Other People's Money

- Hey honey, what say we go down to that nice little gift shop on Church Street? Let's buy that nice glass vase we saw the other day.
- Ooh, you mean the lovely blue vase we both liked? But it cost £75, and we only have £80 to last us until pay day, and that's 5 days away. Oh, you're right, who cares? Let's get it!

Fact 1 - In this credit-crunching, wallet-worrying and penny-pinching climate, the above extract of scintillating conjugal conversation is unlikely to be heard in households across the land.

Fact 2 - I sell glass vases.

These are not vase-selling times, particularly not £75 vases. Today, the board of directors announced that 4 warehouse workers would be made redundant by the end of the month and that several departments would be 'restructured'. Happy New Year!

I am currently in Paris, on the eve of the opening of the season's most important housewares exhibition. Already, tales of insolvency and cash-flow concern abound. Within an hour of being on our exhibition stand today, I had been offered enough sales CVs to construct a papier maché Eiffel Tower, 1:1 scale. As I addressed my sales team this morning in the least inspirational speech since last year's sales meeting, the twisted irony that a fully-salaried person was trying to motivate a commission-only sales team was not lost on me.

This exhibition is a time to assess the economic implications of the global downturn, and how it will impact on our company. This is a time for planning and prudence and sound sales strategies and good marketing. But most importantly, this exhibition means one week of spanking the company credit card to within a micro-sliver of its laminated plastic life. This is the time to discover what the bottles inhabiting the lower reaches of the wine list actually taste like. Dessert? But of course, and send the cheese board and port at the same time, my good man!

There is nothing quite so grotesquely obscene as spending the money of others with neither care nor concern. Yet that is exactly what we are doing, and we are proving rather adept at it. Our eyes adjust automatically to focus on the most expensive dish on the menu and a rota is kept amongst all company credit card holders so that no-one will go home with more than one bill to his name. In the kitchen, another scuffle breaks out as the waiters fight amongst one another to serve us, for there is no better tipper than an expense account tipper.

As a pang of guilt threatens to resuscitate my conscience from its temporary coma, I remember that I am sacrificing another seven weekends this year to the glorious art of vase-selling, and that today is Day 11 out of 19 without a break.

As I open my wallet and lovingly thumb the unsuspecting card in and out of its slot, I let a gentle whisper escape my lips: 'You're in trouble, my flexible friend, you're in big trouble...'