FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 3 A New Start

But it was becoming clear that we needed to pay attention to our office processes if we were going to keep up with all this activity.

be proud of. But it was becoming clear that we needed to pay attention to our office processes if we were going to keep up with all this activity. The Reception area at Oakfield Road doubled up as a pretty busy office in its own right. In addition to their Reception activities, Joanna Rodgers and Sharon Field managed a wide range of other tasks: raising invoices, sales ledger, purchase ledger, insurance, and payroll. Most of the important stuff did find its way onto a computer system eventually (although ‘Basic DOS’ describes it pretty well), but it was actually mostly done by hand. Sharon describes how sub-contractor payroll worked: ‘There was a window that opened into Reception, and the men would walk past and throw their wage sheets in through the window. The wage sheets were handwritten, and some of the handwriting wasn’t the greatest: not easy to decipher.’ So, there were some things that we needed to sort out. But we still managed to have the occasional party. Dad had started a tradition of Christmas Dinners that we kept up most years. They were held at The Portland Rooms in Norwood, and they could be – correction, they were – fairly outrageous events. The Christmas Dinner of 1988 has stuck in many people’s memories for one particular event, which doesn’t do proper justice to the man it happened to. It was John Nuttall’s first year with us, and he was sitting at a table with one of the gangs that he worked with – and with his wife, Deb. One of the gang, a mason called Patsy Gartland, had unfortunately had too much to drink, and as the waiter put the soup in front of him, Patsy tipped slowly forward, face first into the soup. John had to wheel Patsy in his chair to the back of the room, and hide him behind the curtains for the rest of the meal. Deb vowed never to come to one of those events

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