VST Sales Anecdotes, Part 3 of 10
We often do shared party nights for our Christmas do. Not the sit-down-and-go-home-by-nine kind. The full works: drinks, dinner, awards, band, disco, the lot.
One year in particular still gets brought up. Circa 2015. Black tie. Northampton Saints. About twenty-five of us, all dressed up to the nines.
The night was going perfectly
Dinner was great. The VST Awards had gone down a treat: Best Appointment, Best Motivator, Biggest Fail, all the usual categories, and remarkably, nobody had been offended. No one was too drunk. Or so we thought…..
I’d spent most of the night doing what the boss does on nights like this: hosting, compering the awards, buying rounds, having a good chat with everyone. By the time the band and disco kicked in, I reckoned I’d earned five minutes to myself.
So I decided to treat myself to a proper glass of red wine and sit and watch everyone dance for a bit.
Where it went wrong
Only problem: the wine had run out on our table. So off I went to the bar, and rather than faff about with a whole bottle, I came back with one large glass of red – but I never made it back to the table.
One of our ladies, who shall remain nameless, decided it was time I danced with her. No negotiation. As I walked along the edge of the dance floor, glass of red firmly in hand, she snatched my other arm and spun me round whilst jumping up with her legs around my waist!
Within about two seconds flat, both of us went down in a heap on the dance floor.
And yes, you’ve guessed it. That large glass of red went absolutely everywhere. My white dress shirt was now completely, thoroughly cherry red. I looked like I’d been gunned down in a drive-by!
The aftermath…
She was mortified. Horrified. Couldn’t apologise enough. I just stood there for a second, a bit dazed, working out what had actually just happened to me. I wasn’t cross about it. If anything, I thought it was quite funny. But there was no salvaging the shirt or the night, so that was me done, home to change, covered head to toe in Rioja.
You’d think that would be the end of the story. It wasn’t.
She was so mortified by the whole thing that she handed her notice in on the Monday. Genuinely couldn’t face coming back in and looking me in the eye.
We didn’t accept it, obviously. Had a proper laugh about it instead. And she went on to work with us for another ten years after that.
And before you ask, yes, the wine came out of the shirt, and the suit went off to the dry cleaners and came back perfectly good as new.
Why we’re telling you this
Christmas parties are where you find out what a team’s really like once the guard comes down. Ours has always been the sort of place where a disaster like that turns into a decade of workplace folklore rather than an awkward Monday morning. That says more about the culture here than any awards ceremony ever could.
This is the third in our series of ten stories from two decades on the phones (and, apparently, the dance floor). Next up, back to the calling floor for another one.
Fancy joining a team that laughs this hard at itself? Get in touch (virtualsalesteam.co.uk/contact-us/)
Andy Smart
