The Agency: Volume 2

An Occasional Series About a Marketing Madhouse

The boss I had before I joined the agency was a weird guy. Since that guy was me, I was used to his eccentricities. My next boss, however, was a study in extraordinary strangeness. At least I think he was my boss. I’m still not sure.

I had been freelancing full-time for a couple of years and decided to seek out something steadier. The agency had a senior writer position open that fit my experience, so I applied and was granted an interview.

My first meeting was with Jon, the copy director. He was odd-looking, as if an art student with a tremor had tried to draw Jerry Seinfeld from memory. He asked the expected questions, but he was fidgety and his eyes darted around like the Feds were closing in on him. When he spoke, his nostrils flared and un-flared like windsocks. Overall, he gave off an uneasy, peculiar vibe.

I passed muster with Jon and was next directed to meet with two other writers and then with John, the president. A helpful way to differentiate Jon from John is to remember that Jon is missing the “h” for “human.” But to make things clearer, I’ll refer to the president as John P.

In contrast to Jon, John P. was charming. He was also very intelligent and a terrific judge of character, as proven by his offering me the job on the spot. I told him I’d like to sleep on it. So I slept, called him, and the deal was done.

On my first day, I was shown to my office and given some paperwork to fill out. The two writers I’d met at my interview stopped by to welcome me, which was nice. John P. paid a visit as well, and dropped off some background material on a pharma client that he wanted me to read.

In a harbinger of the staggering lack of communication I’d soon come to expect, no one had told me my place in the chain of command. I assumed I reported to Jon, but I didn’t even see him until he scurried past my door on his way out at 5:00.

Over the next few days, it became apparent that Jon was snubbing me. Whenever we passed each other in the hall, he carried himself with the air of a bratty boy-king: “I will not look at you, I will not talk to you.”

I soon noticed that every day at precisely 5:00, he’d speed walk past my door with nary a glance in my direction. No one takes that much care to leave exactly at quitting time—on the dot, every single day—unless they’re trying to send a message to management. That message is twofold: “You don’t own me, and I’m a fucking asshole.”

Weeks later, as if a switch had been flipped, he began treating me as if we were old pals. He asked me to come into his office to brainstorm ideas for a line of absorbable hemostats, which are a surgical product you don’t want to ever need.

Jon spent very little time talking about hemostats and a whole lot of time talking about fountain pens. He owned over 50 of them. His walls were adorned with photos of fountain pens. He showed me websites devoted to fountain pens. He had me hold fountain pens. He expounded on the nuances between different types of fountain pens, as if rehearsing his fountain pen Ted Talk.

Now, I like pens. I think fountain pens are cool. That said, I doubt that even the inventor of the fountain pen cared this much about fountain pens. Plus, the speed with which Jon turned from pretending I didn’t exist to waxing rhapsodically about his inky obsession was downright demented.

As for my next meeting with him a week or so later, I’ll just give the highlight: I don’t recall exactly what he said to elicit my response, but at one point I found myself asking, “Wait, so you don’t believe in evolution?”

“No,” he said. “The evidence isn’t there.”

I know there are gaps in the fossil record, but this was—actually, I don’t know what this was. He said it with such confidence, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world that evolution is just some quack theory, the way flat-earthers think the rest of us are mindless sheep following the tyrants at Big Globe.

Jon’s extreme confidence in general was curious, given his deficits in personality, appearance, and skills. His girlfriend Emily was also a writer there. She was smart, cute, and friendly, so the office gossips liked to dig into the mystery of their relationship. From what I was told, he was controlling and treated her horribly.

One morning about three months into my tenure, I was riding with John P. to a client. He had just parked the car when he got a call from his brother Jim, an EVP at the agency. (You can read more about him in Volume 1.) Some shit had gone down back at the office.

A VP named Joe, who was the director of one of the company’s biggest accounts, had called Jim to tell him that he wouldn’t be coming to work that day, or any other day; he was quitting to start his own agency.

Joe didn’t say this outright, but we soon learned that he intended to steal his former account. Five other people in various roles, from project management to graphic design, were leaving with him.

Among them were Jon and Emily. Jon was the only one who didn’t formally quit. Instead, he’d instructed Emily to do it on his behalf. It was the perfect final act, but I couldn’t help but think he missed a chance to draft a snotty resignation letter with a choice fountain pen.

Ultimately, this mass defection worked to my benefit. I and some talented colleagues were charged with saving the account, which we did. And that, along with Jon being out of the picture, led to opportunities that I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.

So, although our time together was brief and bizarre, in a roundabout way Jon was instrumental in my career evolution. I hate to admit it, but the evidence is there.