Pressdog.com

I Got Sacked

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 05/16/02)

Right up front, I’m not bitter.

Really. I swear. A little scarred, but not bitter.

It was “nothing personal.” A “numbers thing.” In early January it went like this: “Bill! Love ya! Great attitude! Stud writer! You even do the shit work without being asked! Now get out. Here's two-weeks severance. Buh-bye.”

It was all so unattractive. OK, technically I didn’t get “fired” in the classic sense of “punishment for nearly bankrupting the company and/or exposing yourself to co-workers.” I got “laid off.” Downsized. “Position eliminated.” The end result was the same – joblessness.

Here’s the synopsis: I was a writer for an advertising agency for 27 months. The agency lost some accounts. Failed to win some new accounts. Everyone knows the Law of the Ad Jungle: lose accounts, lose people. Just part of life in the marketing big leagues here in tony West Des Moines, Iowa.

Kind of explains why, with some tiny exceptions, spending five years with one advertising agency is like spending 30 with any other business. When you work in an ad agency, you don’t spend a lot of time decorating your cube. You keep your packing boxes within reach.

Ad agency clients are a flighty bunch constantly besieged with propositions from other agencies. The other agencies come around, saying stuff like “What a great suit! Let me buy you a drink, or a car. If you had a REAL agency, you’d make a lot more money.”

And we did unto others when I was in the biz. Sending prospective clients ornate mailings that may or may not have featured a stripper popping out of a cake. So, if BMW, for example, ever falls for a hot, new little ad shop in a tight-fitting building, they’ll dump their Tony agency, Fallon Worldwide in Minneapolis in a heartbeat (perhaps via e-mail).

All those years of relationship will be worth a popcorn fart. Then a lot of Fallon people will have to pack up their cube stuff just like I did. Some of them will probably go to work for whoever lured the account away from Fallon. Hey, a guy has to eat. And it could happen tomorrow – or later today. Everyone at Fallon and every other agency understands that.

It all makes working for an ad agency more like being a long-term contractor than an employee. You KNOW the ax is coming, you’re just not sure when. Maybe you bail before it falls, maybe not. If you come to work and your largest client hasn’t fired you by e-mail, it’s a good day.

I took my January “downsizing” like a man. No shouting. No tirades. No scathing going-away e-mail. No frothing at the mouth. It doesn’t do any good and just makes you look bad. I knew the nature of the beast when I shook hands with it and took the job.

Oh sure, inside I was screaming, “Hey, what about Person A? The one nobody can stand to work with because they keep getting crushed against the conference-room wall by his/her ever-expanding head? Or Person B who wouldn’t cross the street to call someone else an ambulance? Or Person C who everyone knows hasn’t had an original thought in upwards of a decade? Or Person D who, you know, wears bad shoes all the time?”

But really, I still love everyone at my old agency. Even in my brief, torrid 27-month career I was on the other side of a couple cuts in which the cuttees were probably saying, “What about the no-talent, ego-freak troll, Zahren?” The ax fell near me for the first time was back in the late 90s when I worked for an internal corporate creative squad.

My friend, the wonderful and extremely talented Katie, wasn’t so lucky. She had just opened a soda at her desk when they came for her, two women managers who looked like they were having one of their top five worse days. They took her away and she never came back.

I remember standing by her cube, looking at her still-fizzing soft drink, thinking, “Shit, they got Katie.” It was Platoon-esque. “Not Katie,” we wailed. “So young and packed with talent. So willing to do the shit work without being asked. Such a great attitude.” And, she’d been there for a few years and I had been in the department for about 6 months.

I spent the rest of the day reflecting on just how much I sucked, let me assure you. I was pissed at myself for not getting fired instead of Katie. And I’m sure she was saying “How do they keep newboy ass-kisser Zahren and fire me?” Luckily, Katie transferred to another department for a few months until manager RJ could lay down enough smack to get Katie back.

When she walked back into the department I nearly wept. I apologized to Katie maybe 19 times for not being fired. (Let’s just make it 20: Katie, I’m sorry.) Katie currently throws major copy heat for an ad agency in Minnesota, who would be COMPLETELY insane to fire her even if the agency was technically going out of business.

As for me, God smiled and two weeks after the Great Schism and showed me another job right here in Des Moines. I’ve rejoined the corporate masses, writing for an internal creative group again. Good people. Very stable company. My situation is now a little more insulated from the vagaries of advertising budgets and nutty clients.

Still, I sit just 50 feet from the VP's office. I’ve got the route their down and the cube stuff box ready. You never know. That’s just life in the bigs.

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