Fire drill

At the building where I work – like all office buildings - the management company is required by the city to have annual fire drills. When you least expect it - provided you don't see the firetruck and guys in orange vests outside - building management breaks into your work day and makes an announcement over their static-y public address system. Lights start flashing, it's panic at the disco and everyone's instructed to evacuate the building using the stairs, not the elevator.

Slowly and orderly, everyone saunters out to the parking lot, wondering if there’s enough time for a Starbucks run. Then they check in with their company's point person to prove they weren’t left behind in the faux towering inferno.

It’s an inconvenience that interrupts work for a bit, but the intentions are good and this kind of fire drill can actually make a difference in a genuine emergency. Which is exactly the opposite of the fire drills you usually find in an advertising agency.

Sadly, people working in agencies are well acquainted with the other kind. The pain-inducing, frustration-increasing, time-wasting, resources-draining, brain-numbing, soul-crushing kind.

Agency fire drills are notorious shape-shifters. They can come in the form of an account person yelling in the hall for everyone to “Look busy!” as a new client prospect tours the agency.

They can be an all-hands-on-deck, cancel-your-weekend-plans mandate to try to save an account that’s been going out the door since they got it.

They can even be the creative director’s kids graduation, engagement, wedding or circumcision announcement that has to get done first, before the actual paying work. Don't even get me started on headlines for the circumcision announcements.

"Take a tip from a mohel who does!"

"Is your mohel good enough to make the cut?"

"It's time to put some foreskin in the game!"

The common characteristic of agency fire drills is they’re all, without exception, monumental wastes of time. They’re the original model for the hamster wheel. And the unlucky ones who are "volunteered" to participate are rats in a maze, who manage to find their way out the other side without reward for their effort.

Agency fire drills happen because people high enough in the food chain to call them have placed a misguided sense of importance on whatever the drill is. They’ve entered a state of denial regarding exactly what the results of everyone dropping what they’re doing to do something else will accomplish.

None of this should come as a surprise. Despite how lean, nimble, agile and responsive the agency website says they are, I have yet to work in a shop that runs as efficiently and effectively as they do in their fantasy life. The one that lives in their manifesto on their website.

Anyway, once the real-world fire drill is over, everyone shuffles back into the building, takes a crowded elevator back to their floor, and picks up where they left off.

And if they're really lucky, maybe they get a venti cappuccino out of the deal.

Like a version

If there's one thing ad agencies are it's repetitive. Let me say that again - see what I did there? Especially when it comes to revising the work.

As anyone who works in the creative department of an agency knows, sometimes a project will come around an absurd amount of times. My friend Rich Siegel named his blog Round Seventeen as an homage to the number of times he's had to revise copy.

I'll see your Round Seventeen, and raise you the revision number I had on a piece of car copy yesterday. The number was 68. Now, if you're reading this post as a civilian, I suppose you're thinking with all those versions the copy must change dramatically from one to the next.

Not so much.

Revisions come from all sorts of places. Proofreaders. Account people. Low level clients. Mid-level clients. The big cheese client. Legal. The product guy. The client's wife. The cleaning crew on the third floor. It goes on and on. It's usually a word or two they obsess over ("Is this too light? Too flip? Too...you know...). More often than not, it just a change for change sake so they can feel like they were part of the process, and get their name on the credits when they fill out the award-show entry forms.

I hear the Client's Wife category is going to sweep the shows this year.

There's an old adage, one I subscribe to, that says the secret to great writing is rewriting. It's a nice thought, but working in an agency will knock that sentiment into the next zip code mighty quick.

Anyway, old Albert had it right. And I'll be he got it on the first try.

Greetings

Here's a trend I could do without. Greeters.

It's not that I'm an unfriendly person. I think if you asked anyone who knows me, right after they stopped laughing they'd tell you I'm actually pretty much of a social butterfly.

But really, this trend of having greeters at every business has to stop.

Of course Walmart is where it all started. It was originally hailed as a great idea, letting retirees earn some money and interact with the public by giving them smiles, handshakes and fist-bumps.

Plus, what with the blue vest, it gave eighty-year olds yet another fashion option.

But like weeds, now greeters are popping up all over. The place that it irritates me the most is at my bank, Wells Fargo.

Already known as a bastion of friendliness and personal attention (cough, cough), now I can't even run into the bank without being stopped in my tracks with "Welcome to Wells Fargo" and "How's your day going?" and other assorted small talk.

Here's the thing: when I run into the bank, I want to run into the bank and run back out again. What I don't want is to be intercepted by a teller walking the floor, who should be behind the counter making that winding line move faster.

As if that isn't annoying enough, now the tellers are suddenly all chatty and small talk. "Is it nice outside today?" Really? Here's an idea: look out the fuckin' window while you're taking my deposit. "Busy day for ya?" If it is, standing here talking to you isn't going to help is it.

I appreciate that they're trying to humanize the experience and promote a friendly image. But the needs of the customer have to come first, and no one's in there to make friends.

So stop talking to me, do your job, and get me out of there as fast as you can.

And have a nice day.