It’s been a while! Another wonderful contribution from a guest contributor. It’s all true. I was there throughout. What started with laughter ended with blood (and after a respectful break, more laughter).
Enjoy!
A long time ago in 2011, a common practice for agency folk in the media industry was (and let’s face it, still is) to invite advertising sales reps from publishers, TV stations and the like to join leaving dos. This takes place under the auspices of building professional relationships with business partners. The fact that the sales reps are also expected to pay for everything on their company credit cards is obviously neither here nor there, and don’t go thinking otherwise, OK?
On one such occasion, the departee was a workmate called Paul, who was moving to pastures new after several years of mostly unblemished agency service. Paul’s leaving drinks started on his last Friday, at lunchtime, in a very fancy and expensive steak restaurant. The TV station he’d invited to build closer relationships with/foot the bill had a strict ‘no alcohol’ policy during the working day, but Paul was good friends with someone at the company, and the policy was disregarded with giddy abandon. Red wine was guzzled, and porterhouses demolished.
One of the lunchers was a recent graduate who had joined the TV station that week. As most people do when in the early throes of their career, she looked to her more seasoned and experienced peers for guidance on how to behave – in hindsight, a massive error – and enthusiastically dived headfirst into the vino. Good for her.
While this was going on, some of us were working. I was finishing a major pitch presentation with a few other people from the agency, including our CEO. It hadn’t gone particularly well. For a bit of ‘pitch theatre’ (see ‘The Walls Come Crumbling Down’), we’d laid real turf in the company board room, to create the impression of a countryside spa resort. This seemed relevant at the time, but had the unintended consequence of multiple spiders and worms crawling out of the turf and over our prospective clients’ feet during the presentation.
Following a curt ‘we’ll be in touch’ from the now far less prospective client, a few of us in the deflated pitch team went to the pub opposite our office to consider our folly. After nursing a pint or two outside the increasingly busy boozer – it was late Friday afternoon, after all – we heard a bit of a commotion, as Paul’s leathered lunching crew made their way up the street towards us, surrounded by a thick cloud of Malbec fumes (probably).
A short interjection from your humble narrator and leathered lunching crew member: The host for the day was keeping a particularly low profile as the most senior member of the no-drinking organisation she was representing by wearing a high-vis jacket that she has swapped for a cigarette with a workman outside a pub.
As he neared his work local for one last hurrah, Paul jogged ahead of the lunchers – clearly he still had a thirst on – and turned to beckon the gang to catch up. The (by now extremely shitfaced) graduate/grape enthusiast in the group didn’t need asking twice, and charged towards Paul, who held his arms out wide to absorb the impact. As she drew nearer, Wine Grad launched herself into the air, possibly imagining the dulcet tones of Bill Medley and Jennifer Warner as she had the time of her (working) life.
Humble narrator: In Paul’s defence, his invitation was clearly nothing even close to the acrobatics that were about to be attempted which should have been obvious from the pint glass in his hand. It is a testament to the man’s can do attitude (and love of WWE) that he didn’t simply sidestep the proposed Cirque Du Soleil shit and return to his pint as Wine Grad launched herself through a shop window.
Unfortunately, by this stage in proceedings, balance was not a friend to Paul. As Wine Grad crashed into him, he unsuccessfully attempted to catch her, but instead rotated roughly 180 degrees before falling on top of her in the middle of the road. Paul was not a small chap, and was also holding a pint glass at the time. In his efforts to cushion the fall, he accidentally wound up cracking Wine Grad on the back of the head with said glass, shortly before she landed skull-first on the concrete.
After a few seconds of awkward groans and laughter from the collapsed duo, and a collective sharp intake of breath from everyone outside the pub, Wine Grad sat up and touched the back of her head. Upon feeling the blood we could all see trickling down her neck, she started to scream her lungs out, while Paul (also splattered with a mix of his and her blood) tried to down-play the inadvertent glassing, picking shards out of his arm while attempting to make his way to the bar.
This downplaying was scuppered somewhat, as shit went from bad to horrible when Wine Grad stopped screaming, and started having a massive seizure in the street. An ambulance was called, and first aid administered, after which she was driven to a local hospital for observation. Unfortunately for her, the day got even worse; after spectacularly breaking company rules in her first week on the job, getting accidentally glassed, having a seizure and ending up in hospital, her boyfriend broke up with her that evening.
Still, I think she managed to keep her job. It’s not easy to get sacked in media.
Final interjection: We didn’t win the pitch. Turns out as a pharmaceutical brand they weren’t sure about the the worms in the meeting room or the blood soaked teen on the steps of reception. Someone should have put baby in the corner.
Diaries Of Media 