1960s WORK
0161 Gallahers -- Social Life
Gallahers was also such an important part of my life because of the social aspects. Privately it was the first time I had my own house, down in Slough, and a young family. However, this also meant commuting every day. The office was in the City of London opposite Cannon Street station. There were some benefits in commuting, for the company paid for us to have cars. This was unusual for marketing staff in those days. Brand managers had Austin 1100s, and more important we had parking spaces in central London - actually under the arches of the Cannon Street railway bridge. These car parking spaces, it later turned out, cost the equivalent of something like a third of our salary! The company also paid for our petrol and even for my garage at home.
Eventually the company decided that this was a perk they could no longer afford. On the other hand, they decided that they would lose all of us if they took our cars away. Accordingly, they gave us the cars, which was very expensive since they also to make up the income tax element of this. The day after they had given us the cars we all went to management and asked for a rise. When asked why, we explained that we no longer had company cars. “But we gave you the cars” they said, to which our reply was “Many thanks for that, but it is now no longer included in our remuneration”. The company had to give us an all-round salary increase of nearly 50%. Just to rub salt into the wound most of us still left within three months.
As with most commuting journeys into London it was a nightmare if you started out too late. Hence I used to leave about seven o'clock from Slough. The key thing was to hit the Hogarth roundabout, on the outskirts of Hammersmith, no later than eight o'clock. If you made it by that time, and used all back doubles through the West End, you had a decent run to the office. The reverse was true in the evening, so we rarely went home before seven o'clock. Between five and seven, therefore, we used to go to the pub. This was before the introduction of the breathalyser, so I had been seen to put down seven pints of Guinness before driving home! When the breathalyser came in everything changed. Thus, on the day it started, Roland had to go to a reception at the Swedish embassy and came back full of aquavit and as drunk as a lord. We filled him full of black coffee until seven o'clock at night, at which point he was just turning the breathalyser a pale green; when we bundled him into his car and hoped the he would get home -- which he did
Even commuting had its best moments. I remember driving home for the Christmas holidays when Miles was due to be christened and -- as I went along the M4 -- it started to snow. It was a wonderful start to the holidays!
Indeed almost every aspect of work Gallahers was fun. Camaraderie was excellent. Even though we had acquired some aspects of a spirit of competition between brand managers this was very much in fun, and never got out of hand as it did in many other companies. Indeed, I even enjoyed the annual parties. Pat bought an off-the-peg Cardin dress, one of the first pręt-a-porter offerings, in purple with an padded roll hem around the bottom. It was very fashionable and I guess it was the best dress she ever had!
Even when we left, and all of us did so at more or less the same time, the camaraderie was maintained. We had the best leaving parties that anyone ever remembered at Gallahers. Unfortunately, Gallahers decided that that was also the afternoon when they were going to interview our replacements. This was a big mistake. Thus all afternoon, even as the candidates came for the interviews, the whole department was playing football -- rather the worse for wear from drink. As each candidate left the office we all solemnly lined up and insisted on shaking their hand. I doubt that they ever recruited anyone from that recruitment round.
hits