New Job

I don’t really enjoy what I’ve been doing for the past year. I buy media, which really isn’t that bad of a line of work—I mostly just call up radio stations and newspapers and arrange for our clients’ ads to run. But our clients aren’t the traditional, well-established types of clients who are advertising to improve their branding with the public, they’re get-rich-quick seminars and the only thing they care about is filling the seats at their seminars for the least amount of money possible. That being the case, some of my tasks have morphed from dignified negotiating to loathsome haggling.

“Your negotiations seem to have failed, ambassador.”
“The negotiations never took place.”

Negotiating is a respectable practice, it allows two parties to talk things out until common ground is found which will be mutually advantageous. The bizzaro counterpart to negotiating is haggling. I hate haggling. To me, haggling demonstrates both a lack of integrity within one’s self and a lack of respect for those he deals with, because a haggler isn’t concerned about establishing a symbiotic relationship or doing good business, he’s concerned only with price and getting a better deal than what he’s offering the person he’s haggling with. And at work, I’m often expected to haggle.

I can still remember my first haggling experience here. I was told to get advertising rates from the radio stations in Orlando, Florida. I called down, had a pleasant conversation with each of the stations, and reported the rates to my manager. His response, “That’s not good enough. Call them back and get the rates lower.” So I called them back, negotiated a bit, then reported a slightly lower cost: still not good enough…

“I misjudged you, Walter. I knew you would sell your mother for an Etruscan vase, but I didn’t think you’d sell your country and your soul to the slime of humanity.”

…So I called the station back, WORL, and told them they were full of it and there was no way I’d ever pay the rates they were expecting. They put up a fight but I just kept shoveling the sh*t and eventually they relented and surrendered a rate I was happy with. When I got off the phone, everyone in the surrounding cubicles who had overheard my conversation were cheering my name for a job well done, but I felt sick that I had just caused such a stink about something I didn’t even agree with ethically.

“So, Peter, you’ve become a pirate.”

Nothing makes a guy feel more forced into growing up than to be given an assignment to bully around other grown-ups. Since that first call to WORL, I’ve had the same situation several times. But in an effort to preserve some measure of innocence, I’ve discovered how I can both meet my managers expectations and keep from cankering my soul; however, I’m sure the end results don’t look quite as good on paper.

“JETSON!”

When I came back from going home for Christmas, my flight arrived in the middle of the day and all my friends were at work, so I didn’t have anyone to pick me up at the airport. Our office is pretty laid back and wasn’t super busy over the holidays, so I just called in and asked if anyone would be willing to come down to pick me up. My manager, Andrew, said he’d come get me saying, “I’ve got some things I need to talk to you about anyway.” I thought for sure he was going to tell me my results have been poor and that in the future I needed to be tougher on haggling the rates.

“Mr. Cratchit, I have had my fill of this!”
“And I have had my fill of YOU!”
“And therefore, I am about to raise your salary!”
“And I’m about to raise your right of the pavement! Huh?”
“Pardon me?”
“That’s right, Bob. Raise your salary and pay off your mortgage on this house.”
“Ha, ha, ha, won’t you come in?”

Well, I prepared for the worse, but instead of criticizing my work, he praised it. Turns out the creative department asked the company presidency if they could have me, and my manager is fighting to keep me in the media buying department. He said it was my decision whether I wanted to stay in buying or move to creative. He told me to take my time making up my mind, but made sure to remind me that my leaving would make his life much harder.

I’ve always wanted to work on the creative end of things. Now, don’t go thinking that I’m going to be the art director or anything; I’m mostly just going to be working with the editing equipment, switching out the market-specific information at the end of an ad. The pay will be the same, even though the work will be less demanding. But I’m told as the work load increases, we’ll hire more people to assist me and I’ll be made manager over the dubbing department.

That assignment won’t begin until a partnership pans out with another company, so in the mean time, I’m just continuing as a media buyer—which has my manager happy, but I’m eager to move on.

Its hard to stay focused once your ready to be done with something. It reminds me of times I was dating a girl and felt like ending things. I can’t think of any more awkward time in life than those moments you spend with her between the time you’ve made up your mind to end things and the time you actually tell her so. You’re still expected to play the same role you always have, but your heart just isn’t in it. You feel like you’re faking sincerity in everything you do and you worry that everyone around you can see right through it.

That’s how I’ve been feeling at work lately. I’m ready to retire from media buying. I don’t mind doing it, but its especially difficult to motivate myself to make a haggling call. But since there’s no guarantee that the deal with the other company will pan out, I might be stuck buying media for the rest of the year.

But, that wouldn’t be so bad. Sometimes I stress about whether this is the job that will propel me along the path to ranking high in a company or owning my own business. What worries me is the idea that since I’m not in love with this job, I don’t put all my heart and all my emotions into being the best at it—I mostly just do what it takes to get the job done, and not just done I guess, but done well.

And maybe that’s all that work is: it’s just doing what’s expected of you each time the expectation arises. Aspiring to lofty positions will get you nothing but a head full of frustrations and an enemies list of people you’ve crossed along your crusade to glory. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should be happy with mediocrity, but we needn’t be brats about clawing our way up and out of the bottom of the totem pole.

“Now as the ladder of life has been strung, you might thing the sweep’s on the bottommost rung. Tho’ I spend my time in the ashes and smoke in this whole wide world there’s no happier bloke.”

Some people would argue that complacency and concent will only cement your position on the “bottommost rung,” but I think there’s something to be said for being happy with where you’re at. It is evidence of a person’s flexibility and compatibility; these are telling times in which a man can prove his worth. There aren’t enough opportunities in this life to simply leap from one to the next to the next. And there’s an adjective to describe those who do that: non-commital.

“I find that if I just sit down and stay there… the solution presents itself.”

But on a similar note, there is another telling time for each of us: those moments when we ARE faced with an opportunity for change—a chance to face a new challenge and stretch our abilities into new areas. The more contently you work in your current position, the more opportunities for change will fall into your lap. These are the moments when ambition may prove itself. If you are afraid of change you will turn those opportunities down. But if you are looking to advance, you’ll weigh those opportunities and take advantage of the good ones when they come.

Is media buying retarding my advancement to financial independence? No. It may not be what I want to do with my life, but it is a means to an end. And when I feel like I’ve done my time here, and when an opportunity for growth arises, I’ll accept the chance and move closer to my goal. Until then, I’ll enjoy my job and try hard to enjoy the haggling too.