Day in the Life (In-Office): Josie Dallam
Sales Coordinator, Little Bee Books
Day: Tuesday, January 25, 2022
7:00 am: Good morning! This is earlier than I typically wake up on a workday, but we are going into the office today! Little Bee Books has an office space in a Spaces, which is basically a re-branded WeWork. We are allowed to go in when we want to, you have to sign up ahead of time and only 6 people are allowed in at once. Everyone has to be vaccinated, but you don’t have to wear a mask in the office if you don’t want to.
8:00 am: Commute! What a time, no one two years ago would have thought that it would be kind of fun to commute now, mainly because I only do it once a week or so. I live in Jersey City, and I find the walk to the PATH a great way to start my day. I listen to podcasts or call my family.
9:00 am: I make it into the office and get settled with my Pret breakfast. I check any emails that came in overnight, send out the daily sales report, and check if any of my orders were sent out by the warehouse. I go to the front desk to inquire about some books I had sent to the office from the warehouse that I want to send out to an account. I also want to send some new releases that aren’t in the warehouse yet, so that’s why I had them sent here first so I could package everything up together before sending out. The front desk locates my package and I pack up the rest of the books I need.
10:00 am: Turns out no one else is planning on coming into the office today, so I decide to not go to a phone booth for my production meeting. Every Tuesday we have a brief check in and overview of the schedule for our Special Sales projects. These include custom editions of books for different accounts and foreign editions of our titles. I have a few questions about some potential orders I have in the works, so I stay on after the call with the National Account Manager and Production Editor, which of course ends up in a little bit of general chatting. I was really hoping one of them would be in the office today, because of course office chit chat with my co-workers is what I miss most about working from home.
10:30 am: Time to buckle down and do what I actually came into the office to do today: account submission grids. These are Excel sheets and PowerPoints with title information to sell books into mass market accounts. I find the extra monitor at the office very helpful when filling these out. It is of course possible to do it just on my laptop, but much easier with the large added screen. I have several big ones due this week and next.
1:00 pm: My boss calls me to check in on the order for a presentation. This breaks me out of my trance and reminds me I do have to eat today. I didn’t bring lunch, so I go out to the corner store to grab a few things.
2:30 pm: I have been meaning to call IT all day to get my computer connected to the new printer we have in the office, but meetings kept distracting me. I need to be able to print out the shipping label to mail my books out. I call IT and sit a while on hold as I continue to work on my submission grids. I eventually get connected and then have a slew of issues, as per usual when dealing with IT. Eventually we are pretty sure my computer is connected to the printer, but I have a meeting and can’t check.
4:00 pm: I have a meeting with our Amazon rep to talk about 2020 and 2021 performance and what we can expect from 2022, best practices, etc.
5:00 pm: Meeting ends. I finish up the grids I was working on. The long IT call really derailed my day, I don’t have the information printed to mail out the samples to the account, so that will have to wait for my next office day. I have some errands to run before the stores close. I pack up my stuff, lock the door, and head out.
