Angel for a Day - by Natasha Lockwood

Have you ever found a £20 note on the pavement? At first it feels really good and exiting, but then after a while you start to feel guilty that you have received something you don’t deserve.

Richard (aka Charlie) and me, being an Angel

This, I've learnt, is similar to the feeling when you accept praise from friends and family, because they’ve seen a picture of you in a nice dress collecting an award for something that wasn’t really your work!  Here’s the picture, and the story to accompany it, of how I became an angel for a day.

Let me first set the scene. In our Conferencing department we have a Sales & Marketing office and an Operations office. The difference between the two is quite clear (I usually work on the operational side); you would be able to distinguish us as we have been known to have chipped nail varnish, often get covered in random substances such as paint or pollen, and have occasionally stepped in to become cloakroom attendants or even waiters. I like to think of us as the engine of a car, everything needs to work well and efficiently in order to run, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to see it!

If  we are the engine, then the Sales & Marketing office is the sleek bodywork of the Audi TT!  When I walk into the office I often think I can hear music, but that could just be me.  The brains of the operation is Richard (aka Charlie) also pictured, but as the saying goes, behind every good man is a good woman – or in his case three.

Harriet, Lisa & Natalie are definitely the Angels to his Charlie, each one more glamorous than the one before; these ladies have never been seen with lipstick on their teeth or ladders in their tights.  Even in the snow they still manage to glide into work in 4 inch heels. Apart from making men want them and women want to be them, they also happen to be very good at what they do. With honey toned voices they accept and deal with all range of enquiries in a polite and prompt manner, hence how I got into my little predicament.

 

These ladies are so capable they managed to bag themselves second prize in the Venuemasters Mystery Shopping Award – for those who don’t know, this is when someone rings up claiming to be a potential client with a fabricated enquiry in order to score us on how well we deal with this, from the initial call to the follow up.

One maternity leave and one holiday later, Charlie was down to just one angel on site, meaning he needed a stand in accomplice for the Venuemasters Annual Conference.  This is where I come in.  Knowing I had to look the part, I packed my most glamorous evening gown and glittery heels and spent the day networking, trying my best to do what I have seen the Angels do so many times before. Then we come to the evening, where winners were announced, and the prizes were doled out, and this, my friends, is how I ended up getting pictured in a nice dress,  receiving a prize which I had not really earned, and how I got to be an Angel for a day.