My Fire-versary™

Traditionally the first anniversary gift is paper. And a year ago, I was one of the lucky ones who was on the receiving end of one of those special paper gifts.

It was a pink slip.

Last week was what I like to call my first Fire-versary™ when myself, along with 499 other employees, got laid off from a leading cybersecurity company. See if you can guess which one from the picture.

After having their best year ever according to last year’s Wall Street report, they apparently decided the only thing better than record profits was fewer people to share them with.

It's the corporate version of Ozempic.

So how did I celebrate the special occasion? Well since I left, I haven’t thought about it that much. Of course, I miss almost all the people I worked with (you know who you are). And I definitely miss the stock options.

But, like they say at Boeing, when one door closes another one opens. I’ll be here all week.

I don’t know how my fellow ex-colleagues are celebrating theirs, but in the year that’s transpired, as I wrote about here, in addition to peddling my copywriting and creative directing skills, I’ve fallen into a second career as a book editor. In fact I’m working on editing my seventh book as we speak.

I’ve also been catching up with my life, having done and continue to do things around the house I had to put off when I was employed full-time. You probably know this, but I'm able to do all this because I'm so handy and mechanically inclined. Remind me again, which end of the hammer do I use?

Also, my binge-watching has become both more sophisticated and medically concerning. Between new seasons of Hacks, Your Friends & Neighbors, For All Mankind, Shrinking, Euphoria, Running Point and From, to new shows like Widow’s Bay, Rooster and American Classic, my eyes are in a perpetual state of bloodshot. The price I pay for being Hollywood conversant and a joy at dinner parties.

Honestly the year has flown by. Every once in a while, I still wake up with the instinctive urge to check Slack or log in before remembering nobody’s waiting for me to update a job ticket anymore. And that’s probably the strangest part.

For something that felt so seismic at the time, the world barely paused. The coffee still brewed. The dog still needed walking. TV kept auto-playing the next episode. Eventually the old job stops feeling like an identity and starts feeling like a season finale that might've gone on one episode too long.

Which is fitting.

Because the traditional first anniversary gift may be paper. But apparently the modern one is perspective. Folded neatly into an envelope I never asked for.

Keeping a secret

There’s a holiday tradition everyone who works in an advertising agency eventually runs up against despite mighty, mighty efforts to avoid it.

The White Elephant holiday gift exchange. Sometimes known as Secret Santa.

Essentially it’s a primitive holiday ritual where you and all your co-workers buy inexpensive gag gifts no one wants, then exchange them. Hilarity ensues. (At my house, we call this Christmas). You can challenge your co-workers if someone gets one you actually want, or you can just hang on to yours and silently figure out who you don’t like enough to re-gift it to.

From Magic Eight Balls to Fart Extinguishers to the How To Tell If Your Cat Is Plotting To Kill You book, white elephant gift exchanges are exactly the opposite of what they’re intended to be: Funny.

So, being in the giving spirit of the holiday – although I’m not saying which holiday – I’d like to suggest three Secret Santa/White Elephant gifts that are agency appropriate, worth a few laughs and inexpensive to create or buy.

Which is good, because you're not getting a bonus this year either.

The Pink Slip.

Agencies are notorious for having heartless housecleanings just before Christmas. Give your colleagues an official looking pink slip, and enjoy the merriment when they can’t tell if it’s real or not. For extra fun, have everyone take a step back from the recipient when they open it.

Dock the Halls.

Use card stock in the mailroom to dummy up some realistic looking timesheets, with the hour for the gift exchange you're right in the middle of marked as docked from their pay. Watch the fun as the bitching reaches new heights. Wait, is that someone marching off to read HR the riot act? You can't put a price on entertainment value like this!

Manual Labor.

Showcase your creativity, since the client doesn't let you showcase it anywhere else, with this 100% fake Employee Manual. Contains uproarious, fictional and totally bogus sections like Our Profit-Sharing Plan, Vacation Days, Overtime Pay, Bonus Structure, Addressing Grievances, Internet Use Policy and much, much more. Wait a minute, that's the actual employee manual. Oh well, even funnier. And the printing's already done for you.

I hope these suggestions have been helpful. As you rip open the gift wrap, don't forget to pause and give the fake laugh while you say unconvincingly, "Oh, that's..great.." And remember to be kind, because bringing joy to the world and love and friendship to your colleagues is what the true spirit of the season is about.

Plus you have to work with these people every day. At least until someone hands one of you a real pink slip.