after I left so you wouldn’t know it anymore.”  She tells people she was right at the top of this agency, but I’ve always imagined that if this agency did ever topple – or exist – like a Jenga tower it would only come down once the actual important pieces were pulled. 

Every morning, Bex rolls out of her double king bed close to midday. She skips the shower and comes trundling down the stairs in her silk bathrobe. She goes past the office where her 3 “film producey” employees work, and straight into the kitchen, where her Polish maid, Lana, prepares her a Goji berry smoothie. “I bet you don’t eat as healthily as me.” She parades her food around her kitchen to her staff. “It’s nasty but I’m on this new diet. Yeah, gonna lose a Kilo this month.” Bex said the same thing last month about a different diet, and the one before that. The only problem, as Sarah pointed out on the kitchen CCTV,  is that eating bacon butties while people aren’t looking doesn’t mean the calories don’t count. 

Most days after lunch an armful of Amazon packages arrives with her name on them. She tears through them with her toddlers, Bean and Bird and the three of them spend the afternoon playing with their new toys. She doesn’t have to ask Sarah to clean up the mess. 

Last year, Bex paid 100 grand for a painting by Brad Pitt, at a Brad Pitt children’s foundation auction. With it, she earned herself a dinner with the man himself, a love letter, and an engraved Tiffany bracelet. A month later the invoice arrived on the doorstep and her husband Stanley, 88, opened it. It was an awkward conversation with Stanley, and an even harder one with Brad Pitt’s charitable representatives, but the most difficult, she claims, was telling the orphans that they weren’t getting their roof re-tiled. This one nearly brought a tear to her eye. But hey, what’s the point of art if it doesn’t make you feel something?