The Hot Dog Business

Major Hot Dog sales chain.  We are privileged to provide secretarial services for an importer of German Bockwurst who sells to major cinemas, football stadia, theme parks, rock cafés, airports and school and university catering services, amongst others. We designed their quotations, invoices and statements. We deal routinely with their correspondence, maintain their client database, type their invoices and statements, produce their sales brochures and operating instructions for roller grills and similar  equipment which they loan or supply. We also design documentation for use by employed staff in administering their own retail outlets and documentation relating to the employment of staff.

The Jewellery Business

Reading the unreadable.  In the early 1980s, the proprietor of a manufacturing jewellers came to us with an urgent request. He had a very talented and productive jewellery salesman who was a desirable employee in all respects except one.  Being dyslexic, he had an illegible handwriting and this was causing problems in documenting sales. When the salesman went out in the field, it was customary to leave jewellery with customers on a sale or return basis.  This is called leaving them "on Appro" and "appros" need to be documented for insurance purposes.  Moreover the appro documentation needed to be produced reasonably soon after the jewellery was left, and what was tending to happen was that the firm's own secretaries, because of the difficulties they experienced with this salesman's handwriting, were putting off typing out the documentation --  with the result that it occasionally got mislaid in the office or overlooked. It required a lengthy session with the client in order to actually "learn" the characteristics of this salesman's handwriting. Once we got the knack of it, we found we were actually able to read it quite easily. A positive spin-off from this job is that we know we have been instrumental in keeping a good salesman in his job and keeping his customers happy.