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‘Really good, thanks. I followed up on some of your recommendations for vineyards to visit, you’ll be glad to know.’

He smiles, an act that I still find unnerving given how hostile he was when I first arrived. ‘Happy to be of service. Now, are you ready to show us your wares?’

‘I am. Is Leon joining us this morning?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’ve got a PowerPoint presentation. Judging by his reaction last week, I don’t think he’s a fan.’

Jeremiah’s smile widens. ‘You don’t need to worry about him. It’s me you need to impress. Oh, and our visitor, of course.’

‘Visitor?’ I’m not sure I like the sound of this. It’s taken me a week to soften up Jeremiah. If this person is half as troublesome as he’s been, it could derail my plans.

‘You’ll see. Shall we?’ He steps aside to let me scan my pass at the barrier, before following me into the meeting room. Most of the faces here are familiar now, even if I struggle to remember the names of one or two of them, or what their role in the project is. Leon is sitting in his usual seat, and his scowl deepens when he claps eyes on Jeremiah. I’m looking for a new face, so it takes me a minute to work out who the mystery visitor is.

‘Jeremiah tells me you’re going to start feeding back to us this morning, so I thought I’d sit in. I hope you don’t mind,’ the newcomer says.

‘Umm, not at all,’ I stammer. The last time I saw Sarah, she was giving me tips on how to handle Jeremiah last Tuesday, so her presence here today is enough to throw me off my stride a little. Jeremiah has obviously picked up on my unease, and I find myself wondering if he deliberately engineered this situation to put me under pressure. It’s just the kind of thing he would do. The ceasefire was evidently temporary, although I am curious to see how he interacts with a female boss, so maybe I might learn something useful.

I take my time setting up my laptop and connecting it to the screen. Outwardly, I’m trying to project the image that I’m completely unfazed by Sarah’s presence, while also desperately trying to buy time to get back the peace I felt until I stepped into this room. After a couple of minutes, our corporate title slide appears on screen. The image is of a woman picking some very red tomatoes off a shelf and grinning from ear to ear, with the NGRS logo on one side.

‘Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second week of workshops,’ I begin. ‘Thank you for all the time you spent taking me through your current business practices last week. I’ve collated that information, and my aim this week is to share some recommendations with you that we can take into the detailed design workshops next week.’

I look around the room, taking care to make eye contact with all the people I’ve identified as key players. Sarah is watching me carefully, Jeremiah is fiddling with his pen and Leon is staring down at his pad and frowning. It’s not as frosty as last Monday morning, but the atmosphere is still decidedly cool.

‘I always like to begin with this slide,’ I tell them, hoping my well-rehearsed joke will soften them a little. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all find happiness as easily as this lady? She’s only buying tomatoes but, from the look on her face, the experience has made her day.’

Nothing. Sarah looks bemused, Jeremiah is staring at me blankly and Leon hasn’t even looked up. Great. I’m starting to understand what the term ‘dying on stage’ means. So much for my confidence on the way in. Time to move things along and see if I can get them to engage in some of the detail, at least.

‘So, the first thing I want to look at,’ I continue as I advance the slide, ‘is the way you’re grouping products together, and the way those groupings flow through the stores. You told me last week that the product grouping is largely dictated by the buyers but, as I hope you’ll see, this is leading to some strange combinations that will undoubtedly make it harder for customers to find the products they want. This is, in turn, going to be having a direct impact on your turnover.’

‘Are you saying my layout planners are incompetent?’ Leon practically bellows. ‘Because that’s what it sounds like to me.’

‘Relax, man,’ Jeremiah says dismissively, which I know from experience will only inflame Leon more. ‘She’s got a point. My wife went into our local store at the weekend and it took her ten minutes just to find the firelighters for the braai. Turns out they were with the bleaches and other cleaning materials.’

‘Of course they were,’ Leon snarls. ‘All those things have toxic chemicals in them so we group them together.’

‘See, from a buyer’s perspective, I understand that,’ I say soothingly. ‘You probably have one person who knows all the rules and regulations around products that could be toxic, and that grouping makes perfect sense to them. But, as Jeremiah’s wife’s experience shows, that doesn’t help the customer. You’ll have much happier customers, and therefore higher turnover, if you put the products into logical display groups that make sense to the shopper, and then a flow through the store that helps them as well.’

‘We can’t just go moving fridges and freezers about,’ Leon persists mutinously. ‘Those things are plumbed in. It would cost a fortune and we’d need to close the stores while we did it.’

He really is spoiling for a fight this morning. Even Sarah is looking at him quizzically, I notice. This could work to my advantage if I play my cards right. I just need to keep my cool and be the adult to his petulant child.

‘You don’t need to do that,’ I reassure him. ‘The equipment is fine as it is. It’s just the way you’re displaying stuff in it.’

‘Such as?’ Jeremiah asks, evidently keen to score as many points against Leon as he can.

I put up an image of one of the floorplans they shared with me last week and use my laser pointer to highlight as I speak.

‘Is there a particular reason why the dairy products are all spread out and intermingled with things like pâtés and meat pies?’ I ask.

‘If you’re having a cold pie, you might want some cheese to go with it,’ one of the planners, I think his name is Lethabo, offers.

‘Is that how the customer thinks?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just how we’ve always done it.’

‘I would suggest that cheese should be in the same aisle as other dairy products, such as yoghurt, butter and cream. Pies would go well with things like dips and other snacking items. That’s how the majority of your competitors are doing it⁠—’