Crime and Punishment (Or, Just Punishment)

No time like the present to start complaining about working in advertising. The hours are shitty, the people are snarky, and the work is wretched unless you are the client, or should I say, Client. A typical agency day consists of spending hours staring at a piece of gum (or chewy-rubbery fake-flavored hell-pellet) trying to decide which color wrapper will sell more sugar to poorish, pimply and text-addicted tweenagers, and how to make the words 'artificially flavored' sound good, or at least not so bad.

That's if you're one of the lucky creative ones.

If you happen to be in account management, you're pretty much screwed. There ought to be a manual or even a textbook, titled Ad Nausea, that is passed out to students graduating college, with warnings about being on the account side at an ad agency. Maybe I will write the book myself, a cautionary tale about simply being married to an account guy, to one of the only grownups in a playpen crammed full of unruly children. About how the Mister comes home at night, drained of life, too exhausted even to take off his shoes, whispering from lips that can barely move sordid tales of hysterically sobbing media chicks who got yelled at by the mean old client. Nasty stories of backstabbing, infighting, lying and cheating, of conference rooms full of inflated egos and dog farts competing with each other for space and air time. Sound like fun?

(By the way: Why do girls in advertising cry so much? Why do agency pooches have so much gas? I suspect I can answer both questions, but these are topics for another time.)

This post is the first of many somehow-funny glimpses into the murky, sweat-stained advertising industry and more specifically, it's a tell-all about being married to someone who has to deal with crybabies all day long. Let's face it: advertising is a sham, a waste of time in the greater scheme of life. Eventually, all of this time and so-called creative brainpower will just end up stuck to the bottom of somebody's shoe. Just don't tell that to the Client.