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Woman has excellent home office for terrible career decision

A WOMAN has created a slick home office in which her plans to become self-employed are likely to fail.

Former accountant Emma Bradford has equipped her spare room with ergonomic office furniture, a stylish monitor and pleasing pot plants in a doomed attempt to become a freelance writer.

Bradford said: “Having the right environment will be crucial when the work starts pouring in. And while I’m waiting for that it’s a great place to drink coffee and listen to my new digital radio.

“Writers spend most of their time at their desk so I’ve bought an enormous curved one from Ikea, although at the moment I mostly use it to pretend I’m the captain of a spaceship when I get bored.

“I don’t want to be surrounded by clutter when I’m doing creative things like writing magazine articles, so spending £1,200 on a designer filing cabinet was definitely a good idea.”

Bradford gave up her job as an accountant two months ago after attending a one-day freelance writing course run by the Guardian, something she describes as “the best decision I ever made”.

She added: “No one’s actually called me yet, but when they do I’ll be able to take the call on my state-of-the-art cordless headset, even if I’m in the kitchen playing with the cat.”

Very important marketing meeting exempt from two-minute silence

MARKETING executives at a snack foods company have decided that today’s two-minute silence does not apply to them.

Senior staff at the makers of ‘Cheddar Tasties’ have decided that the importance of coming up with a new slogan for their product overrides the traditional Armistice Day silence.

Company director Tom Booker said: “We’ve got a marketing consultant arriving from Dublin at 11am, to discuss whether the poster strapline should be ’They’re cheesalicious!’ or ‘Low calorie cheesiness with a surprising crunch’.

“There’s also going to be me, two other top regional executives and Helen Archer from leading snack foods distributor JBT who is frankly a nightmare to get hold of. The meeting room is booked with tea, coffee and a quality biscuit selection.

“Sorry but I think you’ll agree we can’t take 120 seconds out of that to think about other stuff. I might be halfway through writing the words ’Cheese tang’ on a whiteboard.”

Marketing manager Nikki Hollis said: “Days like this are a good opportunity to consider important things, which in this case is how to sell Cheddar Tasties to 18-25 year-olds.”

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