9-11-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #206 (Remembering 9/11 on the 11th Anniversary)

(The following was written last year, for East Haddam patch.com
the original patch.com article  -- below photo of me was taken around 2002)

Horror, awe, and curiosity motivated me that gorgeous late summer’s day. I can’t say it was the smartest adventure ever, but circumstances compelled me.

In 2001, I was living in downtown Manhattan and working uptown – at a media planning company in Worldwide Plaza, at 8^th Avenue and 50^th Street. When the first plane hit the World Trade Towers I was underground, riding the “E” train subway.

I didn’t know what happened until I was at my administrative assistant desk and I saw a swarm of worker bees on the other side of the cubicle farm. Whispers in fearful tones jabbered around me, then—

You know the story.

We were all sent home from work. Bridges, tunnels and subways in Manhattan were shut down, so it left walking home as the only option. Home was four miles, south. My friend, Levi, lived on 47^th and Seventh, so I tried calling on my cell phone but couldn’t get through (jammed signals). In an emergency, you crave the company of friends.

He did answer his apartment doorbell, though, shock on his face.

“I’ve got to walk home,” I said, “Or find somewhere to stay.”

“We have to go there,” murmured Levi – another writer, another glutton for unusual experience, Life full-on.

Intending just to walk with Levi until we reached my home (two neighborhoods north of the World Trade Center), I started walking south with him down the West Side Highway. I’d have been content to watch the disaster on TV at home, but no.

Looming directly in front of us, billowing gray smoke oozed from the flames of the crumbling Twin Towers.

“Unreal,” we muttered. Who could believe this was happening? The most brilliant, cloudless cobalt sky was being smoke-smudged. In my platform sandals and long work dress I wasn’t exactly dressed for hiking, but on we trudged, closer to ground zero.

In a series of zigzag maneuvers, we managed to walk to South Ferry in four hours, then come back up to where we could see the smoldering skeletons of the fallen Twin Towers up close. Gray flakes of burned papers and other debris fluttered down. . . I wrapped a bandanna around my nose and mouth, hoping to block any toxic debris.

Really, what WAS I thinking? Levi didn’t talk much while mulling over the enormity of the situation. I kept thinking of the many temp jobs I’d worked at the World Trade towers during the 1990s. . . all the times I stared out of the windows on the 101^st, 102^nd etc. floors while doing data entry and answering phones.

Finally, close to the Hudson River on the west side, rescue workers spotted us. They practically tackled and threw us onto an ancient tugboat that was waiting for people who genuinely needed rescuing.

We were shipped across the river to Jersey City; eventually found PATH trains to Penn Station in Manhattan; had an argument on the train; went our separate ways. I went home to be with a wiser friend, to cry and pray for the many murdered, innocent souls.

To this day I wonder if I’d have been one of them, in pieces of fluttering gray ash, if I’d taken that office assistant job at AIG on the 102^nd floor of WTC One. . . .

3-19-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #76 (Flash forward for Lisa Millar -- My last not-good job review. . .)

For Lisa Millar . . . 

(Me in typical work mode -- at a desk)

All right, I know my last entry in the blog was sequential -- at least, chronological -- but as time and space are arbitrary on the page and as a creative person I can do anything now I choose. . . I choose to flash forward twenty years, from 1981.

It’s 2001, and I’m working at a pretty rough desk job -- as the “admin” (administrative assistant) for an entire media planning department at Ogilvy & Mather in NYC.  Only, the company has now split into a new company called “Mindshare” and if truth be told I’d call it “Mindf**k” for reasons that shall become obvious.

I started the job as a temp in late 1999, filling the proverbial shoes of my longstanding predecessor (was there eight years?), who worked as the assistant to Beth LeMasurier, a high-up VP at Ogilvy & Mather in Media Planning.  The department worked the American Express account -- not in creative, but in planning what kind and where the media advertising money would be spent. 

If you’re a Mad Men fan, it’s the job that Harry kind of invented for himself.  But he saw a place for it in TV advertising (wasn’t Joan great at figuring out ad placement during Days of Our Lives??).  The O&M Media Planning dept. we worked for did TV, radio, and print media.  I believe we had approx. 25 people in the Amex account dept.  (Next door to us were the IBM account media planners, who kind of stuck their noses up at us, maybe out of flawed personality rather than philosophical differences.)

So.  My boss, Beth, was considered brilliant but eccentric.  Her commodious office was crammed with clutter, and you couldn’t really see the surface of her desk or any other surface, for that matter.  She wasn’t communicative in the least, and instead of calling me in to her office for a face to face or to update me on the work, I’d get piles of stuff with cryptic postit notes -- or emails.

The second-in-command or the VP under Beth, Nancy Tortorella (“torture-ella” I thought of her as), was a very snobby, self-righteous, double-talking bitch.  There, I said it.  If she reads this, fine.  Every time I am on the Metro North train and go through Darien (where she lived in 2001), I call it “de rien” or “Derrieren.”

Nancy T. and I did not get on famously.  At first, things were all right & she seemed to be nice enough, but after a few months, there was no love lost.  I hated her false laughter and her attitude of “Snap to it -- make it right, right NOW!”  So what if you were asked to do something one way one day, and then the following week had to do a total 180.  And don’t you dare ask any questions.

Eighteen months into my job, I finally got a review.  My understanding when I took the job was that reviews came regularly and with a raise in salary.  So as time went by, I pushed and pushed until they deigned to review me.  That wasn’t my first -- or last -- mistake.  My first mistake was taking the job. . .

Anyway, one tepid August morning when most of the staff were out on vacation or at a meeting (interminable meetings in that office!), I was called in to Nancy’s office for my review. 

If I’m feeling brave someday, I’ll fetch that foul piece of paper and try to refrain from burning it and laughing, fiendishly.

My favorite quote from the review went something like “uses too many exclamation points in emails.” As a result, I was being put on notice for 30 days!!  My performance was deemed sub-par on account of my uncommunicative boss who wasn’t happy with the way I carried out her cryptic commands.  My under-boss, NT, didn’t like me at all (Darien snob!!). 

Well, rather than crying at my computer, I emailed a friend who was in a pop band with me, Ken Anderson. He and his wife, Rebecca Hall, worked at the United Nations.  He had often nudged me, “Come on, work at the U.N. with us!”  I emailed him to say, “I’m ready to work at the U.N. with you.”

A month later -- when my second and probably terminal review was slated to occur -- was the morning of September 11, 2011.  Fifteen minutes in to work, everybody was corralled up to the reception area with the two big screen TVs and we watched the World Trade Towers being struck by planes in instant replays and I swore I saw people jumping out of the buildings.  Horrible, horrible.

The people at American Express were down at the World Financial Center, which was of course evacuated.  For many months, they were in flux and my department hardly knew which end was up.  My follow-up performance review never happened -- was swept under the table, so to speak.

. . . Of course I found a job at the U.N. and by that December, gave my notice.  There was no love lost -- and I have to thank a terrible tragedy for delaying a certain humiliating final review. . .

So, Lisa, that’s my horror story for you, another possible (but hopefully not) victim of a toxic working environment!