professorthrupiece.com has learned that an emergency meeting of the Executive Committee [Sales] of the Threadbone Press will take place later this morning and that it will be chaired by none other than Mrs Amanda J Threadbone, CEO, CFO, President and "gros fromage" of the Threadbone Corporation entire. Well-placed sources within the Corporation have said that whilst it is not unknown for Mrs Threadbone to take such a close personal interest in the day-to-day administration of any and all of her many commercial interests, it is believed to be "unusual" for her to do so on such a seemingly routine occasion. The move has fuelled suspicion that all is not right at the beating heart of the Threadbone Press.
Sources close to Threadbone Corporation Vice-Chair Royston Binstock have been whispering [a little less than sotto voce] that more than the odd raised voice has been heard of late in the CEO's Great Heaving office suite and that certain decisions taken "lower down the chain" have been subject to a less than friendly inquisition "higher up it". Whether a backlash [the septuagenarian Mrs Threadbone is known to have been seriously resistant to relinquishing any of her responsibilities and is believed to regret her decision to delegate on a more systematic basis] or a sign of her growing impatience with the direction of travel recently outlined by Press Executives, remains to be seen.
Perhaps some clue to the nature of the discord comes in the form of several leaked Powerpoint slides prepared by minions for today's meeting and designed, we understand, "to explain to and to prepare Mrs Threadbone for" depressingly low projections for the sales of certain titles in The Threadbone Press's premium-priced Opportunistic Reprints Series: the Press's putative answer to "locked-down stay-at-home self-isolating socially-distanced household boredom". Amongst a catalogue of literary misfires, the most worrying is believed to be mountains, men and me by flash-in-the-pan [literally] exhibitionist mountaineer Ivor Bigge-Todger. Commissioning Reprints Editor Tatum "Tattie" Owld-Hatte has already felt the full force of the Press Syndicate's wrath, leaving his post just 3 days after joining the Company. Worryingly, hers is by no means the shortest tenure in the Press's long history. In 2014 innovative new broom D'Frent I'Dia was himself swept clean out of office just 24 hours after his promotion to the position of Editor [Women's Studies] and shortly after he had announced that first title to receive his personal green light would be PMT: Why Should Men Put Up With It?
No-one attending today's meeting was willing to go on record, but tea lady Evvy Trolly, confirmed that one cup of Earl Grey [without biscuits] had been ordered for 11am indicating, if nothing else, that "it would be a long - though obviously virtual - session".
Comments