Self, how did I get here? Part III

I really didn't feel old when I started the job. I was going to be a Senior Media Buyer at one of the world's largest agencies in one of the world's largest buildings, in one of the world's largest cities. I was buying the home market, a coup, and a sign that I was still at the top of my game.

The set-up was different; no window office like I had grown used to. The place was growing so fast and so bustling with this New Business that I was to work on, that all the new people were sitting in cubicles. No problem!

What also didn't seem to me to be a problem was the fact that, as I looked around at my new group, I realized that not only was I the only person over 40, but none of them were even near 30. Again, no problem! I've always been able to get along with people younger than me: don't push it, just be yourself, be nice, be open. And of course, there was always KittyKitty (hereinafter referred to as KK). If you haven't yet read Part II, she was my boss, also over 40, and had a name that I felt was more naturally suited to.....well, you get it.

On that first day when lunch time came, I saw My Group gathering together with their coats to Do Lunch. In the spirit of the team, I got my coat and headed their way. My radar and intuition were on overdrive: in a friendly and laughing way, the group said hi, and waved me right past. Ha,ha, as I raced to my imaginary appointment. Have a good one! Okay. No lunch. Got it. And as the days went by and every small overture was met with a blank look, I realized I was just too foreign to them and would have to bide my time and let them get used to me (like a wart or a tumor). In the meantime, I realized that KK had no such problem with The Kids. They gathered in her office like Little Buzzy Bees around The Queen. She talked to them about boys and parties and fashion.

In the years since I had started in The Business, I had acquired a family and had had my fill of the media parties and after work drink set. I was good at my job, fun at work, and would attend the extracurricular events that I deemed important. I had worked at places where people had families and had pretty much grown out of the must go/must be seen crowd. I thought that, since KK was married and had kids (Really! At home and in school!) she and I would be generally on the same page. But whenever I mentioned her daughter, or --and this was really a faux pas -- my own children, I got The Look. Strangely similar to the one I got from The Kids when I would make a comment about whatever the group was talking about at one of our endless meetings. Here's an example: Before our Monday morning meeting, KK asked if anybody had anything to tell about what happened to them over the weekend. I mentioned, Oh, I found out I won the Academy Award contest for guessing the most award winnners. Everyone there had entered at a big luncheon for the entire media community, they knew exactly what I was talking about. Dead silence. Not even a, Whadja win? Not even from KK, who you would think was trying to educate these tiny minds.

Because our account was just starting up, things were a little slow to get going and we had a little time to get to know each other, and to get used to new equipment and computer programs. That is, I sat in my cubicle literally in the center of a room bursting at the seams with people, while they shouted and laughed over my head at each other. As it happened, most of these people had worked together before, and with KK (the products of a mass layoff elsewhere). So, while they hit the
ground running with their same buddies, and already knew the system, I was the only REALLY new person.

So you can see the disaster this is headed to: isolation, no communication, no back-up or support from manager or peers.
If I had a question, and I had many about this new computer program I had come into, it was hell getting it answered. No matter who I talked to, the question in the eyes was, "I have to tell you this? Shouldn't you know everything at your age?"
And then the smirk and the running to gossip when I left. Of course, if we were all learning a new program at the same time, this wouldn't have been a problem, but these people couldn't carry a conclusion that far.

There were times when actual important information did not come my way, because a change in our work would be mentioned casually to one person then spread by word of mouth. The word never came to me, and my work would be handed in wrong, the deadline not met, and no allowance made for the lack of information. Just The Look. And the growing feeling that I was not Working Up To Expectations.

The last in a string of not-very-able assistants KK assigned to me, was a young guy right out of college, his first job, no experience. This made my job all the harder because I had a tough market list (four had become twenty, including the all-important Home Market). This place also had all the other previously discussed problems in spades: too few people (half the buyers eventually left and were not replaced); more and more volume (additional markets added on to the few remaining buyers); requiring more and more information (entire departments were eliminated and the work passed back to the buyers); and making the buyers go back again and again to demand moremoreMORE for less.

There was the time I passed my boy assistant's desk and saw that his screen saver was a picture of The Beastie Boys. I asked, "Are they fighting for your right to party?" referring to one of their songs that I somehow remembered. No kudos for actually knowing music more recent than Barry Manilow. His answer: The Look, and "I don't like that CD." Okay, then. I thought if I was low-key with him, eventually he would come around. I even got him a nice tie for Christmas. Really, it was nice. The guy at the store picked it out. No, I can't say I ever saw him wear it.

I always acted professionally and did things the way I had always done them. Correctly, I believed. One day, I wrote my boy assistant an e-mail explaining that I would be out at lunch, and if a certain party called, please take down the information he would give. Later that day, I received in error a forward of my e-mail that had been passed on with a snarky note to the effect of, This is one of the good ones! Twilight Zone: What's funny about this? Who is he sending it to? How many people did he send this to? Who thinks I'mstupidandridiculousandhowmanyandhowcanIwalkdownthehallandfacepeopleand................

I decided I would tell him I got the message and I wouldn't "tell" and then he would think I was okay after all and maybe things would be better. I did tell him. I got The Look. And some kind of denial that made me sound a little crazy. So.

I continued to do my job, and actually got a good review and a raise. But it had gotten to the point where people walking down the hall didn't even bother to look at me anymore. I was Invisible. And Ridiculous. And Scum. And fighting for my life. Because I reallyreallyreally needed this job. And the way I felt, I couldn't possibly go anywhere else to interview for another position. I couldn't sell myself in this state. I no longer believed that I had the slightest idea what I was doing.

There was no room anymore for the things I had learned in the business: the art of negotiation, the development and use of contacts, the building of an effective media schedule. Now it was all about moving as fast as you possibly could, cranking out paper, faxing requirements to salespeople and collecting their bids the same way. Everybody was required to provide you with EVERYTHING NOW so what was to negotiate? These kids were like robots, operating keyboards like machine guns, spraying numbers into little squares and piling up the paper like so much carnage. They were born in the computer age, they don't know anything else. Don't want to know what it was like to actually know what the difference was between one radio station and another. Because now there really isn't any difference - they're all owned by the same company and run by computers, too.

I was working 12 to 14 hours a day, sometimes not leaving my desk even to go to the restroom. KK was getting downright mean - she would come into my office and shriek at me, and she would do ridiculous things like refuse to have anyone cover my desk while I was out on approved days off - then attack me when a deadline wasn't met because the work hadn't been done in my absence. Then she took my coveted Home Market away from me and gave it to one of The Kids - even though my performance in the market was unquestioned. The Kid didn't so much as ask me for a phone number, even though I had bought the market for 25 years. I called all my reps and let them know she would now be the buyer and I was sure they would enjoy working with her. That's what professionals used to do.

Of course, I knew KK wanted me to quit, but I was insane by then and racing against time. I knew in my heart that this was my last job in advertising. I was broken, crumpled, and empty. I hung on for dear life, working almost constantly, not taking time to put in expense reports for late night cabs to the train or "dinner money" for working past 7pm. I didn't really think I deserved it. I was working late because I was stupid and slow and couldn't finish the work no matter how fast I physically tried to move.

By now, I was in a tiny inside office with no window, barely big enough for a desk and chair. The door was shut, I was working feverishly. KK came in with the Human Resources person, an otherwise good sort, and tells me this is it. I don't really remember what she said, just that she said it with cold eyes and it had words like "unsatisfactory" in it. (But what about that review and raise just two months ago?) As I sat there, meeting KK's ice with an icy glare (I could have easily pulled her tongue out at that moment), I could see my computer out of the corner of my eye. Each line was systematically erasing itself, as the Whoever Out There erased me from existence. The work I was currently feverishly trying to finish, all my records, all my phone numbers and contacts, disappearing byte by byte. The dramatic ending: I had one hour to pack and what I left behind would be mailed to me. Then I would be "escorted" out of the building. I'm sure the lack of tears irritated KK; she flounced out and back to her office to hold court with Those Who Loved Her.

The HR person felt bad. She was older, too, and had seen the awful things going on in my office just across the hall from hers. But I packed what I could, then left. I'd like to say I strode proudly out the front door, but no. There were no sympathetic eyes to catch mine and wipe a tear as I passed. I did manage a brisk pace out the back way, though. I should say that this procedure wasn't unheard of in the office. One young male assistant, who "got" me, so was doomed, had quit a couple weeks before with notice, but KK decided to fire him and have him escorted out anyway.

One person did actually follow me out to say goodbye. A young woman who had recently married a Pakistani guy after a whirlwind romance and had come to work every day with her head covered and dressed very modestly. She was actually a very pretty blonde European American-type girl, and was lots of fun once you started talking to her. As outcasts, we had bonded a little, although she was in a different department from me. She had just decided to start dressing in the Western fashion, and her husband approved, and she was so happy. She cried when she said goodbye, and that's the only time I lost it just a little.

Then I was gone to tell the whole horrible story to my kind and concerned husband who was waiting outside to pick me up and take me and my little box of office mementoes home.

Oh, yeah. The thing I remember most about KK? I had asked her for, and got, a day off to be with my mother who was having major surgery. It was a Friday. On Monday, not a word about whether my mother had died or lived, how she was doing, whatever. Nothing. Ever. This is a woman who would bolt out of her office because she could smell a new Kate Spade bag coming in the door after someone's lunch hour shopping, and talk about its merits versus Coach. But she never once mentioned my mother's surgery.

Well, Mom is doing fine, thank you.

What comes after a tumultuous time like this? Eighteen nightmarish months tacked onto what had been a pretty okay career and life?

More soon.