We're all freelancers

My friend, fellow blogger and dog-surfing instructor Rich Siegel – who runs Round Seventeen – put up a post today called Too Many Freelancers.

The gist of it is far too many of our staff brethren are packing it in for the seemingly greener, albeit much more competitive, grass of the freelance life, although not all of them are suited for it. Of course, he’s right.

But I’d like to offer another point of view. We’re all freelancers, whether we’re on staff or not.

It’s a quaint notion, a carryover from the Mad Men era, or a time you could work at IBM for forty-four years and have a nice pension at the end of it to see you through the rest of your days, that having a full-time gig at an ad agency somehow equals job security.

Ask the teams that work at Mitsubishi’s new agency every two years how secure their jobs are. The creative teams on Dell Computers can probably whip up a spreadsheet showing why that theory is wrong. Take a drive with the former creative director at Doner, Mazda’s old agency for thirteen years that created the Zoom Zoom campaign, and ask him how he feels about job security. The battlefield is littered with examples.

My point is we’re all just one agency review, one client loss, one new marketing director, one client’s wife’s opinion, one budget shift to digital, one creative director in a bad mood away from being shown the door.

Don’t get me wrong: I very much like the idea of job security. I also like the idea that I’m six-foot-two, a hundred eighty five pounds, totally ripped and get mistaken for Chris Hemsworth on a daily basis. But just because I like it don’t make it so.

The Round Seventeen post talks about Smiling and Dialing, Dry Spells and Making Nice, all daily chores freelancers are far too familiar with.

But they occur on the staff side as well.

Staffers get paranoid when it slows down, and try to look busy in case management is doing bed check. Not so much politically motivated as a survival strategy, staffers can be found making nice to people most in a position to turn the idea of job security into a reality. And day in and day out,the phone lines are always open to other agencies. Especially if an account's rumored to be shaky (SPOILER ALERT: They all are. Always).

So if you're on staff at an agency, thinking about making the leap to the freelance life, congratulations. You already did.

Flush with embarrassment

Years ago, I went to New York. I don’t remember the reason for the visit, but since when does anybody need a reason to go to New York?

What I do remember is getting to the city around 6:30 a.m. and going to the apartment of my friend Susan, who was from New York but who I’d worked with in L.A.

I think it's safe to say she wasn't amused when, unannounced, I was knocking at the door of her one-and-a-half room apartment, suitcase in hand, at sunrise because my hotel room wasn’t ready.

But in spite of the fact I’d inadvertently gotten to see her without her makeup on, something she was extremely unhappy about, she let me stay a few hours until my room was ready.

The room I was waiting for was at the now long gone Biltmore Hotel on 43rd and Madison. Not only was it one of NY’s architectural landmarks since it opened on New Year’s day in 1913, it also happened to be smack in the center of the NY advertising scene (the show Mad Men gets its name from Madison Avenue), and I’d just started my first job at an agency.

I was still in awe and wonder of the magic, creativity, nice people and fun of it all.

You know, just like I am now.

Anyway, I checked in and went up to my room. What dawned on me as I was in the elevator was that I hadn’t gone to the bathroom since I’d gotten off the plane at Kennedy. So when I got to the room, I dropped my suitcase on the floor, ran to the bathroom, closed the door and then proceeded to pee like a racehorse.

Now, at this point, you might be asking yourself why I bothered to close the bathroom door when I was the only one in the room. Good question, and it’s the one I’d be asking myself in a minute.

When I was done, I washed my hands, grabbed the crystal doorknob not unlike the one you see here, turned it and pulled the door open.

Except the door didn’t open. The doorknob, stem and all, came out of the door.

For a minute I thought it was funny, and the sound of my laughter was echoing off the tile walls. That went on for awhile until I realized I needed to get out of there.

I tried several times to put the doorknob back in, but it wouldn't catch. Did I mention this was July? It was hot and disgusting outside, and getting pretty warm inside.

Since I was on a higher floor, I couldn't yell out the window for help. So I wound up doing the only thing I could do. Banging the doorknob I was holding against the door, and screaming for help like a little girl.

It was not my finest moment.

After what felt like about fifteen minutes, I'd worked up a good sweat because of the heat and humidity. At least I had water and towels to wash off.

Finally hotel security came to the door and set me free. Then they called maintenance to come fix the doorknob.

I thanked him, turned on the air conditioning as high as it would go, then flopped on the bed and slept for three hours.

When I talked to my friend Susan later in the day and told her what had happened, she reacted exactly like any New Yorker would in July.

She said, "You have air conditioning?"