Dane also knew cakesmanship was a gamble. It could get stale and send the wrong message. There was the case of Ivan Blinsky, a language professor Dane knew from his teaching days. Blinsky was a lumbering man with thick lips and bulging eyes, who panted and spoke with a lisp. Blinsky’s prestige at the university had dwindled to nothing despite his seniority and Ivy League degree. His classes were often cancelled and his department was eliminated. With no office of his own, Dr. Blinsky tramped across campus in a frayed raincoat and damp sneakers, with a bag of books and a box of donuts, which he handed out wherever he parked his carcass. Dane now understood the stark motive behind Blinsky’s sweets. Each donut beseeched, “Don’t hate me!” The bribe worked. People did not hate Ivan Blinsky; they pitied him.
Now Dane had one more question to ask himself in traffic: was he turning into the Ivan Blinsky of advertising?
3. THE BOSS
Every job, Dane had learned, began and ended with a boss. He knew this because he had started and ended with several bosses.
Dick Spilkus, the executive vice president/executive creative director at Mentos, had thirty years of advertising experience. A private man with a grave face, Dick spoke softly but growled when vexed. After decades of uncertainty and struggle, Dick had a survivor’s irony, which yielded sparks of sardonic humor when his dark mood lifted.
Dane spent time with Spilkus to learn about Mentos but mainly to learn about Spilkus. Dick had the irascible, weary air of an ambivalent family man dragged through life by responsibilities. His son was in a Caribbean dental school and his daughter was a college senior. Dick was always on the phone with industry friends, cadging an entry-level job for his daughter. Editing her résumé was Dane’s first assignment and he would have considered it demeaning if it had not given him a chance to bond with his boss.
“You’re a good father,” Dane said. “I wish my dad did this for me. Come to think of it, I wish I had a dad.”
Dick laughed in hiccups in response to Dane’s “joke” only to settle into moroseness.
“It’s not for her,” Dick replied. “She’d rather sit on her ass. My accountant says I have too many people on the payroll. I’m trying to get her off the payroll.”
The conversation hit a patch of temporary silence.
“So how’d you spend your weekend?” Dick asked Dane.
“It was quiet,” Dane admitted modestly. “I went swimming and clothes shopping with my daughter, got a parking ticket, watched basketball on TV and vacuumed.”
“Exciting,” Dick deadpanned.
“That’s my life,” Dane replied. “What did you do?”
“Saturday night my wife and I went to the Galleria in White Plains.”
“Isn’t it a long way to go for a mall?” Dane asked, breaking a rule of office conversation by posing a question to which he knew the answer.
“A forty minute drive,” Dick said. “We don’t shop. I like to walk around and look at the people.”
“Don’t you have people closer by you can look at?” Dane asked with reckless indiscretion.
“Yeah, but I see them all the time.”
“Aren’t there malls in Connecticut?” Dane asked, doggedly trying to make sense of Dick’s weekend excursion.
“Our malls are full of teenagers. The people at the Galleria are elegant and upscale.”
Dane ran out of questions before the dialogue caused permanent damage to his professional relationship with Dick. Spilkus shifted to business.
“I know the creative tools you bring to our shop. That’s why I hired you,” Spilkus said. “But I need you to manage here. You’re supervising a writer and three editors.”
Dick summarized the agency’s copy department and its problems. In two minutes, Dane noted that the copy department had more problems than employees. His first mission was to reconcile Barbara, the senior writer, and Ralph, the senior editor.
“I want you to interview them,” Dick said. “Learn who they are as people…”
“As opposed to who they are as plants or insects?” Dane asked. By injecting inappropriate humor in a serious conversation, Dane was playing fast and loose with the rules of office conversation etiquette.
He got away with the wisecrack or so it seemed. Dick responded to Dane’s sarcasm by pressing his tongue between his teeth to make a vile, sucking noise.
“Get to the root of the conflict and cut it out. Make them work together,” he said. “Advertising is a people business. And one more thing. Make sure Barbara shapes up.”
“Is something wrong with her?”
Dick grimaced and stroked his neck to check the closeness of his shave.
“Where do I start? She’s insubordinate. Unreliable. Often absent. She’s a piece of work that needs working on.”
“May I ask a dumb question?”
“Go ahead. Answering them is my specialty.”
“If Barbara’s so bad, why does she work here?
“A good question gets a dumb answer. I don’t know. She has her good points, but I haven’t found them. That’s your job. Now get out there and manage.”
Case 5-B
MANAGING THE MOMENT
4. MANAGE WITH CARE
Managing the copy department was a step up in Dane’s advertising career and a step back to teaching. Like any employee who ever smarted from an overseer’s abuse, he pledged to do things differently when he was in charge and to rectify every wrong he ever experienced. This was his chance to be the boss he never had.
Dane did not merely embrace the chance to lead and solve problems; he craved it. Judgment and objectivity were instincts that had lain dormant in him since he entered corporate life. Now he could hone them into fine instruments. Dane did not lust for power. His mission was to help people collaborate for a common good. He wished to be a boss he would respect, not resent. In this regard, one item in Spilkus’s briefing troubled Dane. Dick expected Dane to boss people around, especially Barbara, the other writer. Why would Dick turn one writer against another, man against woman? Was he giving Dane sanction to bully Barbara like it was his sexist birthright?
Meanwhile, Ralph, the senior editor, had to be reckoned with. He was on probation for fighting with Marie, a tempestuous account executive/traffic manager and former bartender. What did probation mean at Mentos? Dane had no idea.
He would need to make determinations and enforce them, but first he had to investigate. He needed to interview the conflicting parties.
5. THE RETICENT WRITER
Barbara was the first to be interviewed.
She stood at his office doorway like a curious spectator until he invited her in.
Barbara was slow, deliberate and taciturn. Before she opened her mouth, Spilkus’s assessment of her ran through Dane’s mind with the speed of prejudice. Barbara had florid cheeks, suggesting a penchant for drink. Vaguely overweight, she wore a large flannel shirt to cover her torso. Nonetheless, her pendulous breasts shifted when she moved, suggesting that her modesty had no need for undergarments. One exception to Barbara’s dishevelment was a well-cut mass of honey blond hair, the feature she clearly valued most. All told, she seemed a rustic recluse, insouciant of public opinion.
But Dane could not close the book on Barbara yet. As a manager, he had to see the data from different angles. Her appearance might yield alternative meanings, which fairness compelled him to explore.
Red cheeks could result from hypertension or a brisk walk with her pet. Exposed shirt-tails might be a fashion statement, a lack of affectation or no time for laundry. Yet, from all perspectives, Barbara was the most poorly groomed woman Dane had ever seen who was not a dog-walker or panhandler. He concluded that she was depressed.
Dane mused, “How can I manage her when she doesn’t manage herself?” And what would management of Barbara entail?
Dane’s first ever subordinate stared at him, frankly wondering when he would tell her why she was there.
“I’m Dane Bacchus. I’m a writer and I’ve been hired to
manage the copy department. I’ll need your help.”
Barbara stared at him without speaking. She apparently did not accept Dane’s empowerment, camaraderie, or his appeal for help.
Dane tried outflanking her intransigence with a chat.
“So how long have you been here?”
“Twelve years.”
“Were you always in advertising?”
“I was in public relations before I switched to textbook publishing. From there I moved to a magazine. Then I was a medical editor. Now this.”
“Are you from around here?”
“A few towns up the road.”
“That’s great. So you don’t have a long commute.”
“No. It’s convenient, I guess.”
Barbara had nothing to prove and less to say. She had worked for a science association and a magazine. She was a writer and editor.
Did she have a family, children? She did not say.
The interview encountered a long pause as Dane struggled for another job-related question. The silence deteriorated from awkward to painful and Barbara felt the need to put them both out of their misery.
“I’ve worked here for twelve years,” she said. “I live in the same house in Newster where I grew up with my dog. My brother’s a lush who works at a Valvoline car center. That’s about it. Do you need me for anything else because I have a project going out tomorrow.”
“You can tell I’m not very boss-like,” Dane said frankly.
“That’s refreshing. I guess,” she said dryly. “The last supervisor loved to play boss.”
Dane was encouraged by her response. Finally, he had said the right thing and the interview was going somewhere. He believed he was gaining her trust and might now obtain candid answers from her about the copy department.
“Dick mentioned a conflict in the department. It’s my job to resolve it.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks,” Dane said, ignoring the badness of her good wishes. “So can you tell me about it? The conflict?”
“One word—Ralph.”
“The senior editor?”
“Yes.”
“How does he cause conflict?”
“He changes copy without telling me, then justifies it by saying it has to be this way, according to the American Medical Association.”
“He doesn’t just correct grammatical mistakes and suggest changes for your approval?”
“He changes words—because he feels like it.”
“That’s outrageous,” Dane declared. After one minute he had blown his administrative neutrality. It must have been a negative record, he thought, like a fighter getting knocked out in the first minute of the first round. He needed Barbara to know he was a writer who shared her concerns in order to gain her trust, but not at the expense of objectivity.
“He’s an asshole,” Barbara explained.
If Dane agreed that Ralph was an asshole before even shaking his hand he knew he could no longer manage the department.
“We have to work with Ralph, so we can’t call him an asshole.”
“You can’t but I can,” Barbara said.
“So what do you write about here?”
“I work on all the ophthalmology products for Tiny Anderson.”
Dane’s gut told him Barbara was not impressed by him as a supervisor. She seemed unhappily secure in her role, a status to which he aspired. He considered asking her to speculate about why Dick disparaged her but this seemed a short cut to a cul-de-sac.
“When I talk to Ralph, is there a question you want me to ask him?”
“Ask him what makes him a flaming asshole. He knows everything but I bet he can’t answer that one.”
6. THE VERBOSE EDITOR
Dane met Ralph later that day. If Barbara was soft, ruddy and round, Ralph was all angles, bone, pallor, and edge. He dressed with meticulous accuracy. Every button was buttoned, the collar was crisp, and pleats, hems and creases were razor sharp. Just as creatives bound their merit in portfolios, the senior editor’s appearance was his best editorial work.
Ralph loved to talk but editorial review conditioned him to revise, which made his speech deliberate and slow. He qualified every statement and glanced away intermittently as if checking a teleprompter. Dane had known people to speak in digressions and asides, but Ralph was the first person he met who spoke in clean, annotated copy.
“I hear there’s conflict in the copy department,” Dane said.
“Really?” Ralph blinked with astonishment behind his metalrimmed glasses. “May I inquire as to your source for this claim?”
“My source? Dick Spilkus, the creative director. It’s common knowledge that you and Barbara have had your differences.”
Ralph shrugged. “It’s always been my policy not to get involved in office politics. I just do my job. Anybody who has read my journal, emails and letters knows this about me. I’ll provide them as sources if you like.”
“I don’t need backup and I won’t read your journal. I’m not accusing you,” Dane said. “Dick asked me to solve the problem. All I want is for things to run well.”
“That’s all I want!” Ralph affirmed with emphatic nods. “I am committed to doing the best possible job and to ensuring that every printed item this agency produces is professional and correct.” Ralph’s Adam’s apple was bouncing in his neck. “My views are documented in my application cover letter.”
“Yes. That’s great. And now we want the department to be cohesive and cooperative. Barbara said she was upset when you changed her copy without consulting her.”
“Oh, she was!” Ralph’s eyes widened. His head turned and bowed as if he had been slapped. In profile, his scimitar nose and sharp eyes made him resemble a raptor. “I never did that. It’s against my professional standards and against the Mentos editorial guide, which, by the way, I wrote.”
“So you’re claiming she invented the entire story. You never changed a word.”
“I have changed a word or phrase on occasion but only to make it consistent with language developed earlier. I never took creative license or inserted my words in the place of the writer’s.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Dane said to put the editor at temporary ease. He wondered if Ralph was disingenuous, delusional or obtuse—or any combination thereof. How could he deny a conflict with Barbara when she called him an “asshole” to his face? Did arrogance make him oblivious to others? Dane identified Ralph as someone who might not be reasoned with, only subdued. He dreaded such people but occasionally wished he were like them.
“I have utmost respect for writers,” Ralph averred. “But as an editor I must be sure that each piece is coherent, correct and consistent.”
“Yes, of course.”
“You can rely on me. You want things to run smoothly and I will do all I can to help.”
Ralph’s declarations of unity and support were so emphatic they gave Dane a headache. Each utterance was empty, yet correct—an editorial masterpiece, displaying a strict adherence to rules. Dane studied Ralph for a self-revealing tendency—and found one. While summarizing his background, Ralph mentioned he was a writer before switching to editorial work for a more stable income. The repressed writer inside Ralph might be emerging like a guerilla fighter to take potshots at Barbara’s copy.
When Ralph left, Dane was spent.
In his first round as a manager, Dane had settled nothing. He could not even induce the parties to acknowledge a conflict existed. He did not change Barbara’s mind about Ralph or prevail upon Ralph to speak candidly about Barbara. The one insight Dane extracted from this muddle was that both Barbara the writer and Ralph the editor occasionally did one another’s jobs and did not observe the professional boundaries between them. Dane still presided over a mess.
7. (Y) OUR TOWN
Frustrated by his sputtering attempts at managing his department, Dane fled the office and explored his new neighborhood, Winton’s upscale and scenic downtown.
When h
e started at Mentos, Dane believed working in Winton was a privilege that would reward him aesthetically. It was a lovely town with a long history and distinctive character. Winton was different from anywhere he had ever worked or lived.
A colleague once philosophized that where you worked meant less than what you were working on, yet Winton provided Dane a splendid exile. He found solace from his work anxieties in the quiet, congenial burg. Everyday circa 2 PM, he crossed the slush-covered bridge over the estuary that lifted and fell in the heart of Winton’s downtown. The Sasquatch River gave the bedroom community the timeless charm of an old, coastal village. Dane inhaled the redolent, ocean-saturated air and thought how great it was to be in such a novel environment. Winton was not New York but it was somewhere. It was a cultural landmark—colonial Williamsburg without costumes.
This was Goldfarb’s adopted home. Dane tried to visualize his downtrodden Integrimedicom friend in this haughty habitat. He traipsed by the YMCA where Goldfarb swam each morning before his commute, then proceeded up the Old Post Road past a ramshackle house standing in the rear of an undulating lawn like a craggy promontory. The spectral manse personified Winton like the Empire State Building symbolized New York. A gnarled elm hovered over the lawn like a demented sentry.
Within a week, Dane had taken in Winton. He had sampled a pastrami sandwich from the best deli in the Connecticut Gold Coast and devoured a slice from a family pizzeria serving pies to Wintonians for fifty years. Other stores on Main Street were generic—a chain pharmacy, a KFC and a Banana Republic—but Dane deleted these from his image of old Winton as an enlightened upper-class town, unique in Gold Coast County for welcoming Jews and minorities.
Yet, despite a gracious veneer and its unique liberal heritage, which set it apart from other exclusive towns, Winton conferred an aura of entitlement on its residents and issued visitors a tacit guest pass.
Dane felt like a “day worker” in Winton. Yet, pizza remained a great social equalizer and Winton’s pizzeria was equal to any in New York. He would not deny himself a succulent slice even when he felt out of place consuming it. His concentration enabled him to shut out all but the mastication of sauce, dough and cheese. And unlike New York playgrounds, where adults without children were barred, Winton’s venerable pizzeria welcomed all customers. However, among its regulars—high school students and moms with children in tow—Dane felt like a degenerate, particularly in his old trench coat.
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