He clocks up the miles chasing sales, profits and targets in the electronics industry. Welcome to the secret diary of an East Anglian salesman.

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This week we are heading down for a day or two in Surrey. It’s the 2012 sales kick- off meeting. That’s “kick-off” in the sense of “beginning” rather than “free for all fight”. But you never know.

The last meeting I had with my directors we ended with the discussion “how can you be more efficient?”. A point I raised was that I had a laptop which crashed on average, twice a day, and took twenty three minutes for a basic restart was noted. My new laptop is ordered. It’s a sad state of affairs when you consider your smartphone a more useful tool than your computer.

Perhaps, controversially, laptops in general have made us less efficient? The dearth of the traditional secretary has led to a lot of ham-fisted reports and long emails being typed by the owners of those reports. Employees whose key skills certainly don’t include touch typing. Like me.

Coupled with a 60Mb server inbox limit, and being cc’d on anything that moves, I spend half my time fighting with MS Outlook.

On the normally pleasant run across the A428, time to snack. I have a few clementines. Or satsumas. Or small oranges, or whatever. So how is it that there is such a variance in flavour between fruit from the same batch? From “outrageously tart” to “bland at best”. No quality control. Not like my wonderful industry. I’m writing to the Council for Citrus Fruit. I want answers!

Right! Now off to see a customer about the year ahead. And how not to order ten times as many parts as you wanted. They say the demand has dropped, but I suspect a keyboard error....