The Training Room

SYNOPSIS (script attached below):

In an anonymous UK suburb, the minimalist sales floor of corporate giant, Blue-Sky Thinking Insurance plc, operates with military precision. Workers generally go unrewarded, but stellar sales can bring about a prestigious promotion to the promised land – the mysterious, ‘floor 15’.

Bookish salesman, GORDON (22), hardworking yet largely ignored, envies floor fifteen’s latest recruit, DES (23) – all city-boy aspiration and Men’s Health abdominals. Furtively applying add-ons to customers’ purchases explains Des’s impressive sales, a scam devised by his predecessors, and Des recklessly wears his skulduggery with pride.

Over celebratory cocktails, Des brandishes his new security pass, an accoutrement granted solely to fifteenth floor staff whose access to that floor is via a special lift at the posh entrance; plebs like Gordon go in at the back. Des produces his sales-floor headset, after being told to ‘retain it for training’ – some bizarre, but accepted, company ritual.

As per company protocol, contact between fifteenth floor glitterati and the plebs is strictly forbidden, and since Des ‘starts upstairs’ tomorrow, tonight is the pair’s adieu.

The next day, Gordon, like Des before him, sets about acquiring his golden ticket, and Gordon, gaining momentum with every arse-clenching and illegal click, is sales-floor guru by lunchtime. Come clocking-off time, Gordon has earned a meeting about a promotion with no-nonsense manager, LUCY (25).

The following morning, Gordon, his corporate worth finally acknowledged but his integrity trashed, ascends to floor 15 for training.

Gordon meets carnage in The Training Room – the company’s corrupt sales team all dead as haddocks, decaying and sporting, Gordon included, headsets and lanyards. Des has garrotted himself with his headset cable – the contraption’s only use after betraying its ‘owner’ via a hidden mic, as confirmed by recorded snippets of Des and Gordon’s previous evening’s choice, indiscreet cocktail-bar banter emanating from the room’s PA system.

As a petrified Gordon makes to exit, The Training Room door slams shut, and locks.