Page 42 of The Love Hack

It was from Greg. Morning, Lucy. Got a minute?

My stomach lurched, but I typed, Yeah, sure, and added a smiley face.

Pop into my office, if you don’t mind.

Be right there.

I stood up. Ross glanced at me, then glanced hastily away. Adrenaline coursing through me, I made my way to my boss’s office, a shorthand notebook and pen clutched in my sweating hand.

‘Afternoon, Lucy.’ Greg’s chair was pushed back from his desk, his glasses pushed up on his head. There were smudges of red ink on his fingers from correcting proofs. He looked tired and dishevelled, as he usually did by the middle of the afternoon.

‘Afternoon.’ I forced a smile.

‘Take a seat.’

I took one.

‘So, Lucy. I see from my calendar you’ve been with Max! for three months now. We don’t normally conduct a formal review at this point, but I thought we should have a chat about how things are going.’

I nodded mutely, my mouth dry.

‘You’ve settled well into the team,’ Greg went on. ‘I’m impressed with the quality of your writing, your organisational skills and your attitude. You’re a valuable addition to Max!.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m really happy to be here.’

But I could sense a ‘but’ coming, and I was right.

‘But,’ Greg said, and part of my brain went, Told you so! ‘The Ask Adam column has got off to something of a slow start. The response from our readers has been extremely positive, but the numbers aren’t quite where we’d like to see them. As you know, an ever-increasing share of our revenue is derived from online advertising, which is dependent on click rates. And we’re not seeing these increase at the rate we’d hoped for.’

‘Does that mean—‘ I began, but Greg held up a hand to stop me.

‘I don’t want to worry you, Lucy. I believe in you – I believe Ask Adam can be a great success. It’s early days. We’re just not quite there yet.’

‘What should I do?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I’m doing my very best but if there’s something I need to change, just tell me and I’ll try.’

Greg smiled. ‘I know. Your enthusiasm is one of the things that make you a real asset. And that’s why I think you’ll be willing to get behind what I’m about to propose.’

‘Okay,’ I said, thinking, I’ll do anything – anything at all. Just so long as I get to keep my job.

And not get sacked and never see Ross again, said a little voice in the back of my mind.

‘Here’s what we’d like to do,’ Greg said. ‘We want to run some numbers, analytics, so we can see what type of questions are working best in the Ask Adam slot. Then we can focus of putting those out there, and increase the reach of the column over time, backed up by posts on our socials to draw readers in.’

‘Great!’ I said. ‘That sounds like a plan.’

Greg nodded approvingly, and then he said, ‘But. In order for that exercise to be meaningful, we need more data. Ask Adam has been running twice a week, and we got off to a slow start, so we’ve only published twenty columns thus far. In order to build traction, we need more volume.’

‘Okay,’ I said again.

‘Am I right in thinking the number of queries you’re getting is still high?’

‘Sure, and it’s increasing. In the beginning I was receiving maybe ten letters a day, now it’s at least twenty. There’s no way I can answer them all. Of course, some of them are obvious nutters, or asking totally random things like who’s going to win the Premier League, but most of them are legit problems.’

‘That's what I thought. And that’s why I’d like to increase the frequency of the Ask Adam column online from twice weekly to daily, if you’re up for that? It’ll mean a lot more work for you, of course.’

‘That doesn’t matter. I can manage.’

Could I? Could I really? I’d stared at Anonymous’s query for over half an hour with no clue what I was going to tell him. The only reassuring thing about it was that I had the luxury of time to mull over my response – now, I’d glibly robbed myself of even that.

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