From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [20]
When I worked at Fuller & Smith & Ross they had a killer who was a combination killer and faggot. He really was. He would kiss you to death. He’s dead now, but I don’t hear many people grieving for him. Now this killer was the agency bookkeeper, the guy who was in charge of the money coming in and going out.
At one point they kept insisting that I fill out my time sheets – so many hours worked for such and such a client, that kind of thing. I insisted that I wouldn’t fool around with the time sheets. Finally, it came to a point where petty cash owed me one hundred and fifteen dollars and I really needed the money. So I went to the faggot-killer and said, ‘Joey, you know I’d like to have the money you owe me.’ The killer said, ‘Well, you’re behind on your time sheets.’ I said, ‘Forget it. I’ll give you a time sheet tomorrow. But give me the money now.’ Joey said, ‘No. Absolutely not. You’re not getting your money until I see every time sheet here.’ So I said, ‘O.K.I’ll leave and I’ll get my money.’ He said, ‘How do you intend to get your money if I won’t give it to you?’ I said, ‘I’m going to hock my typewriter.’
So I picked up my typewriter, put it under my arm, and started to walk out of the office. The faggot-killer spots me and starts screaming, ‘I’ll have you arrested if you take that typewriter.’ Well, the creative director hears all this screaming – and nobody can scream like a faggot-killer – and he comes running out of his office and there was a big meeting. They decided to give me my money, but it was a draw because two days later I had to turn in my time sheets.
I think most agency killers pick the job for themselves. Nobody walks up to them and says, ‘You look like a nasty bastard, you can be the killer here.’ He doesn’t have to have the power, that’s the interesting part about it. Killers do things that eventually get them the job. Like they’ll show unnecessary zeal in screwing a company out of fifty cents on some bill. Occasionally, killers split up their territory. One killer, for instance, will handle the account area and maybe media, and the other killer will take on the creative side of the agency. Very efficient, the agency killers. Sometimes, when an agency starts going downhill, the killers are so busy they can hardly keep up with the work.
In a lot of ways they’re very much like the guys in the Mafia. You know, hit guys are not bad guys at all. They’re friendly toward dogs and little kids; in fact, they’re real nice except for the fact that they kill. Killers for some strange reason usually aren’t top management. They’re either running a piece of the production department, or the media department, or, like the faggot-killer, in accounting and bookkeeping. They’re medium-level guys.
Killers don’t make the actual decision to kill, but they’ll egg somebody on to make the decision. They’re the people who say, ‘You know, Harry over there hasn’t turned out a decent ad in the last six months. I don’t know what we’re doing with a guy like that.’ Harry, who’s uptight for his own crazy reasons, suddenly hears the word that he hasn’t turned out an ad for six months, which makes him so nervous that he then doesn’t turn out an ad for still another six months. At the end of the year, Harry’s out.
Copywriters and art directors have cold periods. If they’re not professionals about it, they show it, and they’re cold out loud – I mean, they’re cold to the whole world. They just can’t come up with anything. Instead of cooling it and relaxing, they act cold and they lose it all. That’s the time when the killers move in. They smell it. They smell it better than anybody else does. They know when a guy’s about to die. Killers flourish best at agencies really on their way down and also at agencies growing like hell and getting bigger by the moment. So one killer is killing out of fear and the other type