A long time ago when I was just a wee girl navigating the streets of this Big Bad City, I worked for an agency. Not just An Agency, but one of The Big Three. When the Big Three were actually The Big Three and not the Big Four, back when Agencies were all chrome and glass and Miami Vice suits and fast-talkin' guys with a wee bit too much hair gel and women in power suits with shoulder pads and...oh, wait. Each morning I'd pull into the grey glass building and nose my car past the assigned parking spaces with the BMW's and the Mercedes and the SAAB convertibles (do agents drive those anymore?) down to the basement level where the assistants parked. I'd wedge my battered silver Jetta next to the BMW's and the Mercedes and the SAAB (not-convertibles) as assistants came in two varieties: those with money, and those without.
I'll give you one guess which one I was.
I'd trudge upstairs in my "Agency Costume" which usually was compromised of a knee-length skirt, a blouse, a battered black jacket because my boss told me I had to wear one, and my shiniest 12-eye patent leather doc Martins. Because there wasn't a dress code when it came to footwear.
I picked up her mail and took the elevate to the second floor, where I traced my way through the maze of cubes to my own. I'd fire up the WANG word processor (this, people, is not a joke, and yes, it was 1995!), start my boss' tea and leave it to steep on her desk, along with the dailies and her copy of the call sheet, and then return to my desk. The WANG stored files by number, and although I normally coded letters in numerical order, there was one file I worked on diligently every morning.
/open 666
How to Survive [name redacted] : A User's Guide.
Some days I'd re-read previous entries, some days I'd add more. It was a document utilized both to save my sanity and to hopefully, one day save someone else's as I didn't want to be there forever. Three days into my agency experience I knew I wanted to be a writer, and had set about reading every client spec I could get my hands on. However, I also had to attend to the business of my job. Working at an Agency is high-stress: you're trying to get your clients read, auditioned, met. A forgotten phone call or a script that doesn't get there directly affects someone's livelihood, and half my time was spent tracking down payments and calling back messengers and promising the worried voice on the other end of the line that we weren't ignoring them, and that [redacted] would get back to them as soon as humanly possible.
But what your life was like was an immediate consequence of what your boss was like.
The WANG is long-gone, as are the pages I wrote. When I finally left - it took me over three months to quit - I printed it out and put it in a black three-ring binder for the temp (no one was willing to take the desk permanently) and told them to guard it with their life. As I left that day, I saw the manual in the garbage. I asked the temp about it.
You're a terrible human being, the temp [redacted] told me. She's perfectly nice.
I called in two days later. Someone new answered.
Is [temp's name] sick? I asked.
What happens if you have to call in sick?
You don't call in sick. The people in the Agency Trainee Program who work the mailroom do not want to work your desk, because they know your boss is insane. So they will call a temp. The temp will come in at 9:30am, because that's what our official start time is. Except that she knows that you get here at 7:00am, which means she doesn't roll in until 10:00am. She will then call you, and because she is such a "cool boss" (her words) she will give you the option of coming in or bringing the temp and herself along with the Rolodex to your house so you can roll calls, saying it will "be fun."
She is not joking.
No, no, the voice on the other line told me. She quit. I'm the new temp.
I admitted who I was.
I'm dying here, she confessed.
Check out document 666, I told her. And good luck.
Why I didn't print out a copy of the manual for me, I'll never know. I've attempted to recreate some of it, which you'll see in the coming weeks.
What kind of crazy bosses have you had?
