Yesterday, I found myself standing in front of the Exxon
Tiger Mart I visited every Thursday morning for more years than I can
accurately tabulate. Back then, this store was my first opportunity, on the
short walk to what was then my job, to take a critical look at the latest
edition of the weekly FREE TAKE ONE publication whose garish and abundant ad
content I either created, processed or shepherded – also for more years than I
can accurately tabulate. (A rough estimate would be fourteen.)
Those mornings were filled with trepidation and
jitters – even before I added coffee. To people in the business, my plight might
have been called lamentable. Even without the benefit of a proper press
check, I was uncomfortably responsible for the visual integrity and
typographical accuracy of the final product, printed in the dead of night in
another part of the state. This responsibility, I quickly learned, included any
mistakes made by myself or the artists and production people working with me,
and any technical blowback generated by digital gremlins, and, most astonishingly,
any misunderstandings created by the stunning ignorance of the management and
the sales team with whom I collaborated all those years. With and without them,
I’ve spent more than thirty years designing ads, and I understand that client
naiveté can be overlooked and even corrected. But when the people in charge and
the people in charge of selling don’t really understand the product, the job
description of the production manager shifts from “managing production” to
“choreographing ignorance.” It was
that vast and formidable ignorance, along with increasingly inept management --
and a flat-earth approach to the burgeoning digital revolution -- that ultimately
killed the paper and cast me into financial purgatory.
That’s right. It’s all about me.
I entered the store yesterday morning to purchase a
Nutrigrain bar. Not much had changed since my last visit. Clif
Bars had been added to the selection, but, alas, not the elusive Maple Nut variety.
More refrigerated shelf-space had been claimed by bottled water, as well as
water in bottles and bottles filled with water. Paying for my peanut-buttery
snack, I noticed that the cigarettes were now behind Plexiglas. Under the
circumstances, the display resembled an exhibit from a bygone era.
On my way out, I veered down memory lane, and took a quick
look at the collection of free publications by the door. This is where I once
got a first look at my now-defunct paper and the weekly journey into relief or
retribution would begin. Looking down, I expected to see The Greensheet and
several automobile publications, I did not expect to see a familiar masthead
that once represented a steady paycheck and contributed mightily to my first
heart attack. But there it was. The stoic, pseudo-Lakota and the strip of
patriotic ribbon. The Franklin Gothic Bold, expanded and further tortured with
Typestyler gradation. Gagggh. I was certain I had slipped through a time warp.
Holy crap. Am I late for work?
Yeah. About three years.
Euphoria clashed with steel-talon panic before quickly
subsiding. It didn’t take long to spot the addition of an upstart QR code, as
well as the name of a nearby town. A small town. A charming hamlet where,
apparently, the Internet had not killed the printed classified ad and a daily newspaper
had not sewn up all the display inches. You know. Mayberry. This was their
little piece of the franchise, not mine. Mine was still dead. I picked up a
copy of the familiar publication, and was suddenly and inescapably
pot-committed to complete the morning ritual. (Pot-committed is not a drug
term. But, you knew that.)
Paper in hand, it was time to head next door to Denny’s for
cursory, furtive page inspection. Except … Denny’s is gone. Where once was
Denny’s is now a bank. So, I walked to the recently truncated shopping mall
behind the Tiger Mart and sat on a bench in front of The Guitar Center to study the
ad-filled pages. There were 32 of them. A healthy paper, by today’s standards.
Our largest paper was 72 pages. We hung at 60 for a short time, before slowly
and steadily dwindling to our final 12-page edition. (Four of those pages
actually given away.)
I had two reactions to this familiar visual experience. I
thought, look at all this work. Hey!
I could use some of this work. And, I thought, look at this crap. I
never want to do this crap again. I would rather be a barista or a Wal-Mart
greeter … or the guy who picks up roadkill. I actually felt (and some damaged
part of me savored) an old, toxic panic that once haunted my dreams. It was the
panic that came every Tuesday afternoon when the sales staff began filling the
top drawer of a filing cabinet in an adjoining room with the hastily-scribbled
layouts and incoherent ad copy I had been waiting for since the
previous Friday. Every time that drawer slammed (BLAM!) several minutes -- or
several hours -- were added to my workday. (BLAM!) Tuesday could be a ten-hour
day. (BLAM!) Or, it could be an eighteen-hour day. (BLAM!) It all depended on
the whims of the client and the sales staff and their subsequent indulgence by
an owner/manager, who enjoyed telling the production department they were nothing more than overhead. (BLAM!)
(BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!)
All I sought during those late nights was clarity. Clarity and closure -- and an understanding that, under deadline, time is a dwindling commodity which only moves in one direction. We rarely celebrated cohesion. The goals of any sales staff and the goals of any production department are, by nature, discordant. So, compromise is often the only salvation. But, bless them, these folks generally held their ground like petulant children ... or Republican legislators. And, I'm glad I was finally able to bid them adieu.
I put the paper in the trash and walked to the nearest bus
stop, noticing one thing that had not changed. After leafing through those inky pages, I
really wanted to wash my hands.
