Songs of the not-so innocent

I am staring at an email sent to the entire office on the morning of 8th Jan. The mail was about welcoming a new employee to the agency. He was joining at a Junior Account Executive position, which, in industry parlance means Lower than Doormat; a guy who could, on average, expect to - be mercilessly badgered by his boss, be belittled by any creative teams he worked with and face a complete disruption of his eating and sleeping schedules.  Of course, he need not expect this degrading experience at every agency he sends the resume to. The intensity of this treatment also differs between places. However, largely, starting out in a junior AE role is a thankless existence, something I feel all of Client Servicing is anyway. I pulled up that particular email because I have just been told that he has quit. After a horror of a Monday, he didn't come into work yesterday and the rumour is that he was extremely stressed out, which caused his BP to plummet and him to faint. I am not surp...

The few and far readers of this blog, along with any dedicated online stalkers, may be wondering why I haven't posted in such a long time. The kinder minority may suggest that perhaps it was a splendid decision on my part to give the blathering a rest. The simple truth of the matter is that I tried to make the most of December because it was my last month at (the now) previous work place. A well-known, or should I say infamous ad firm, in which I spent exactly 2 years, 1.5 of which were painfully crushing and miserable and 6 months that were bad. Ok, make that 5 months and 3 weeks. I am not exaggerating. By the end of the first week, I'd cottoned on to the fact that every single person in my department was as miserable as fuck, and unable to do a thing about it. It was like being the bunch of musicians who got stuck with the unfortunate role of providing music as the Titanic went down. The combination of an unhinged, non-creative Creative Director, a Stymphalian bird masque...