A day in the life

Mandy inspired me to do a “day in the life” blog entry. So here goes. You are all aware of my current employment situation and let me tell you being laid-off isn’t as glamorous as you think. It’s like a lumberjack sawing through the trunk of your ego and then two weeks later sending you pieces of your bark (they call that severance)—way fun. Anyway I am now a “temp” (that’s short for employed prostitute) at McCann Erickson, which is one of the largest ad agencies in the world. If you have seen any Verizon Wireless, Microsoft, or Exxon Mobile commercials recently, that was McCann. I work mostly on the Microsoft account. My building is located just off State St. in down town Salt Lake, right across the street from the Wells Fargo monolith actually. It’s a cool building. It was built in 1908 and was a gentlemen’s sports club. McCann fills all six floors and the basement, or bomb shelter as I have come to call it. As you can probably guess I work in the bomb shelter with the rest of the Creative Department. I may be sounding a bit cynical right now, but I really do enjoy working for a pay check instead of sitting at home going out of my mind with worry and boredom.

Ok so that’s the physical description of the work place. Now the “day in the life” part of this entry. My day begins at 8:45 when I wake up and take a shower. That part of the day is pretty common to most people I imagine so I’ll skip over it. I’m on the road by 9:15 and in the office by 9:45. My official work day begins at 10:00. So I’m going to break it down hour by hour for you. This entry will be written throughout the course of the day. So hang on to your shoes, here we go.

10:00 A.M.: Arrived at work and booted up my computer. I checked e-mail (newsletter from world headquarters in NYC and a meeting reminder) nothing too spectacular. I had a Verizon Wireless account status meeting at 10:15 (I was asked to attend in place of my boss because she’s in Alaska at the moment). At the meeting we discussed projects that are due today and work load expectations for the rest of the week. Also talked about “The Dark Knight” and how amazing that movie was. Meeting was over by 10:45 and I was back at my desk. Pulled up a Microsoft product guide to read (it’s 150 pages of trademark information for Microsoft’s thousands of products). I should have a project drop on my desk by 11:30.

11:00 A.M.: My first project came around 11:30 as predicted. It was only a one page document from Microsoft so it took about 15 minutes to get it ready for versioning. You may wonder what I did with my down time, well let me tell you. I read the fascinating Microsoft product guide. It’s a real page burner; can’t put it down (like a horrific car crash in print). I also thought about other possible campaign ideas for my portfolio. So far I have thought about doing something for LEGO and Nasa’s new lunar initiative.

12:00 P.M.: Just finished an online training course for new employees. The course was about the company code of conduct. So now I know how to act “in the best interest of the company.” I should be seeing a large project around 2 this afternoon. Hopefully something will drop before that but you never know.

1:00 P.M.: This is my lunch hour. I took my leftover pasta from Mimi’s Café and enjoyed it outside in the plaza. There was a Rasta band playing in the plaza this afternoon, which was kind of weird to be honest. There were a bunch of professionals bobbing around and swaying to the frequency of spiritual liberation. It was an excellent people watching opportunity. The Rasta lovers scattered when it began to rain though (real Rasta lovers would have cheered with joy [as in the laundry detergent because that’s the only time Rastas get to do laundry, when it rains]).

2:00 P.M.: Just received a large project that will probably take the rest of the day. It is a Verizon Wireless project which means there will be a lot of things wrong with it. I’m looking forward to this because thus far I haven’t had much to do today aside from reading the fascinating Microsoft product guide of course.

3:00—6:00 P.M.: The Verizon Wireless project took longer than I thought it would, which was nice. I finished up the project with minutes to spare. I got some last minute e-mails about upcoming projects tomorrow morning. So I will have stuff to do first thing in the morning. After taking the project back to the creative director I closed out my computer and headed for the door.

6:00—6:45 P.M.: Driving home in traffic. Natalie says this is the worst part of her day. She hates traffic. And I don’t enjoy it much either; however, I make good use of my time in traffic. I call it my zen time. While waiting in stop and go bumper-to-bumper traffic between Bountiful and Farmington (thank you Utah Department of Transportation for tearing the crap out of I-15), I take the time to clear my head. Traffic is when I’m able to forget about all the comma drama at work (that’s a word nerd term). My zen traffic time enables me to clear the old noodle so I can come home and devote all my energy to my little lady.

So that’s pretty much it—pretty boring actually. The world of advertising is a lot like traffic now that I think about it. You hurry up then wait for a while, and then hurry up again then wait and then you’re home. I was going to do some fun little stick figure animations to go along with this post but I’m too tired; maybe next time.