Would a mid-sized regional paper company office of that time period have roughly the staff as depicted in the show (US or UK)?
From what I remember of the US version, there was 1 regional manager, 1 assistant to the regional manager, 1 receptionist, 1 HR, 1 QA, 1 CSR, 1 supplier rep, 1 intern, 3 accountants and 5 salespeople in the main office and then one warehouse manager and a bunch of warehouse staff downstairs.
Is that a realistic staffing ratio?
My guess would be that accounting and HR would be handled at headquarters, rather than the regional office. I don’t think they’d have a receptionist since they so rarely have outside visitors.
In an office full of sales people, I always wondered why they had to have a QA guy there. In-show, Creed obviously didn’t do much. But what was he supposed to be doing?
Quabity Assuance
Seriously though, they wouldn’t need any accoutants. Unless the accountants were actually just data entry people calling themselves accountants.
Also the assistant-to-regional-manager was a made-up position, fulfilled by a salesperson.
I think there was a plot decision to have an office full of people making work for each other, which is why you have a QA guy and a supplier rep with no engineering/production/shipping guys. One accountant for state tax stuff maybe, the other two could be book-keepers if there were any books to keep…
A manager and a back-office of 9 for 6 sales people and a warehouse could certainly be possible if some of them were doing useful jobs. Or if it was setup to send people too. Or left over from a takeover. Or a failed expansion. I’ll give you the receptionist as an executive perk. HR has been colocated to handle the warehouse and sales teams. CSR is inbound sales. But the QA guy and the supply rep and two of the accounting department should be located somewhere where something is happening, not in a meaningless regional sales office.