From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor - Jerry Della Femina [22]
Charlie was doing a lot of firing those days. On one day there were account assignments coming out and Charlie had to pencil in assignments for everyone. He pencils in a lot of names and then when he comes to a guy named Dennis, he doesn’t pencil Dennis’s name in but rather he puts down ‘Mr. X’ to work on such and such an account. In his mind, of course, he was about to fire Dennis. The only problem is that on the list are Dennis’s accounts and next to Dennis’s name is ‘Mr. X.’ Of course he hadn’t gotten around to tell Dennis that he was out and ‘Mr. X’ was coming in. And of course his secretary, she doesn’t know anything, so she goes ahead, types the list out, and the account list is circulated throughout the agency. The next scene: Charlie running all over the agency trying to grab back these things from everybody including Dennis. Well, he wasn’t fast enough – the legs go first on an agency president – and when Charlie gets to Dennis’s office, there’s Dennis, white, looking at the list. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way.’ Charlie had not been able to find a replacement for Dennis and didn’t want to fire him until he did.
Charlie liked me and when I told him I was leaving he was quiet for two weeks. On the next to the last day he came into my office and said, ‘Kid, can’t you change your mind? Kid, what can I do for you? Kid, you could own this place someday.’ Last day, he’s in my office again. I shook his hand and said, ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’ ‘Goodbye, kid,’ he says. ‘I wish you luck, but you’re making a mistake.’
I went downstairs for a going-away drink with everybody. A guy comes running down saying, ‘You got to go upstairs again. Charlie’s gone berserk; he’s firing everybody. So help me. Go upstairs.’
And he was. Charlie had simply gone into the office of a fellow named Mike Lawlor and said, ‘Mike, are you going to follow Jerry?’ Mike says, ‘No, Charlie, I wouldn’t do anything like that.’ Charlie says, ‘Mike, are you going to take your book [meaning portfolio] up to Fuller & Smith & Ross?’ ‘I might,’ says Mike. Lawlor felt that the Bill of Rights allowed a guy to show his book around town. ‘Get out of here,’ says Charlie. ‘You’re fired. Pack up your things and get out.’ He then went into the office of a guy named Bert Klein and said, ‘Bert, you’re Jerry’s friend, aren’t you?’ ‘Yeah.’ Are you going to follow him?’ ‘Gee, I don’t know.’ ‘Did you ever have your book up to that agency?’ ‘Yeah, I’ve had my book up there.’ ‘Get out,’ said Charlie, ‘you’re fired.’ Still another friend of mine, a guy named Bob Tore, was coming out of the men’s room. He was a little wobbly because he had heard that Charlie was going from office to office firing people. Charlie grabbed this guy Bob and said, ‘You’re Jerry’s friend, aren’t you?’ Poor Bob. He starts to stammer, ‘Uh, uh, yeah, I know Jerry …’ Charlie got compassionate: ‘Never mind. You got two kids. I won’t fire you.’
Charlie, who now is a good friend of mine, really did a job that day. I don’t know what the final head count was, but he put in a good day’s work. The next day he had four freelancers working up there to take up the slack. And the guys he fired were no slouches. Mike Lawlor went to Doyle, Dane, Bert Klein to Wells, Rich.
One of the reasons for all the chaos is that, suddenly, an account can pull out of an agency. An account has to give an agency ninety days’ notice before it pulls out. I swear there are some guys on Madison Avenue who hide in the bathroom on Friday. Friday is kill day because it’s the end of the week – killing is done on Friday for bookkeeping reasons. What’s so sad about it is that the wrong guys get fired. Management calls in some poor guy and says, in effect, ‘As you know, we’ve just blown fifteen million dollars worth of billing, and your one hundred and sixty bucks a week stands between us and survival.’ It’s almost