My Ad Agency Laid Off Marked Men?ro;”Literally

The layoffs came on Wednesday?Ash Wednesday to be specific. I arrived back in the office from an interview and found precisely 20 percent of my coworkers packing their things. Some had boxes and others backpacks, but all were instructed to be out of the building before 2 p.m.

A surprising number of those fired had dark smudges on their foreheads. At first I didn't remember the holiday, so I jumped to the conclusion that an agency exec was using the occasion to fulfill a macabre fantasy, where all underperformers are branded with an advertising scarlet letter. I had a vision of this whacked-out EVP slapping them on the forehead as they entered the revolving doors. When I mentioned this theory to my office neighbor, he reminded me that ashes were a Catholic custom. His alternate theory was that the agency was going through a religious purge.

Right then and there I decided to end my job search. It had begun as a precautionary measure; the economy was sure to continue tanking. But after the firings I figured that, being a Protestant, I might still be at risk. The nonpracticing Episcopalians would surely be next to go.

I walked the halls, offering condolences and headhunter contact information. The girl I'd dated for a few months was in her office, shredding her files and purging her hard drive. I feebly offered her some of my more expensive office supplies: a labelmaker, an electric hole-punch. She laughed at the offer and then patted me on the shoulder in an awfully kind, sympathetic way. She reminded me that security was escorting her out of the building.

I wanted to say goodbye to my boss, a very senior account guy, who must have been pulling in close to $300,000. He was the highest-ranking guy to get the ax. He'd also been a wonderful boss; the kind who, in anticipation of the layoffs, went to great lengths to protect his people by moving them onto "safe" accounts. When I walked into his office, I was terrified.

The ash cross on his forehead had smeared into a messy blob. I could see that he'd been crying and I immediately wanted to hide behind one of his potted plants. But instead I told him that I was going to miss him and that he was the best boss I'd ever had. He mercifully cracked a smile. "You just graduated from college. I'm the only boss you've ever had."

We shook hands and he said, "You know, I think everyone else is a little afraid to come in here. You're the only one who stopped by so far."

Now this is a guy who must have had 30 or so people working for him. I felt dreadful and I wanted to hug him badly, but he dropped his head and turned around to finish filling his boxes. As I watched his silhouette against the corner office windows, I felt simultaneously awed and sad. Awed that such a senior person could be fired, and sad that he'd spent so much time saving people like me. He'd worked so hard to secure everyone else's jobs that he'd unintentionally sacrificed his own.

The next day, after the layoffs, the entire agency?or what remained of it?was instructed to meet at a church up on 52nd St. It was some bizarre denomination and the interior was futuristic, like that church in The Graduate.

The meeting room was below ground. I was initially struck by two things: how dark it was (the room had a skylight, but it was cloudy outside and there was hardly enough light to hold a meeting) and how much the collective agency looked like a high-school assembly. I work at the largest advertising agency in New York, but, in these Romper Room religious confines, we looked like the cast of You Can't Do That.

The new president of the agency stepped up to the altar and began speaking. As he introduced himself, I noticed a few people yawn in protest. Everyone was in favor of his turning around the New York office, like he did London, but nobody liked his methods?layoffs and restructuring.

After the new president gave his introduction and lamented the previous day's events, he began an explanation of the great reorganization to come. As he shifted topics his decibel level inexplicably doubled. The sound technician must have accidentally flipped some switch, because when he said, "And we will divide the agency up into teams of account groups," it sounded like the voice of God. He wasn't espousing anything extraordinary?merely grouping account, creative and planning onto the same floors of the building?but through the eardrum-bursting p.a. system, it sounded prophetic.

When the technician finally solved the problem, lowering the volume, another sign took its place: the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and streamed into the skylight. It had the simultaneous effect of washing out the projector images and giving our new president a heavenly glow. He seemed pleased for a second at the divine spotlight, and whipped out a pair of sunglasses. Then he pointed back to the projection screen, where his PowerPoint charts were no longer visible. He whipped off the shades, squinted at the screen and then said, "Trust me, it's going to be great."

I think this was the point where most of the audience forgot about Ash Wednesday and began to listen. Even if we couldn't see his organization charts, he'd won us over with his California-cool vibe. And it was also fun to laugh in church.

This was my second year in the advertising business and I felt something phenomenal taking place. Like me, F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his first two years in New York at an advertising agency; he said that ad agencies were like the rackets, adding that their "constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero." Although I like his insight, I suggest that it is spirituality, not humanity, that my newly constituted agency aspires to deconstruct. Whether it's corporate restructuring in a house of God or layoffs on a Catholic holiday, my ad agency is at its best when it's damning the most.

Amen to that.