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.

Unemployment line

A friend of mine, who's an excellent writer, and I believe from my experiences with him a decent individual, put up a post about someone he didn't know who'd tried to contact him on LinkedIn. Universal experience. Happens to all of us.

Whoever it was that hit my friend up for a connection listed his job as Independent Marketing & Advertising Professional, which, as we all know, is LinkedIn code for unemployed. My friend replied maybe the guy wasn't that good at advertising if he couldn't think of a better way to say it.

Now, I totally recognize my friend was just being funny. And don't get me wrong. I like a harsh, sharp, snarky line as much as the next guy. God knows I've written my share of them. But this time, it just struck me wrong.

Not wrong, hurtful. I felt bad for the guy.

I've said it many times before - if you're in advertising and you're unemployed, all it means is you showed up one day. Obviously the guy was unemployed. We've all been. And I was startled that my friend, who knows what it's like to be unemployed, came off as harsh as he did in his comment.

The point of LinkedIn isn't to announce you're unemployed - it's to make yourself look as good as possible to potential employers and digitally network as much as possible. Two things it seems to me this guy was trying to do. (Just to be clear, I wouldn't link with someone I don't know either - but I wouldn't blame 'em for trying).

We're all in the advertising foxhole together, and anyone in the business will tell you things ain't what they used to be. And they're not going to be again. Me, my friend and the guy on LinkedIn are all just trying to do our best.

Every once in awhile, contrary to how it may appear, I believe a little slack-cutting is in order.

The in betweens

In the freelance world, there are all types of people and personalities. Most noticeably, there are the ones who shouldn't be freelancers. They simply don't have the finely honed skills to deal with what I like to call the in betweens.

Those periods of time - sometimes long, sometimes short - between gigs where you've finished one job and have no idea where the next one is coming from.

Some call it limbo or purgatory. I call it heaven.

I just finished up working on a national car account at one of my favorite agencies to freelance at. I liked the people I worked with, I enjoyed the work I did and I love the creative services person who brings me in whenever they can.

Here's the thing: that gig is up, and I have no idea what's waiting on deck. But I do know from experience and faith that something is, and it'll get here eventually.

This is the skill I have people who aren't cut out for this don't: I don't go crazy when I'm not working. I don't climb walls or stress out. I learned long ago if all I think about is working when I'm not working, and wanting time off when I am, then it's a lose-lose proposition and I'm not going to be happy either way.

Maybe it's a gift, but I take my in between time off for exactly what it is. Time off. I catch up with things around the house and things I've wanted to do but don't have the time when I'm employed. The garage gets cleaned. Books get read. Screenplays get worked on. Posts get written. Shows on the DVR get watched (I'm particularly good at this one). Dogs get walked. Kids get picked up. Lunches get taken. Laundry gets done (I love doing laundry - one of the long list of reasons I'm a catch).

Sure it's always nice to know where the next check is coming from, but if I don't know now I will when I'm supposed to.

Don't get me wrong, I don't just leave it all up to chance and the universe - I would never be that cavalier with my career (trying to stop laughing cause I used the word "career"). I do make the effort. I send out emails, check in with friends and find out what's going on around town. Like all freelancers, I play dialing for dollars on a regular basis. But I don't play it all day every day. And it's not the only game I know. Besides, a watched pot, well, you get my drift.

Anyway, as much as I'd like to talk more about this, I really have to get going.

After all, Breaking Bad isn't going to binge watch itself.