How Starbucks Saved My Life. Michael Gill

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СКАЧАТЬ was a favorite of the new owner of JWT, a Brit named Martin Sorrell whose bookkeeper background made him particularly attentive to the bottom line. Before Martin arrived, JWT was almost like a nonprofit organization, dedicated to doing the best communications for our clients and not worrying about the bottom line. Martin had a different idea. He told the stockholders he was more interested in boosting their profits than in spending to achieve the highest caliber work. He made a hostile bid for our company. We fought him, but Martin had the Wall Street bean counters on his side, and he easily prevailed.

      I had been in a meeting when Martin said bluntly, “I like young people around me.” I really should have listened to him and seen what was coming.

      Martin himself was only in his early forties. Linda was in her early thirties. No wonder they got along. Young, smart people, they were eager to get rid of whom they probably felt were “the old farts.”

      On the morning of our breakfast, Linda showed up late. Another bad sign. In corporate America, the higher your status, the tardier you are. Consciously or unconsciously, Linda had adopted the style.

      She had red eyes. It looked like she had been crying. Yet another bad sign. I knew that Linda liked me and felt some gratitude to me for helping her career, but I also knew that in modern corporate life there was no time for sentimentality. The facts that I was still good at my job, and was honest, and had spent my whole adult life helping JWT become successful were irrelevant.

      I had met Linda at a party. She had just graduated with an MBA from Harvard and held an undergraduate degree in history of art. As I told her, it was a winning combination in advertising—she would be strong in creative ideas, while making sure the whole process made a profit. And I had been right. But her credentials alone would not have gotten Linda hired. I had to present her as more macho than any other guy we could hire. In helping Linda move into the top management of JWT, I had written a memo describing her as an “unforgiving high achiever.” I had shown the memo to Linda.

      “Am I really that unforgiving?” Linda asked me, almost hurt.

      “No, maybe not,” I said. “But as a female high achiever you have got to be perceived as tough as any male—especially in management. Probably tougher than you really are underneath. Macho number crunching, including crunching people, is the management style Martin really likes.”

      I had helped Linda focus on the hard substance of the business: money, and an unforgiving attitude toward cutting “overhead”—which in advertising was always people. Now the overhead was me.

      I smiled at her over the table. I wasn’t going to cry. Yet I felt like dying. My heart actually hurt. Was I having a heart attack? No, I just felt really, really sad. And angry with myself. Why hadn’t I seen the signs? Linda went forward and upward in her career at JWT; I stayed in place. Linda passed me flying. Martin liked Linda. In a polite, British way, it was clear Martin could not stand being in the same room with me. With my sparse white hair, I was an embarrassment to the kind of lean, mean, hard-charging, young company he wanted to run.

      “Michael,” Linda said, “I have some bad news.” I fiddled with my muffin, willing myself to meet her eye.

      The waiter came up to me to see if we needed anything else. Waiters still think that the old guys have the money and run the show.

      I shook my head, and he backed off.

      “Let me have it,” I said stoically. I wasn’t going to beg for mercy. I knew it would not do any good. I hoped that Linda had at least argued for me, for old times’ sake. But by the time you got to a breakfast meeting, outside the office, the deal was done. I knew I was history.

      “We have to let you go, Michael.” She pronounced the words robotically. To her credit, she had a hard time getting them out, especially that phony corporate “we.”

      “It’s not my decision,” she hastened to add, and a tear started down her cheek. She brushed it quickly away, embarrassed by her own emotion—particularly in front of a guy who had taught her to be so tough. I don’t think she was acting. I think she was genuinely unhappy that I had been fired, and that she had been chosen to do the dirty deed. From the bottom-line point of view, it was, as they said, a “no-brainer.” Plenty of young people could write and speak as quickly and well as me—for a quarter of the cost. If Linda had refused to fire me, then she could not be part of the management mafia. It was a test of where her loyalty lay: to an old creative guy who had helped her in the past, or to a young financial whiz who now ran the company? Linda had to prove to Martin that she was unforgiving. You had to kill to get in the mafia. Linda would make her bones this day.

      I was brave as I could be. At least for those few minutes with Linda.

      Linda told me that I would get paid a week of my current salary for every year I had spent at JWT. She was sorry it was not more, adding that she was sure I had saved something during all the good years.

      Fat chance! I said to myself. I have a house full of kids to educate!

      My mouth was dry. I couldn’t talk.

      “Okay,” Linda said, rising. “It’s not necessary for you to go back to the office to pack up. We’ll handle that.”

      The “we” again. Linda was ready for prime-time.

      “I want to have a going away lunch for you, Michael, you’ve contributed so much,” Linda said, standing. “I will call you to set that up. And Jeffrey Tobin in Personnel will see you whenever you want to go over all the details of your severance package.”

      The thought passed through my mind of suing JWT, or writing nasty letters to all the clients. But Martin and Linda had already thought of that. “You will probably want to become a creative consultant of some kind,” Linda continued, her tone more positive now, “and Martin and I would, of course, give you fabulous recommendations. I will personally help you in any way I can,” she added. I was dead at JWT, but she was willing to keep me on some kind of life support, if I was a good boy.

      Being fired is not the best way to start a consulting company. Yet I knew I needed the goodwill of JWT to have any chance of getting business from my old clients, or anyone else. If I caused trouble, I was trouble, and I’d never get any work.

      The pesky waiter came up again, and I waved him off again.

      Linda gave me a squeeze on both arms, almost—but not quite—a hug. “Be sure and call Jeffrey, Michael. He likes you. He will help you as well.”

      Then she turned quickly and strode out of the restaurant.

      The waiter returned, one last time, and presented me with the bill.

      Outside, the sun was shining. I suddenly, desperately realized I had nowhere to go. For the first time in twenty-five years, I had no clients waiting for me to make sense of a communications campaign. I started walking and found myself crying on the street. It was humiliating. Crying! Me! Yet at fifty-three I had just been given a professional death notice. I knew in my heart it was going to be a bad time to be old and on the street.

      And so it turned out.

      Yes, I’d like a job. I hadn’t said those words for thirty-five years. It had been thirty-five years since I had taken my entry-level job at JWT. And it had been ten years since I had been fired from my high-level position at JWT. I had set up my own consulting company, and I got a few good jobs right away from my old clients. Then, СКАЧАТЬ