Ad Nomad

by Eric Jay Sonnenschein

  Meanwhile, Moran flew between coasts and into spasmodic, redeyed rages. “There’s a fucking conspiracy to get me fired!” he shouted.

  “Can anybody join?” muttered Jon, a sex-addicted art director in the next cube, who designed porn websites in his downtime.

  Late nights, long-distance accusations and data manipulations battered Dane. He awoke one Saturday morning with a hand twisted in a claw. That afternoon he drove Becky and Iris to buy shoes. Seeing them leave a shoe store with boxes under their arms and smiles on their faces made the fourteen-hour work days worthwhile. However, as he waited in the car, Dane realized his fingers were red and swollen and he could not make a fist. Was this arthritis or a sign of heart disease?

  For weeks Dane’s body revolted. His morning stiffness was so intense that he required ten minutes to roll out of bed. He could not lift a shirt over his head or grip a toothbrush. Aching knees forced him to shuffle backward. Dane had described inflammatory diseases often enough to know he had one. Some jobs hurt his pride but Form Icon was hazardous to his health.

  Dane received cortisone shots in his hands and electrostimulation in his elbows. He wore splints over both wrists while he keyboarded, ate, relieved himself and slept. On restless nights, his splints smacked him in the face, resulting in a black eye and facial bruises, which made him resemble a battered spouse.

  One evening, the account head, a nervous woman named Nelly Gukos, demanded that Dane turn three pieces he wrote into two. Between six and eight o’clock, Dane worked feverishly to complete the assignment in order to be home before midnight. At 8 PM, Nelly phoned with a new thought. She asked for the two pieces to be turned into five by the end of the night, Pacific Coast Time. To meet the new deadline, Dane would have to work all night—and for what?

  He exploded.

  “I give you 100% and it isn’t enough!” he shouted. “My predecessor gave you 25% but he was never around for you to torture!”

  “The client comes first!” Nelly declared indignantly.

  “The client will come first—to my funeral!” Dane said.

  “Is that a death threat?” Nelly demanded hysterically. Clearly, she wished to come first to his funeral. Two account executives, one creative director, a traffic coordinator and two client samples of a schedule IV sedative were required to sedate her.

  The next day, Moran waved his forefinger, like a blunt instrument, in Dane’s face.

  “Are you trying to get me fired?” Moran yelled.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” Dane replied.

  “That’s horseshit!” Moran bellowed. “Hard work kills no one. I saw a North Korean on CNN set the world record for non-stop working—sixty hours straight—and he was smiling!”

  “He had gas! Look at me!” Dane pleaded. “My hand is a claw. My arm and back are a mess. My wrists are in splints. I need twenty minutes to get out of bed.”

  “It takes me a half hour!” Moran retorted competitively.

  “You have a drinking problem.”

  “So do you. You don’t drink enough!”

  “I can’t hold a glass! Or put on a t-shirt or hold a toothbrush.”

  “If copywriting is too strenuous,” Moran sneered, “look for an easier line of work—like opening doors at ATMs!”

  All that prevented Dane from being fired was that he had an easy act to follow. His predecessor rarely worked a full day while Dane put in sixty hours a week. His west-coast overseers complained about his attitude but did not order his removal.

  Dane had hit the pharmaceutical advertising lottery—a job so undesirable that he could not lose it. While his position did not make him proud, it gave him leverage to vent his sickness on his California overseers. When they berated him because the studio confused colors on a chart, Dane chided them that he was no art director.

  However, he overestimated his clout when it came to creative fulfillment. His only chance to put new work in his book came in business pitches. The problem was that he had no art partner—again. Dane produced more headlines and stick figures on copy paper. During creative reviews, Dane’s kindergarten stick figures were jeered at by colleagues.

  Dane complained to Moran, who responded with eye-bulging desperation.

  “I’ll be fired any second now and you’re bitching about your lack of creative opportunity? Listen Vincent van Gogh-Fuck-Yourself…it’s not my problem!”

  “Excuse me for needing job satisfaction,” Dane insisted. “I can’t be a flunky.”

  “Oh yes you can. Watch me!” Moran growled behind clenched teeth. “You’re not supposed to like your work. It’s work, not fun…”

  When Dane had his first paper route at age ten, these were his father’s words to him before he ran off with a restaurant hostess.

  Moran once boasted to Dane that his strength was not intellect but greasy guile—a claim he often verified. He diverted himself from his chronic job insecurity by keeping Dane off balance, praising Dane’s professionalism when he called in sick, only to demean his talent by changing his copy. When Moran particularly liked Dane’s headline, he made a point of spoiling it by inserting another verb. When Dane pleaded for the reinstatement of his verb, Moran fired a terse email. “If you continue to harass me when I work with your copy, you will exhaust my patience.”

  Despite the compromise and mediocrity Dane had endured over time, he continued to view himself as creative. He believed he had the skill to find the right words and the strength to stand by them. How gutless would a writer be not to defend his copy? “Be passive or get fired”—Moran’s ultimatum—reduced Dane to a survival mantra of “Don’t care,” “Grab paycheck” and “Shut up.” Dane’s creative core was at risk. Could he let Moran mutilate his words without disabling his ability to find them?

  Yes, he could! A voice in Dane reminded him that by changing his copy, Moran paid Dane advertising’s highest compliment. As Dane processed this enlightenment and made peace with his Inner Prostitute, a headhunter phoned. Like psychic buzzards, recruiters sensed work distress from great distances. Was Dane happy in his current situation? No, Dane admitted, he was not happy.

  Dane interviewed for a new job, which provided immediate pain relief. When he returned to Form Icon, a creative review was in session. Moran and Seamus Mallarky, the executive creative director of Form Icon, were praising his stick figure concept. “Good work, Dane. Glad you could join us,” Moran barked ironically.

  A young stranger was in the room. Dane sensed the newcomer’s presence with the visceral instinct that detected a rodent darting into a crack. On closer observation, the stranger’s face betrayed inappropriate excitement. Dane identified him as a new hire. As questions festered in Dane’s Petrie dish brain, Moran introduced the neophyte with his peculiar grandiloquence. “Our body creative has been deficient in the cogitato, the penetrato, and the resonato that youthful enthusiasm can infuse. I believe that all of the above are incarnate in this man. Please welcome Jon, our new writer on the LA business.”

  The hire of a new writer for Dane’s account was not only news but a special bulletin. Of greater human interest was the new writer’s utter lack of advertising training and experience. He never attended The Institute of Design. He never saw his work go up in flames and out a window. Dane felt more insulted than threatened. Did Moran think Dane could be replaced by a tyro?

  Moran took Dane aside.

  “Our usage of your talents has been suboptimal, for which I take full discredit,” Moran admitted. “You have so much to give that is going—ungiven. You’re a teacher to your core. That’s why I want you to mentor young Jon.”

  “Great!” Dane replied. “If I do a good job, will you fire me sooner?”

  “Wrong. We hired Jon to help you. So you won’t have to stay late.”

  “How can he help me if he knows nothing?”

  “You’ll teach him.”

  “If he’s my assistant, why wasn’t I part of the hiring process?”

  “It’s a great question to which I have
no answer,” Moran admitted. “You’re right. We should have told you. But things have been crazy and we forgot.”

  Moran’s plan to have Dane collaborate in his own elimination was so guileful that he pimped it as a promotion. He upgraded Dane from the cart by the lady’s room to a windowed office. Dane instantly identified his office and title as the trappings of a powerless cog. He watched Moran mentor young Jon, walking and talking with the neophyte as he punched his arm and flicked his forehead. Moran had found his ideal junior copywriter and they bonded in full view. Moran even installed his protégé at Dane’s cart by the lady’s room, a sign that he was on the fast track for advancement.

  A major pitch for a blockbuster drug put Form Icon in creative delirium. Dane went into his art director partner’s office to work out concepts and headlines only to find Moran’s protégé expressing his ideas.

  Dane observed the preparations for his own termination. With anger and defiance, he set out to show Moran—and the world—that he was no passive, overpaid, unwanted has-been. If Form Icon didn’t respect his expertise, he would quit before letting Moran fire him. So he quit. In his letter to the agency partners, he cited his reasons for leaving: long hours, weird schedule and no creative outlet.

  After he submitted his resignation, Moran charged into his office.

  “You blamed me, didn’t you?”

  “It had nothing to do with you,” Dane said.

  “You don’t get it, Great Dane! Some people in this agency are looking for any reason to fire me. You gave them one!”

  After that awkward moment, Moran disappeared. Dane thought he was in the L.A. office but when he received no surveillance emails from his boss, he asked the porn-loving art director if he knew Moran’s whereabouts.

  “The street. Moran got canned,” the art director reported. “I thought you knew. He was ranting that it was your fault. If I were you, I wouldn’t stick around. And by the way, awesome, Dude!”

  The art director gave Dane a high-five and offered him 25% off on his next porn website design.

  Initially, Dane was flattered. He had no clue that he deserved such a lavish gift or that his departure was significant enough to blame on anyone. However, pride was an unstable element in Dane’s mind; it swiftly degraded to worry. Moran was volatile, divorced with children, in need of constant income; in short, he was the Hollywood prototype of a man who goes berserk. Only his job had prevented him from attacking Dane on numerous occasions. Now that such restraints were gone, would he not indulge his proclivity for violence?

  Dane requested a meeting with the agency partner, Seamus Mallarky. With rotund dignity, dark, middle-parted hair, roundframed glasses and a bow tie, Mallarky was the dapper New York entrepreneur incarnate. He greeted Dane with the courtesy of a seasoned diplomat.

  “So you’re leaving us,” Mallarky declared with a hint of rue. “Form Icon wasn’t all you thought we’d be.”

  “I had to leave,” Dane said. “You hired someone much cheaper to replace me.”

  The agency partner did not contradict Dane.

  “So what can I do for you now?” Mallarky asked, while blowing a few stray hairs off his forehead.

  “I want you to know Moran had nothing to do with me quitting and I hope it didn’t get him fired.”

  “The two phenomena are unrelated. You have my word,” the agency potentate said, strumming his lips with his finger.

  “The problem is Moran thinks they are related. I heard he’s angry being out work. I worry he’ll do something desperate. You know Moran.”

  “I’ve known Michael Moran for twenty years. So what’s your point?” Mallarky stroked his round cheeks, lifted his glasses off his nose and widened his eyes.

  “Don’t you think he might come back one day for revenge and—go pharmaceutical?”

  “Go pharmaceutical? What are you talking about?”

  “You know—bullets instead of bullet points.”

  Mallarky laughed, shook Dane’s hand and said, “No worries, Dane Bacchus. I’m sure Michael Moran will land on his two big feet!”

  Despite Mallarky’s reassurance, Dane’s worry was unwavering.

  He cut short his two weeks notice and took his family out of town for a vacation. He told no one where his next job would be, hoping Moran would lose his trail.

  8. A LOW POINT IN A HIGH PLACE

  Prior to Moran’s firing and his own resignation, Dane had proven he was more than word fertilizer by getting hired to his highest position ever.

  The title of Associate Creative Director assuaged Dane’s injured pride. After accepting the offer, his ego was further massaged when he was invited to lunch at a French restaurant to meet his new colleagues. Dane was never welcomed to an agency with such pomp but never started a job with such misgivings.

  For one, he was the only man on a team of seven women. The second problem was that he would supervise a science expert who knew he had been hired to offset her creative shortcomings. Could Dane avoid her wrath and sabotage? What if other team members remained loyal to her?

  When Dane settled in, his new agency felt less like a promised land than a final resting place. The offices had the exhausted air of an abandoned factory, cavernous and cluttered with empty cabinets and obsolete equipment. Through ceiling holes, bundles of insulation, wires and tubes dangled like herniated guts. Women, who predominated on staff, worked in cubicles, with their backs to the corridors so they were easily spied on. “To watch their backs,” employees hung curtains from shower rods across their cubicle entryways and propped mirrors near their computers. Dane interpreted these customs as quirks and ignored them. Whenever he felt queasy about his new workplace, he reminded himself, “I am a group copy supervisor!”

  Dane’s worst fear was directed to his supervisor, Cindy, the one interviewer who objected to hiring him.

  A Tarot reader once advised Dane that to succeed he needed to make an ugly woman feel beautiful. Dane tried to fulfill this prophecy with Cindy, a gargoyle with blue framed glasses. To induce Cindy to like him, Dane tried to make her feel important by checking in with her regularly to let her know what he was doing. Despite Dane’s courteous attention, Cindy showed no interest in his activities. She much preferred to detail her ailments, felt and imagined, and her fear of dying at her desk. She popped vitamins addictively to prevent this grisly fate.

  Making Cindy like him was proving to be Dane’s toughest career challenge. However, after she related certain adverse events from her career, he no longer took her antipathy for him personally. Cindy once had a boss who called her to his office each morning for two years to shout in her face for no good reason. It was a trauma from which she never recovered and for which she exacted revenge by transference to male subordinates.

  When Dane came to Cindy’s office in his second week, she said, “Ummmm, errrr, Dane, I have heard complaints about you. Your radio annoys people.”

  “But it’s on so low I can barely hear it,” Dane said.

  “It’s too loud,” Cindy insisted.

  “I can’t wear ear pods because the radio gets no reception close to me and I have no windows.”

  “Are you Maria in The Sound of Music? Turn off the radio,” Cindy barked.

  After this scolding, Dane did not visit Cindy as often. However, after his second week, his confidence ran high. The client had praised his work and his paycheck was the largest to date. When he knocked on Cindy’s door, he believed she would say, “Bravo, Dane!”

  Cindy descried Dane out of the corner of her blue glass frames. “I’m glad you came in. We need to talk,” she said.

  “Is it about the brochure? The newsletter? The video script? They all went well.”

  “No,” Cindy sighed. “Dane, we have high hopes for you which you seem determined to dash.”

  “What is it this time?” Dane blurted.

  “Don’t take that tone with me. People complain that you talk loudly on the phone. Don’t you know how to behave?”

  “Someone co
mplained about my phone calls?” Dane asked in disbelief.

  “Your obtuseness is what disturbs me most,” Cindy replied. “Surely, you have worked in other offices. We want your creativity and intelligence, but how long can I tolerate your bad attitude and behavior!”

  Dane was shaken. Apparently, he was failing to make Cindy like him—to such an extent that he could be fired.

  “I don’t know what to say. This is new for me,” Dane said.

  “Get off your high horse, Dane,” Cindy replied coldly. “I’ve been in this business thirty years and I’ve heard about you.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he protested without conviction.

  “I think we’ve talked long enough,” Cindy said.

  The next week Dane was summoned to a conference room and fired. Cindy said that he caused too much trouble. Dane’s best paying position lasted 27 days.

  It was his worst career misstep of all time. The calamity happened so swiftly that Dane could not make sense of it. He became a job pathologist and autopsied the fiasco. The cause of firing was clear: Dane had overreached. His fabled gut had failed him.

  Case 7-C

  A SERIOUS SIDE EFFECT OF COPYWRITING

  9. CHILLING IN THE HOT ZONE

  In business, no consideration is given to casualties of work felled by injury or disease. No special ramps are mandated by law for people incapacitated by the brutality of their occupations. The wounded must move on with their damage or be left behind.

  In his year long, full-time job relapse, Dane paid a spiritual forfeit. His self-confidence was shot; his emotional health was fragile. He needed to return to the freelancer’s fold and uphold its code: to work solely for financial ends.

  He received a call from Barber & McGill, an agency with a dark reputation and a sexy slogan: “The Hot Zone.” The founders envisioned their agency as a foundry of ideas, but the office layout was a dark maze of crooked hallways, unexpected stairways, fluorescent lights and shadows.