Holidays, and the Last-ditch Bonding.
Working in an advertising agency makes you immune to sarcasm. Whether that was intentional or just surviving copy, or the adverse effects of the daily grind of needing to be good at your copywriting (or coffemaking) job, or scribbling down quick storylines, or doing the maths (whichever came first), so that when people called in sick, leaving A4 quickly scribbled signs taped on their computer screens “Gone fishing”, is actually the customary way to people’s explaining their whereabouts to random enquiries, that did not just take a 5-seconder powdering of the nose to the loo and back, when we find their seats empty for more than 3 hours, or gawkwardly… days. You can probably attribute it to um, corporate culture.
Take a break, and step far behind the dotted line where you sign your best self forward to accomplish and tick your time away at task-land. (Is the First Commandment of “resting thy greys”, or that forced leave that the Training Personnel always insist on you having at end-year, else they’ll need to pay you in Cash.)
That is what the holidays are actually about. Planning them (Where to go, Who with, What to Wear, When you should Size down and turn people down asking you to Pret for lunch). And actually taking the Leave. It starts at Thanksgiving. Actually, probably a little bit further back — maybe at Halloween. “Boooooo. Yooo hoooo, I’ve left”, might actually not cut it. Or, “Carving out time for the feasting.” with a jack o’ lantern might work.
Or maybe during the year, there was a birthday that happened between that part where the clear, clangy, pleasant chill of crisp air just turns summer, and the bobbed-for apples that somehow collude into mashed little fried turnover pastries - officially into fall - that might be it.
And it ends at Christmas — the most prepared-for anticipated thing that people whose work it is to juggle time — theirs, and other peoples’ who may or may not impact their livelihoods, will always take this as Not-Your-Teatime break.
This is THE break of all Holiday breaks. (It’s not a dirty word, btw.)
“I wish i could write as well as i could draw or paint or capture moments when green leaves turn brown, but i think i would probably be waiting round for descriptions that exceed my word limit in its feeble attempt.” was what one art director had left me to say that she was leaving me, and the crap that we were attempting to make in two days for a man and married life. (Like, i could ever make that an excuse.)
In my twenty odd-years of being, and leaving places — and there’s some i actually really like, and not just for a customary shuttling of Christmas eggnog, and cheer to folk and kin, i require the latitude of actually hovering around a very creative peer-to-peer signing off: “I’ve gone, and conquered the land of prenaetopia, and baked a cake” for instance, would be explicatory of some sort of absence, “I am not going back Steve. You may keep my comfortable swivel chair.” For people who are thickly not in the know after the first A4.
Sometimes, we make an impact- and we know this , because of all the people who remembered me and friended me on Facebook- but i think it’s appropriate, and customary to leave an A4, for all those awkward absences. You may never know who might need the explanation to why your 3pm sighing of frustrations or 8am loud cereal crunching might actually be very dearly missed.
(For people needing the A4 leave-writing format, you can download it - or write me and i’ll print you one. And “Wherefore art thou, Romeee-oo?” is not it.)
And for those needing some form of tape to stick it on your screen, or desk (whichever one you have that is associated with you more fixedly) or parking lot, you’ll need to ring your secretary for it.
