Rock On (22 page)

Whoa! Did we all hear that? Did Carol hear it? I heard it. Crammed in there between the flattering stuff and the strange, politically safe, benign, and very vague promise to use me on a future project, he . . . he . . . totally canned me. Carol swings into action fast and deft, like the tranquilizer dart will wear thin soon and she has to work quickly while I still have a pleasant and dazed look. She points to documents bearing my signature and figures and dates. She smiles when she tells me how long I will remain on payroll until my official termination starts and then how long I will be paid in severance and how long my health insurance will continue to last. I
make some strained joke about wanting to undergo a cosmetic surgery that most doctors are “currently describing as an elective vanity surgery” and they just kind of give me a gentle and supportive look and explain to me that it would most likely be covered. This makes my mind race to try and figure out what about me is so obviously askew that a plastic surgery joke falls flat.

In the middle of all of this, I feel my stomach fall and my blood go a bit thin, because no matter what anybody says, and no matter how much you expect it, and no matter how you tell yourself you can take it, when you are fired, you feel it. The two words everyone here throws around with no apparent relation to high demand now ricochet around my head and in the hollow feeling in my chest: Smash! Hit! And as he sits behind his desk waiting for Carol to finish her part of the show, Co-Co — if I may start to refer to him on more casual terms — glances down at the sheet in front of him, looks mildly confused, and adds one last and late sentence to his praise of me and my extraordinary talent:

“And, Dan, um . . . refresh me on what it is you did in your role here.”

Jesus. What?

So I tell him that I have a background in New York advertising, and first worked here as a freelancer. I tell him that what I do here is . . .
Did. Was.
What I
did
here
was
write and produce television advertising campaigns for our artists, wrote print advertising and marketing materials, came up with partnership ideas here and there. There was the idea I had for developing artists with an online contract — I remind him that we were on a big video conference call together about that idea, because he said he was really excited about the idea
and wanted me to explain it to the people in the L.A. office. I tell him that I had put together some partnership deals, one with JVC in North America that resided in at least the “pretty lucrative” file. Certainly justified my year's salary, anyway. And I'm telling him all about this stuff and somehow actually, strangely, starting to feel my self-esteem come back up a little, even though I'm canned now. And this is augmented by seeing a look sweep across his face that seems to say, “Ah, right, right. Okay . . .” as if he suddenly remembers. And that maybe I wasn't supposed to be on the list? Or maybe the look on his face isn't about me at all and he's just remembering what he wants to have for lunch, like, “Yes, sushi. Ooooh, and there's that new Japanese place downstairs that just opened last week.” I look at how many papers the legal department has drawn up and how many places my signature is needed, and then it hits me again, a little aftershock about how final all this is.

When we're done, I step out of his office and the huge door begins closing behind me. It's a large, heavy, solid door that feels like the gate to a Wall Street titan's lair. It reeks of stale, dubious deals done years ago that have finally stopped paying unreal dividends, blind and half-empty star-making promises, and of this label's biggest, most relevant rock-and-roll glory days, which are now almost thirty years behind it. His two assistants sit at smallish desks that match the color and grain of the door closing behind me, looking at computer screens and trying not to make eye contact. The door notches into its deep and locked grooves and makes a sound too permanent and solid to be called a click, and when it does, they finally
look up at me. I am stunned, and I'm still holding my gray envelope with my name on it. And we all know what the gray envelope is. And I steady my voice and chest to say something to the assistants.

“Well, that was very awkward. But, there's a lot of change going on. And starting tomorrow morning . . . you both work for
me
.”

They look at me wide-eyed in shock; and albeit a little too late, this job finally feels a little bit like rock and roll.

By the time I get back to my office to start packing it, I realize that everyone's phones have been ringing like mine did. The floor is abuzz with chaos, assistants carrying huge rolls of bubble wrap, tape guns, stacks of boxes waiting to be assembled and filled. Ms. Chocolate Chip yells something, very emotionally, almost prime-time-network-drama in tone, to nobody in particular about how, “They're going to do this to you, too! To everybody!” and slams her door. Closet doors that I've never seen opened are being unlocked, and swung open — and behind each door is everything that just over a thousand people will need to move their offices into their apartments in short order. Stacks of boxes, cases of shipping tape and tape guns, fifty-yard rolls of bubble wrap stacked end to end, rolls of shipping labels from the company paid to courier our belongings home, all locked away in the last few weeks or days, probably late at night long after everyone had gone home after six or seven, hidden and waiting for this moment when the trigger is pulled. Weird to think that it was all hiding right next to your office all this time.

Dick walks down the hall and gives me and three foot soldiers from the video production department a strange and impromptu tear-filled farewell. The three of us wonder almost aloud why we're being treated to the epic good-bye, since he probably spoke a total of five or six terse words to any of us during our respective entire stints at the company. I stand
there looking somber and respectful, wondering if this means that the rumored huge apartment the label had him set up in on the top of that tower near Columbus Circle has to be packed up, too. Suddenly he needs to assure us about his fate.

“I will be back. This is a big business, and I'll be back,” he says through a forced smile and watery eyes.

Thanks for the warning.

“It's a big business. . . . you haven't heard the last of me. I will be back.”

Okay. We get it, sport. You'll be back.

Months later, in the unshaven, aimless, unemployed days of summer I'm walking around uptown on Park Avenue, killing time, when I see him. A strangely level playing field on that sidewalk: just two unshaven men doing anything to get out of the house. If I had had the guts, I would've said hello. Instead we avert our eyes and walk on by, the two of us passing each other on an otherwise empty sidewalk in midday, not saying a thing. Exactly the way we used to pass each other in the halls at the office when we had jobs. It feels oddly comforting to know there's one thing that hasn't changed.

Sorry for the mass e-mail, everyone, but, well, after eighteen long, um, months, it's time to move on. If you want to know what the HR woman looks like, drop by my office while I'm packing. You should know who to look for, because if you get called into a meeting and she's the only other one sitting there besides you and a copresident, you're screwed. Trust me.

I will miss you guys! Even the extremely wealthy four or five of you who ignored most of us in the elevators! ;-) Whoa, somebody hasn't had their coffee yet!

Anyway, as we all know, these are challenging times. Not for the mail-order homemade salsa and sauces business (Bob from radio promotions, I think you were right to choose this time to take the leap of faith), but these are certainly challenging times for the record business. Which is why I've made the decision to be moving on (just fired) to bigger and better things. I've always said (usually after drinking a bit more than I'm accustomed to) that part of the fun and adventure in life is not knowing what's around the corner. Well, I'm having a pretty fun and adventurous time, if you get my drift. Did you know that in China, they use the same symbol for both
Crisis
and
Opportunity
? It's really only in our Western culture that we associate being laid off with “bad news” or a “strain on my relationship” or a “lapse in personal hygiene after eighteen
months spent writing at home.” If you ask me, I agree with the Chinese folks, I see the so-called crisis as an opportunity as well, which is why I'm keeping it pretty upbeat in my goodbye e-mail.

To that end, like Bob from radio promotions, I've also decided to finally start a small home-based business. Please help me by filling out this brief survey! Click Reply, and then type in your answers below before sending! Just evaluate the following statements as either “True,” “Somewhat True,” or “You seem like you might be developmentally disabled, but best of luck with things!” in the blank space under each statement.

1. I would like to buy handmade decorations for my home on the Internet, but at the present time, there aren't many options for me online.

2. While I enjoy Bob's Tasty Homemade Salsa and Sauces, and I like to support former coworkers' new ventures, I would be more likely to buy tasteful handmade decorations for my home online than I would a perishable food product.

3. I know Susan from video promo was also fired today. I would feel better coming to terms with this and other distressing job-related information if my work environment featured tasteful handmade decorations.

4. I have an extra room in my home that I would like to make available for an Internet-based business that sells handmade home and office decorations.

5. I would prefer the barter system as a means of payment for renting the extra room, as opposed to cash, especially since the items that would be bartered are tasteful, handmade, and of PROFESSIONAL quality.

Thanks for the one and a half years we have worked together, you guys. It was an exciting time, and there are exciting times ahead.

This is exciting!

— Dan in marketing

Available in eleven different colors, the Post-it flag is perfect for marking pages in important presentations, notes, and manuals.

You, the unemployed, of course, have no business whatsoever marking pages in a presentation these days. As a matter of fact, the word
presentation
only applies to you in the context of letting your personal presentation go straight downhill. By the way, waking up at one in the afternoon and pulling on whatever T-shirt you find laying closest to the bed that particular afternoon, then putting on a hat and calling yourself “dressed for the day” is breaking everyone's heart. Trust us. They just don't know how to tell you without hurting your feelings and making the situation worse than it already is.

Easily removed and repositioned, available in economic 100-pack.

Specially made for dark/black dry-erase boards, available in eye-catching fluorescent white, green, pink, blue, green.

What's that you say? You've never seen a black dry-erase board in a big fancy high-rise conference room where your assistant brings you bottled water and phone messages while you sit in an expensive German chair and try to look smart? Yeah, well, these bad boys are pretty much used to advertise lunch specials and happy-hour cocktails at restaurants — the waiters write the specials on the black dry-erase board, then put it out on the sidewalk. Not so much at the nice places, obviously, but more like the tourist joints; those scrappy little beer-and-clams joints that
are always hiring waiters and bartenders. Any of this sinking in, Einstein?