Rock Opera Trilogy, Pt. III: Smash Hit!

I loved working in tours and festivals until I didn’t. And I remember the exact moment when everything changed for me. I received a text from a friend who was recently laid off. This brought the total to five victims in a measly three-week span. The company was losing clients and making cuts, frantically taking any unimaginative project they could find to stop the financial bleeding. I was making copies of fattened expense accounts when I read her text. She was trying to figure out what her severance package would be. What her prorated annual bonus would be. What her “difficult transition” bonus would be. And, no matter how big a number she ultimately received, it would look thin when compared to my company’s earnings of over $20 million that they recently reported to . . . WHAT? I’ve been feeling guilty for not using both sides of the paper in the printer! We’ve been asked not to expense work meals for the month because there was no money!

Jesus, $20 million being “hard times” for a small agency sounds like a joke. Like, you’re complaining that your company only made “a gajillion, zillion dollars” or something. My definition of hard times wasn’t the same as theirs. For me, hard times were punctuated with phrases like, “If I return those bottles for the deposit, I can buy some cheese.”

As I’m collecting the stack of collated copies, my Director pokes her head in and asks to see me. An Account Manager walks in followed by someone from HR.

Uh-oh.

God bless her heart, my Director gets right to it: My performance is slipping. They think I’m over-worked and burned out. I’m not, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m getting a week off to rest. They need me back at 100% for the next tour. The gesture made me feel respected and loved beyond measure.

I should pause now and say that, truthfully, I am grateful beyond measure for the years this company blessed me with. I would be nowhere near where I am today without the connections, knowledge, work ethic, and mentality that they provided me. I say this because I’m about to quit my job in the coldest way possible.

A week later, I walk into my office for the final time. Basically, I told my agency that it was in both my and their best interests to no longer continue a professional relationship. I was never tired or over-worked. I was checked out and uninspired by our cookie-cutter approach to make a quick buck. This stopped being rock and roll a long time ago and now just a job. I was no longer the right guy to represent the company or lead a team. They thanked me for work and candor, and then it happened: The Co-Founder—who I frequently interacted with at several non-work events—asked me, verbatim: “And, Chris, um . . . refresh me on what it is you did in your role here.”

What?

What I do here is . . . Did. Was. What I did here was staff and manage live events, handle creative and inventory, write print and marketing materials, and come up with partnership and sponsorship ideas for their two largest accounts. I tell her about an idea I had for an ambitious, creative, engaging social media integration platform—I remind her that we all had an all-day meeting with video feed coming in from a New York-based company—that she herself was very excited about. I tell her about some partnership deals that were “extremely lucrative” for the agency and would have lasting impact long after I would be gone. Certainly justified my salary, anyway.

And I’m telling her about all of this stuff and somehow, actually, strangely, starting to feel my self-esteem come back up a little, even though I have no idea where I’m going when I leave this building. And this is augmented by seeing a look sweep across her face that seems to say, “Ah, right, right. Okay . . .” as if she suddenly remembers. And that maybe she wants to make an offer to keep me around? Or maybe the look on her face isn’t about me at all and she’s just remembering what she wants to have for lunch, like, “Yes, sushi. Ooooh, there’s that new Japanese place a few minutes away that just opened last week. I’ll expense it.”

I remember my father teaching me a variety of songs as a kid. Man, this made me feel like I had arrived. I’d sing along with him, interpreting lyrics of love and life as only an eight-year old boy can. I’d run into my mom’s house and dig through my collection of CDs to play, examining the booklets and inserts with printed lyrics, humming along to the melody while imagining the day be when I’d be at the front lines of music and live events. A decade later, I walked out on the biz.

I bounced around the startup world for a few years, working odd jobs to keep the lights on, occasionally reminiscing about the best years of my life, The Dirty Hustle. A lifestyle that was every bit as much rock-and-roll as the real thing if not for a few less guitars, speakers, and groupies.

Just like the night before my first day of work all those years ago, my dad recently visited me. No baseball or mitts this time; just the two of us existing. He could tell that I’ve missed him. He could tell that I’ve aged. I hadn’t seen him in forever and was eager to tell him that I ended up making it to the big time.

“How was it?”

“How much time we got?”