Long Time, No See

Yes, I know.  It's been awhile.

One of my friends asked "So, have you abandoned the blog?"

No exactly.

I mistakenly assumed once I had been relieved of my duties with my former employer that there would be scads of time to blog.  It has proved to be just the opposite.  Forced to scramble for work like a cheap Vegas hooker, I haven't had a break in the action in over a month.  Which is a good thing.  If I know one thing about my business, it's that everything will grind to a screeching halt this week for the rest of the year.  Had to bank as much as possible to make it through the lean holiday period and into 2013.

And screech to a halt, it has.  I have one remaining job, a vanity project for a high powered agency executive in LA.  She's been less than diligent about providing feedback and notes.  I had hoped to have it wrapped up by today, but she just informed me I should have everything I need "first thing in the morning".  On Thanksgiving.  Before she jets out of town to Aspen.

"Ill be checking e-mail between runs, so hopefully I can see something first thing Friday."

Riiiiiight.  I'll just blow off my family Thanksgiving for your little puff piece.  What do you think this is, Walmart?

"I'll be back from Aspen sometime Monday."

OK Honey, break a leg.  No really... break a leg.

The upside of all of this is that it would appear, knock wood, that there will be nothing but time to blog in the coming weeks.

So my apologies for the absence.  I'll make it up to you.  I promise.

The Curse of the iPhone

I love my iPhone, but there is a problem and it is growing exponentially.

Not with the technology, but with the morons who use it.

This is increasingly what I deal with:  I do a job.  I email in the final file.  Within hours I receive a hearty "Looks Great! Thanks!" from the client.  Days or weeks later comes the angry email... "What is this?  This isn't what I approved!  It's totally different!"

I don't know what they think happened.  Do they think I snuck into their office and swapped out the file like it was Folger's Crystals?

By now I know the drill, so the first thing I ask is...

...Did you approve this on your iPhone?

And the answer is always yes.  It was approved after looking at it on a 3 inch iPhone screen.  While driving.

What the iPhone has done is it has unshackled stupidity.  No longer do you have to be content being incompetent from a corner office, you now have the freedom to be incompetent on the go.

This was a particular problem with the last job.  Typically, once I had finished a job it went to our proofreader.  We actually had a full-time, dedicated employee who's sole job was to proof all the copy on every job.  Her name was Dorothy.  Within hours, Dorothy would email in her A-OK and the job would go off to the client, and within hours of that, the client would shoot off an angry email pointing out all the typos.  But that wasn't Dorothy's fault.  Dorothy was a busy girl.  Dorothy was rarely in the office.  Dorothy was doing her job on an iPhone.  As you can probably imagine, when you proof page after page of 9 point type on an iPhone, things get missed.  Dorothy couldn't be expected to catch things on an iPhone could she?  That would be silly.  So it was my fault.

Which brings me to this morning.  I had designed a logo for a sporting wear company.  The owner emailed me on Wednesday asking for a minor change and asked me to re-send the files.  I did so immediately.  This morning I received a text...

"You never sent me the files I requested on Wednesday."

But, in fact, I had.  I found them in my "sent" file.  I texted him back and said that I did in fact send them but that I would send them again.  And I did.  Fifteen minutes later I texted him again, asking if he had received the files this time.

"No."

We tried again.  Again he said he didn't receive them.

Finally, I did the unthinkably retrograde thing.  I called him.

"So you didn't receive any of the files?  I've sent them three times.  Are you getting any email from me?" I asked.

"Well" he said, "I do receive email from you, but they take too long to download on my phone so I just delete them."

I took a minute and counted to ten.  I explained that the emails he was deleting were in fact the files he requested.  The reason they were taking a long time to download was because they were, you know, his JOB.  They were image files.  They were big.

"Oh" he said.  "I don't have Wifi.  Can you send them faster?"

Oy vey.

I told him I would reduce the file size but that it would lower the resolution and might be hard to make out on a iPhone screen.  He said OK and so I did it.

He emailed back.

"These look fuzzy.  Make them bigger."

I get the impression I will be on this Merry-Go-Round all day.

Work For Hire

You would think by now I would be used to this, being unemployed.  By my reckoning this makes six times in the last fours years.  First, after I was downsized out of my long-time agency job in 2008.  And again, six months later at the next agency.  Then followed nine scary months with no prospects whatsoever as we drained our savings and my 401k until out of desperation more than anything else, I took the job in Shitsville.  That agency folded like a cheap card table five months after we moved there.  There was the brief stint at a real estate firm before the owner decided his wife's cousin's son-in-law could do the job cheaper.  He was 18.  Then there was the magazine that went belly-up after two issues and finally the most recent fiasco in the fast paced, psychotic world of online social media.

I'm beginning to think my job is actually being jobless.  Without any benefits of course.  Every time I'm able to panhandle some freelance work, the government declares me Fully Employed! and of no need of assistance.  I've lost track of how many jobs I've applied for online.  It has to be over a thousand by now.  I stopped keeping count somewhere back in the 700's and that was in 2010.  My experience has been that every time you fill one out and hit "send" it just goes down the memory hole.  In four years I had never received a reply to a job application.

Until last week.

I had found a job posting online for a cable channel.  I can't say which one because the industry is small and people talk.  Suffice it to say it's core demographic is shut-ins with cats.  I had filled out the online application but didn't expect anything to come of it since nothing had come of any in the past.  So imagine my surprise when I was contacted a few days later and told the V.P. wanted to meet with me.  The interview was set up for yesterday.

I was so thrilled just to get an interview out of the deal I didn't really even care that it was for a channel I wouldn't be caught dead watching.  Somehow or other, if it came to that, I would make it work.  Once again, I was desperate.


So yesterday I schlepped to the San Fernando Valley. If anything, the logistics of getting the job would be worse than the last one, but at that point I figured we'd worry about that later, if the time came.

Initially I met with the H.R, director, a squat little man.  He ushered me into his office and asked if it was OK if he asked some questions and noted the answers. What was I going to say, "No"?  The first question was... "Name your three worst personnel conflicts at past jobs."

Are you fucking kidding?  Who the hell would answer that?  "Well, there was that one time when I beat my boss senseless with a coffee mug..."  I've had my share of office conflicts, but none I was going to share with this little Oompa Loompa.  I demurred and said none came to mind.  He continued... "We'll, if you did have a personal conflict in the office, what steps would you take to prevent it from escalating into anything violent?"

Was there some history of violence at the company which I should know about?

Mercifully, the V.P. I was to meet with buzzed him and said she was ready for me.

Jessica was her name.  She was a big girl with shoulder length dirty hair.  She was wearing a periwinkle sweater with food stains on it and a khaki skirt that hadn't seen an iron in years.  Here office looked like the home of a hoarder.  She was, I thought, the prototypical viewer of her network.  We exchanged some pleasantries and I scanned her office to get a sense of who she was.  Usually, in an interview with a creative director, I check the book case to get a sense of their aesthetic but Jessica's bookshelves were full of books on food. Specifically, dessert.

"30 Minute Cakes."

"30 Minute Pies."

"Rachel Ray Desserts."

"Microwave Baking."

Clearly, Jessica had a sweet tooth and time management issues.

She started to leaf through my portfolio, casually, thoughtlessly, as if it was a three month old issue of People in a doctor's office.  After about a dozen pages she looked at me and said...

"Your work is very clever and conceptual.  We don't do that here."

And that was the high point of the interview.

It was a long, sad, angry drive home.  I'm just getting too old for this shit.

Women and Children First

And so it ends, my so-called job.  Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Honestly, the writing was on the wall months ago.  Things had grown so bitter that the only question was whether it would end by being fired or with a nasty resignation.  In the end, it came down to the root of all evil... money.  As in, there wasn't any.

I'd actually worked for the company for over a year as a freelance consultant, back when it was a fly-by-night virtual operation.  It was already a somewhat fraught relationship when it ended up being purchased in March (for between $5 and $10 MILLION, if one is to believe the New York Times, and really, why wouldn't one?) by a multinational holding company.  With it came an infusion of cash and an offer for a full-time job.

The first problem was the matter of logistics.  Our new corporate overlords insisted the high flying company be grounded, and grounded in office space they already leased in a nearly inaccessible corner of West L.A.  A full-time job would require four hours a day stuck in traffic.

The second, and more concerning problem was the salary, which was laughably low.  It actually would've been a pay cut.  "But you'll have major medical" my boss protested.  Yes, and a $1000 gas bill each month.

We struck a compromise.

I would sign a short term contract for three months.  By that time the company would be am internet sensation and the cash would be rolling in and then they could offer a more big boy salary.

Never happened.

And I can't say I'm surprised.  One of my chief functions was creating the new business pitches and over the past three months I had done dozens of them.  Not a single one led to any new work.   And after watching my boss in action during one of the pitch meetings a couple of weeks ago, the reason why became clear...

My boss was a dick.

Arrogant, condescending and a pants-on-fire liar.  It was a huckster performance of epic proportions. If I was a potential client, I wouldn't let him park my car, let alone have access to my advertising budget.  We still had some existing clients, but there was no way those billings could cover the vastly increased overhead.  And so, with the money running low,  the decision was made to just let my contract expire.  The decision had been made that my position was expendable, at least until last week when they suddenly seemed to realize what it was I actually did.  That resulted in one final week-long flurry of stupidity, which is why I was missing in action from the blog.

I'm actually a little relieved.  I feel like I got the first lifeboat off the Costa Concordia (Titanic references are so 20th Century).  All the same, it's a little scary be unemployed.  Again.

Once more into the breach...

Medium Rare

The boyfriend and I have become fans of the "Long Island Medium",  the suburban New York woman who talks to the dead.

I wonder if she could contact my career?

It's apparently "crossed over" and I have a few questions.

Sell Baby, Sell

Call me old-fashioned, but when I first entered the advertising business the goal was fairly simple and straightforward...

Sell people more crap.

Maybe we did it with stunning visuals, maybe with a too-clever-by-half commercial, maybe with a jaunty little jingle or a celebrity spokesman or maybe we just bludgeoned people over the head with an offer they couldn't refuse.  Whichever path we chose, the hoped for result was always the same...

Sell people more crap.

I was summoned up to LA yesterday for one of our horrible, terrible, not very good marketing meetings, this one with a potential new client.

The meeting was scheduled for 9am, so of course I left at... 7am.

I was still an hour late.

And that very may well have saved my life because had I actually sat through the entire meeting I probably would've driven my thumbs through my own eardrums.

The meeting went on for many hours (with a break for lunch).  There were PowerPoints and four separate whiteboards which by the end of the day were covered with lists and diagrams and indecipherable marketing acronyms.  My boss didn't really listen much to the client, but in his defense, the client didn't much listen to him.  While one was speaking, you could see the other formulating their next barrage of marketing babble.  It was an endless buffet of word salad.

By the end of the day, a consensus had been reached.  We would move forward by:

"Reaching out to our core constituencies and engage the relevant communities in a proactive conversation that would leverage brand equity via all media channels to provide for a uplifting user experience that would result in positive outcomes."

In other words, we're going to try and sell people more crap.

How?

We didn't address that.

In fact, the "how" is increasingly seeming beside the point.  These marketing meetings are apparently an end all unto themselves.  I've yet to see one result in more work.  And this one certainly won't either.  Dropped halfway through the day as almost a throwaway line, the client offhandedly said "the ad campaign we launched last year has proven very effective so the plan is to carry it through all of 2013."

Oh.   OK.  Good to know.

Would've been better to know FIVE HOURS AGO.

But there 'ya go.  The Magic of Modern Marketing.

We are well and truly fucked.  But at least the hours were billable.

Summer Jobs

Honestly, I thought I'd be blogging much more this week, seeing as how I fully expected to be unemployed.

My job, such as it is, has been tumultuous from day one, but in recent weeks it had crossed over into abuse.  Twenty-four hour abuse, with demands coming it at 4 in the morning or the dead of the night.  Things escalated over the weekend and it seemed only a matter of when, not if, things came to a head.  And who would pull the trigger.  I can't say what exactly my boss was thinking (and Lord knows, I've been trying for months) but I do know my resignation letter has been sitting on my desktop, ready to go, since Monday, just waiting for the red line to be crossed so I could hit "send".  When that didn't happen, although we came close, I simply changed the date on the letter to Tuesday and waited for it to happen the next day.  And the next.  And the next.  And then today.

And then, like a scene out of "The Hurt Locker", most of the major bombs appear to have been diffused during a lengthy conference call this morning.  Now, suddenly, we're all singing "Kumbaya".  I don't believe it for a minute, but I'm hoping the faux goodwill holds at least until the new year.  Looking for work during the holidays sucks, unless you're aiming for department store elf and I think we can all agree I'm too tall for that.  Although, at the rate I'm going, I don't think we could rule out a slot as "Santa" for next year.

Summer for us officially ended this past Sunday.  We won't be going to the mountains as we traditionally do for Labor Day because the boyfriend will be out of town attending to family business.  I'm especially disappointed because tomorrow marks our 10th anniversary and we'll be celebrating it apart.  We'll no doubt make it up when he returns, but somehow it just won't be quite the same.

Sunday was also, coincidentally, the day I finally finished reading the biography of Steve Jobs.  I actually bought it last December and took it to the mountains to be my winter reading.  Then came the unexpected job offer and subsequent house sale and move to OC and months went by without a trip to the cabin.  We missed most of the Spring and it wasn't until June we began visiting more regularly.  And that's when I finally started reading the book.  A few chapters a week whenever we were up, week by week, month by month, until, with perfect timing, I finished a few hours before we left for the season.

Look, I'm a Mac guy going back 20 years.  I'm not one of those freakish people who camp out overnight whenever a new gadget goes on sale, but I would definitely consider myself a "true believer" and a Steve Jobs admirer.  So I was really quite anxious to read the book, which I found absolutely fascinating, but also a little disheartened to discover that there was one overarching impression you came away with after reading it...

Steve Jobs was a dick.

Brilliant, but a dick.

Genius, yes, but... a dick.

I mean... page after page, chapter after chapter, an unending litany of bad behavior and people wronged.  There doesn't appear to be a single person in his entire life he didn't fuck over at some point.  And he made absolutely no apology for any of it.  I kept waiting for the chapter where there was some sort of redemption, maybe when he discovered he had cancer, maybe after he had a liver transplant, maybe, I don't know, on his fucking deathbed.  Nope.  His theory until the end seemed to be that if you're a visionary, if you're brilliant, if you're ahead of the curve, then you can afford to be a dick to everyone around you because despite your bad behavior, you're somehow advancing mankind.

I suppose that's fair enough, as far as it goes, in relationship to Steve Jobs.  I mean, for better or worse, he's certainly advanced the way we see and interact with the world over the past twenty years.  It's a much different world since the launch of the iPod, and there's no further proof of that than the fact that the biography I just read may be the last physical book I ever buy;  I've already downloaded my reading for the coming Winter on my iPad.

And here is where the tale of Steve Jobs bodes ill for the future:

Most people are not geniuses.

Most people are not brilliant.

Most people are not pushing the envelope and ahead of the curve.

Most people are, at best, middle management.

And their takeaway from the book will be that the key to success is being a dick.

And the way I know that this is true is the way the boss ended the conference call:

"I believe in running a company just like Steve Jobs and by pushing people to do their best..."

No, you don't.

You believe after reading the book that you have a license to treat people abhorrently with no consequences.  Thanks to Steve Jobs, being a dick is now the goal.  And after this week, I think we can safely say... SCORE!

Notes From The Rat Race

Yesterday was my weekly schlepp into the City of Angels and it was demoralizing.  Not because of the two hour drive in and the two and a half hour drive home - that's already baked into the Monday Misery Cake.  It was demoralizing because it gave me a glimpse into what we've become.

I say that as someone whose been out of the day-to-day corporate rat race for nearly five years, working from home and unexposed to the daily stupidity and venality that comes with office life.  And it was based on two observations.

The first was amusing at the time, but depressing the more I thought of it.  Once I finally reached the office after the tortuous drive in, I hobbled my way to the bank of elevators that go to the lofty floors of our corporate overlords.  I was a little taken aback to see half a dozen people waiting since the elevators are generally pretty swift and it was 11am, before the normal lunch rush.  I noticed every single person had their head bowed staring at their smart phones, some texting, some not.

And then I saw the open elevator.

It must have just arrived, I thought.  Otherwise, why would everyone just be standing there?  And yet, no one seemed to notice.  I made my way on my one good leg and my hulking laptop bag to the elevator, excusing myself as I squeezed past everyone.  No one looked up.  I ambled into the lift and assumed at least SOMEONE would notice the open elevator.  Nada.  As the doors closed, I gazed out on these people, heads down in prayer, praying to their little smart phones.  Now that I think of it it just seems like a sad commentary on where we are in the Year of Our Lord, 2012.

The second observation was just disgusting.

Like Lesotho, our corporate owners have plopped us down in the center of one of their other acquisitions, a fairly well-know and (formerly) respected ad agency.  We occupy a land-locked cluster of cubicles surrounded by agency hipsters.

Now, I have nothing against hipsters; I like to think I was one myself back in the day. Although the current wardrobe has changed and I think not for the better.  Wearing board shorts and bow ties to the office definitely makes a statement, but I think not the one you're aiming at.  Unless that statement is "douche bag".


The other notable hipster change is the attitude, and that's what I found so alarming.

I was set up to work for at least part of the day in the office and for hours I was able to overhear the ongoing hipster conversation.  There were five of them and they were all gathered together to brainstorm ideas for an afternoon creative meeting.  And the conversation went something like this...

"Did you see that new Nike campaign?  We should definitely rip that off."

"For the outdoor campaign, I found these cool Coke billboards to copy."

"We need a slogan... how about this one from Nintendo?"

"Look at this logo Urban Outfitters did... we barely need to change anything, not even the font..."

And on and on and on.  Cruising the web and stealing other people's work without a care in the world.

It didn't take long to call it a day.  When someone had the balls to mention that all their ideas, coming as they did FROM OTHER PEOPLE, didn't really hang together as a cohesive campaign, the leader in the bow tie helpfully reminded them that they just had to show SOMETHING, it didn't necessarily have to be good.

With what passes for "work" out of the way, they could get around to the really important business... shopping for new jobs.  They all started trading gossip and job prospects regarding various other shops.  Someone mentioned that he had heard that one of the hotter boutique LA agencies was hiring and everyone let out a collective gasp.  Then one of the other guys piped up and said...

"I would SO love to work there, but my entire portfolio is ripped off from their work."

There was a slight pause, and then someone else gave him the reassurance he was looking for.

"You should go ahead and do it anyway.  It's not like anyone gives a shit about this stuff anymore."

It just made my heart sink.  Remind me again why I got into this business in the first place.

Working Stiff

This was supposed to be a blog about Orange County living but it turns out there is precious little Orange County living going on because my temporary part-time job has completely eaten my life.  And yesterday I just about reached my breaking point.

My boss is utterly convinced that everything I do I can do off a laptop, and technically, he's right.  In practice however, it's nearly impossible for countless reasons.  Let's start with the obvious:  at home my monitor is 30 inches, my laptop is only 13.  Once I open any of the software I normally use, there are so many palettes and control panels taking up real estate that I'm left with a work area smaller than my phone.  Now, I'll admit that our months living here in Tinytown have taught me how to work creatively in small spaces, but this is beyond my abilities.  I've repeatedly pointed this and other complications out to the boss, who could give a shit.  He still expects me in the office every Monday for our pointless staff meetings.

The meeting is at 11am, so to make it on-time I need to leave by 9:30 at the very latest.  Knowing there were various projects out in various stages of the approval process, around 8:30 I sent out an email to everyone ( we'll use marketing bullshit and refer to them as "stakeholders" ) explaining that I would be leaving in an hour and if anything needed revisions they should speak now or forever hold their peace.  Or at least hold their peace until later that afternoon.

I heard nothing from no one.

At 9:30 I left for L.A.

At 10am, somewhere near Norwalk, my cell phone rang.

There were revisions.

Many revisions.

Due by 11am.

"Do you have the files with you?" my boss asked.

Even if I did, which I didn't, how exactly did he think I would accomplish this while driving  on the fucking 105?

"Do you want me to turn around?" I offered.  I wasn't yet even halfway into the office.

"No" he said.  "We'll sort it out when you get here."

I arrived at the office at 10:55.

I poked my head into the boss's office to say hello and he returned the favor by saying...

"You need to turn around and go back."

Didn't even stay long enough to get one of the complimentary danish.

I finally got home around 1:15

Nearly four hours wasted, half the day gone.

This morning I'm looking for a new job.

Circle Jerk

 
Un.  Fucking.  Believable.

I have glimpsed our digital "New Media" future and all I can say is... we're screwed.

I drove in for the corporate wankfest, a brisk 90 minute ride.  Each way.  The meeting itself lasted 55 minutes, which was about 50 too long. I was introduced to our new Holding Company Overlords.  They all seemed pleasant enough in a fake, insincere way.  They all talked in big, booming marketing voices, the type of voice that will fill a room, brimming with self-confidence, a voice that says to the world you're not to be trusted.

There were about 15 of us total and we made our way to the glass enclosed conference room.  Everyone took their places around the round conference table with their laptops perched in front of them.  I, wisely, had left the laptop at home, working instead off my new iPad.  Had I brought my laptop in, I would be expected to work and I had no intention of doing that.

The laptop screens formed a circular wall around the table, which everyone hid behind.  It looked more like Mission Control, and in a way it was because while we wouldn't be launching a man to the moon, we would be launching a viral campaign for a snack food.  More on that later.

The oddest thing about the meeting was that no matter who was speaking, no one ever made eye contact.  Everyone just sat intently gazing at their computers.  What they were looking at or what they were doing I couldn't say.  I was taking notes on mine, or at least I was at first, but after about 20 minutes I found myself composing a suicide note.

We quickly dispensed with Old Business, or at least I think we did; I really wasn't paying too close attention.  Then came New Business.... a new client, a snack food.  At this point the floor was seized by Brian, a Marketing VP from New York.  Brian is a dick.

The goal, he informed us, was to launch a viral campaign for this new snack food.  In particular, he said, the client had asked us to reference work that had been done for one of the competitors.  At that point he pulled up the website of the agency that had created the original viral videos on the massive conference room flatscreen and for the first time, everyone looked up from their laptops.

We then proceeded to spin through half a dozen short videos.  They were obviously lavishly produced, yet done in that fake amateurish way.  Market research has shown that people distrust slickly produced videos, but tend to be more open to work that looks "authentic", so now most agency work is done in a practiced "fake authentic" style.  Did I mention all the videos involved a puppet?  Can't leave that out.

I thought all the videos were stupid but the rest of the room seemed captivated. Once we were done with the screening Brian moved to front of the room and proudly announced that the entire series had been done for under $500,000!  Imagine that!  Half a million dollars!  With a puppet!  Brian dramatically ended his presentation by noting that after the videos aired, the competing snack food registered 20,000 additional "likes" on their Facebook page!

Let me see... 20,000 people in a country of 400,000,000... It would appear this brilliant viral video campaign reached about .00005% of the population.  And they're the type of people who hang out on the Facebook page for a snack food.  Money well spent!

There was more, much more, but I simply can't go on.  Just typing this out, I've lost the will to live.  Maybe one day I'll write about the asinine ideas that were bandied about, ideas so stupid they make LOL cats seem like the height of urban sophistication.

Perhaps the worst part about the meeting was news of the next one.  Monday.

looks like I might get to finish that suicide note after all.

Hell: The PowerPoint

How ever did this Grand Republic survive for nearly two hundred years without Middle Management? Surely that has to rank with the building of the pyramids and the carvings on Easter Island as one of the great mysteries of life.  To think there was even a functioning economy without PowerPoint... Boggles the mind.

Even today, the world's last Superpower seems to get along just fine with only one Vice President. That's just crazy talk!

We have 12!

And that's just in Marketing!

And I get to meet them all tomorrow, as our Benevolent Overlords have flown in for a "Meet 'n Greet"...

..."Dog and Pony Show"...

..."Bread and Circuses"...

Choose your metaphor.  Whatever it is, I'm driving in for it, like it or not.

You have to forgive my child-like wonderment of the ways of corporate America.  I come from the Entertainment Industry, which operates more like a whorehouse.  Deals are made with a handshake and a drinking binge, and there's no misunderstanding that can't be smoothed over with hookers and blow.  Especially if you work for Disney.

So this should prove to be interesting.  And informative.

And everyone who knows me knows I live to learn!

To Have And To Hold

147.

That's how many e-mails I received yesterday from work.

Let's assume I spend one minute reading and responding to each e-mail.  It's a rough average; some were simply ignored while others required lengthy replies, even more time-consuming if you factor in having to edit out all the F-bombs before hitting "send".  That's over two hours spent on fucking e-mail!

How the hell did it get to this?

Well...

Two years ago I was desperate for work and a former colleague put me in touch with a friend who needed some help.  He owned a "new media" company.  What is that?  I still ask that question today.  "New Media" evidently means whatever you need it mean to at any given moment.  We were introduced through e-mail and never actually met.  In fact it would be months before we even spoke on the phone.  The projects were sporadic at first and all over the map, but by the summer of 2011 business had picked up to the point that he was my main client, accounting for half of my billings and most of my time.  Last December we finally met for the first time at the company Christmas party.  The company was all of five people.

At the time we were still living in exile and I was desperate to find a way to move back into civilization and thought that at the rate the company was moving this could turn into a real, full-time job.  As late as last January my client disabused me of that idea; he said it would be at least another year before they could consider hiring someone full-time.  Two weeks later, the boyfriend landed the job in Orange County, and since I work virtually we made the move.  I continued to work for my client from our new home base in the OC.

But then in February, the client got "the call".

Here's the thing:  most  people aren't aware of this, but every ad agency, PR firm or "new media" company of any note is owned by one of four mammoth, global Holding Companies.  Two are based in New York, one in Paris and the last in Dublin.  They own... EVERYTHING.  Once a company, of any size, through reputation or work, lands on the radar of one of these companies, it will get "the call".

Basically, they make you an offer you can't refuse.  They offer to buy your company at an exorbitant price making you set for life.  Not only will they buy your company for millions of dollars, they will pump untold riches into it.  I know this from experience from my last agency.  Once the owners of that company received "the call", the company went from 30 people to 140, we moved into swanky new offices and I got a 30% raise.  What's not to love?

At any rate, my client received "the call" in February and the first week in April I was summoned to a meeting in his office.  I didn't even know he had an office.  And that's when I first learned he had been bought.

He offerend me a full-time position, which was thoughtful.  It actually paid less than I was billing him at the time, which was not.  The Holding Company was insisting that he take up residence in an office building they own in Westwood where they warehouse all their acquisitions.  So not only was he offering me a cut in pay, he was insisting on four hours of gridlock a day to boot.  I politely declined.

Ultimately, we hashed out a temporary deal where I'm not an "official" employee and can still work from home and keep my other work and teaching commitments and I only occasionally have to schlep into the office.

The big difference now is that we are but a tiny cog in a global machine.  Our global overlords own 330 companies and have 66,000 employees.  66,001 if you include me.  And I'm not so sure I want to be included.  They way our benevolent rulers have structured the company, we are now a "subsidiary" of one of their other companies in Milwaukee, while at the same time we are "partners" with a firm in New York.  Suddenly I don't have one temperamental client to answer to, I have 20.  And they LOVE to chime in with -email.  About everything.

I know it's selfish, but I'm sitting here hoping for some sort of electro-magnetic pulse or solar flare or anything to knock out the e-mail.  Just for a little bit, just so I can get some work done.

It's only 11am and I'm already up to 62.

Free Pass

The boyfriend and I managed to escape to the mountains for the weekend, but not without Work trying to big-foot all over our plans.

I had uploaded what I thought to be my last job for the week around 4pm on Friday.  I received a curt "thanks" from the boss and as far as I knew I was done.  According to our wildly inaccurate company calendar, my next deadline wasn't until Tuesday and that job was already nearly finished.  So off to the mountains we went.

Because I'm a masochist, I checked my email Saturday morning.  The panic had started about 8pm Friday night.  There were emails from 8pm, 10, 10:10, 10:35, 11:01, 11:37, 4am(!), 6:15, 8:13, and 8:55.  Each marked urgent with a cute little red exclamation point.  It appears no one had bothered to look at anything I'd submitted all week until sometime Friday night and now there were emergency revisions, reorganizations and "re-thinks".  There were also two new jobs that had somehow mysteriously "fallen through the cracks" and yet were still due Monday.

Now, my usual response would have been to fire off an email reminding everyone that I don't in fact operate a fucking drive-up window and operators are not standing by to take your call.  But I have learned from past mistakes, so I did the prudent thing... nothing.

I figured a little fear would be character building for everyone involved, so I waited.  After 12 hours of radio silence (and a couple of cocktails) I finally responded.  I politely apologized for the delay in my response.  More in sorrow than in anger I mentioned that perhaps if someone had bothered to give me a heads up DURING NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS, I might be in a position to be helpful.  Bt they didn't, so I wasn't.

Now, the truth of the matter is that I know how these people operate.  I had actually anticipated this and loaded up the laptop with all the current work.  I could have easily accommodated everyone at the expense of my precious little free time in the mountains.  But I chose not to.  Partially, because I find the casual disregard for what I do offensive.  But more importantly, there was a greater goal...

Avoiding the Monday strategy meeting.

The Monday strategy meeting is a weekly Bataan Death March.  And I'm not referring to the two-hour gridlock I'd suffer through to get there.  The Monday strategy meeting is a joyless endurance event, a time suck of epic proportions.

It wasn't always so.

Once upon a time these were referred to as Creative Meetings.  A chance to get together and talk about the work and ideas and inspirations.  And they rarely lasted more than an hour.  But then the marketing people took over and anything creative was kicked to the curb.  "Marketing" was invented for people who wanted to work in advertising but had no talent or creativity.  Marketing people are perhaps the least imaginative people on the planet.

Marketing meetings are evidently judged by their length, and anything under three hours is considered a failure.  And what do you fill three hours with?

Bullshit.

Marketing bullshit.

Three hours talking about "leverage","social engagement" and "digital integration".  "Viability" and "benchmarking" and "brand extension".  Things need to be "customer centric" and "game changing".  They need to be "organic" and "trending" and... just fucking shoot me.  What does any of it mean?  Beats the hell out of me - it might as well be a three hour lecture in Klingon.

I want to make a set of Marketing bingo cards....

"Shifting the Paradigm?"  Check.

"Crowd sourcing?"  Check.

"Value added?"  Check

"Synergy?"  Check

"Granular?"  Check... BINGO!

"Synergy" is so common, that would have to be the free space.

Every few weeks a new buzzword arrives on the scene to captivate the marketing people like shiny keys dangled over a baby.  Lately it seems to be "siloed", something to do with "vertical integration".  Like a silo.  Or something.

At any rate,  by leaving all these last minute "emergencies" unfulfilled over the weekend, the magic email came from the boss around 8:30 last night...

"I think it would be best if you just skip the meeting tomorrow.  There's too much work due to have you wasting time driving in."

As the marketing folks always say, it's "win-win".

The Catch

I am an independent contractor, a "freelancer".

Not by choice.  As we fast approach the fourth anniversary of my ultimate downsizing, not a day goes by that I don't actively look for a full-time job.  Actually, "actively" isn't quite right since it's really devolved into a pointless morning ritual, like playing the same lotto numbers week after week without winning because of the fear that the one week you don't play will be the week your numbers come up.  So every morning I go through the motions, knowing full well that the continuing sorry state of the advertising business and my advanced age (falling well outside the desired demographic) mean the odds of full-time employment are slim to none.

Freelancing does have it's advantages.  For one thing, in this digital age, it's all virtual.  I can work from home, which the dogs feel is an ideal arrangement.  I can actually work from anywhere.  And more importantly, I can pretend to work from anywhere.  Most of my clients are in LA, but none of them ever knew about our two year exile in Bumfuck, thanks to my 323 area code cell phone.  I've come clean to most of them about our move to Orange County, since that's a marginally more respectable address, although several I still leave to believe I live in LA.  Additionally, I save a fortune on car upkeep and dry-cleaning.  I can work in shorts.

There is, however, a considerable downside.  I rarely leave the house.  Clients tend to believe you operate a 24/7 drive-up window and have no reservations about firing off revisions at midnight on a Saturday and expecting to see something at 6am Sunday.  There are no such things as "days off" or "vacations".  And you can forget about luxuries like... insurance.  And then there's personal hygiene.  Most days I opt not to shave.  The boyfriend thinks I look like the Unibomber, but really, why bother?  If he didn't come home for lunch most days, I'd probably forget to shower too.

The first couple of years were brutal, but by last year things seemed to markedly improve.  I now have a stable of about a half dozen steady clients and it looks like I'm on track to double what I made last year.  That being said, I still craved the stability of a full-time job and would periodically put out feelers and drop hints to my clients.  The response was usually along the lines of "not fucking likely."

In particular, I'd hit up my best client.  He takes up most of my time and accounts for half my billings.  As recently as January, before the sudden and unexpected move to OC, I'd prodded him about a more permanent solution, to which he said "maybe in a year or so."

So imagine my surprise when I was summoned up to Hollywood for a meeting a few weeks ago.  It was all the more remarkable because I had only ever met him in the flesh once, at his company Christmas party last year.  We don't even actually speak all that often, everything more or less being handled through email and text.

It was an 11am meeting and not wanting to be late, I left Orange County at 9.  I barely made it on time.

The meeting was brief and to the point... he now had some angel investors and was planning on staffing up and going big.  He offered me a full-time job.

Oh, how I had waited to hear those words!  The joy was a little short-lived as I suddenly reflected on the two hour gridlock I'd just sat through to get there.  He evidently sensed my concern because he assured me I could still work from home and maybe only come into the office one or two days a week.  Since I already teach in LA on Monday evenings, that seemed completely manageable.

For the next couple of weeks I was walking on air.  Although the official offer hadn't yet come through and we'd yet to hash out the numbers,  I was counting the days until I was back to being a functioning member of society.

The first worrying sign came in an email.  I was told the investors would like a list of my hardware and software requirements.  They were fairly adamant about company work not being done on personal machines.  Connecting the dots meant that the company machine would more than likely be located in the company in Hollywood, which more than likely meant I would have to be there more than a day or two during the week.  More like... every day.

Not to worry, I told myself.  It wasn't working in Hollywood I minded, it was the commute.  But I couldn't help but notice the office in Hollywood sat atop a subway stop.

And we live near a train station.

With a combination of Metrolink commuter train and subway, I could be at the office in an hour.  That's half the time it would take to drive.  I suddenly had my "Mad Men" fantasy, talking the train into the big city!   And with the free Wifi on the train, I could work.  Or blog.
Everything would work out great!

Then this past Saturday came an innocuous enough email.  A request from the client to design a splashy announcement about the expansion.

And the MOVE.

Turns out the investors are insisting the agency move to a building they already own.

At Wilshire and the 405 freeway.

The busiest intersection in all of Los Angeles.

Which just last week started a multiyear freeway improvement.

Which promises a state of permanent "Carmageddon" for the foreseeable future.

I briefly freelanced for another agency near there before we were exiled out of LA.  In rush hour traffic, it could take an hour to go a mile.  We lived 8 miles away and it took two hours to get home.  And that was without the freeway closures.  In the current conditions, I can see that easily being a three hour commute.  Each way.

This morning I received a cheery e-mail telling me i could expect the formal job offer from the investors any day now.

Now I'm not so sure I want it, although in reality I have no choice but to accept it.  It's the first concrete job offer in four years.  Although, in the end, it will probably kill me.

I mean... it's the fucking 405.

Best Laid Plans

We were both looking forward  to a nice, relaxing weekend in the mountains and after the week we'd both had it was very much deserved.  And then they closed the road.

Not a road really... the freaking 5!  Interstate 5, the main artery of California... CLOSED.  For a forest fire.

I heard the traffic report as I was out getting supplies for the weekend.  Surely they'd open it I told myself.

Four hours later... still closed.

We'd wait until morning, we said.  It'd be a shorter weekend than we'd like, but we'd still get out of town.

This morning it was still mostly closed, so we threw in the towel.

Just as well.  My main client did a work dump on me around 3:00 yesterday and I was looking at the probability that I'd be inside on my laptop for the entire weekend.  Instead, I'm sitting here on a Saturday afternoon in front of a computer looking out on what looks like a nice day. I wouldn't know, I haven't been outside today.

It will all be worth it.  I hope.  It looks like this might turn into a full-time gig, with all the attentive benefits, including a pre-rececession scale salary.  It may even be enough to trade up to an adult sized apartment.  Fingers crossed.