June 12, 2005 – Getting Fired During Christmas ‘85

June 12, 2005 – Getting Fired During Christmas ‘85

The year 1985 was a bad year, at least the last quarter. I was still working for a publishing company based in Rochelle Park, New Jersey, then owned by a patriarch of an Irishman I’ll call Mul for short. The year before LA, the publisher of Design, had won a contest among several electronics trade magazine for having a record number of ad pages published in a given year. A couple of years earlier, I had begun working on a publication, called Systems & Software—I use its real name because it died only a few years after being formed. It was spun out of Design to cover products being developed for the emerging microcomputer market. SK was the editor—he was one of the Electronics editors that followed LA to Design. I was the executive editor based in California. We had another editor based in Boston. ST was the lady running the copy desk, a lovely young woman who had moved over from the copy desk at Design, In addition, we had two prolific freelancers WD and her husband HD, who had contests over who could write the greatest number of words each issue.

At the start of 1985, the high tech world was heading toward a downturn, which periodically visited the industry. LA had started S&S and was its publisher—the same group of sales people selling Design was also selling S&S. At the end of 1984 with record sales for Design under his belt, LA had been lured back to Manhattan to save Electronics, which had fallen on hard times and was loosing advertisers faster than it could replace them. SK had decided he wanted to return to Design and resume the managing editor role he had left to start S&S at LA’s request. An ex-Electronics editor, LC, with a track record as editor or a rival microcomputer publication was hired to edit the magazine. About five-foot seven in height with a trim build; he had a face that resembled Papa Smurf, a popular cartoon character of the time, especially because of his full white beard. Along with LC, Mul hired a new publisher RB, a sales executive from outside of publishing, to drive the business side of S&S—a good move as Design’s sales people always put S&S second to their main product. Tall, thin, handsome with a slow deliberate way of speaking he gave the impression of a man who knew what was causing the problem and how to fix it. I got to know RB during a sales meeting held at a hotel in Redondo Beach at the start of the year.

But all was to no avail. The market had turned and no amount of effort was going to offset the lack of dollars to support all the magazines clamoring for ad pages from cash strapped companies. Advertising budgets were the first expenditure cut in a downturn. No amount of additional incentive from our sales staff could change the reality of the business climate. The end came with the close of the year; I could sense its approach in my last trip to New Jersey in the fall of ’85. ST and her husband DT had invited me out to their place and I had accepted with the proviso that I buy them dinner. This was a time in my life when I had been reading Kurt Vonnegut’s work and the three of us spent the evening over dinner discussing his various novels. DT surprised me when he asked if I had read the novel Venus on a Half Shell by Kilgore Trout. I had assumed Kilgore Trout was a fictional character that ran through Kurt Vonnegut’s work. But, upon returning to their home DT presented me with a paperback copy of the work, which I read on the plane ride back to California.

As the meal came to an end, ST and I began to speculate on the fate of the magazine. She had already been preparing herself by pursuing her real estate license and was about to take her test. She was growing weary of editing and the publication’s slow decline was taking its toll on everyone in the office. It was similar to waiting for some terminally ill patient to breath his last breath. When she asked what I had in mind, I had no answer other than to begin freelancing. I had been freelancing on occasion while with the magazine. If an agency or company needed something written I would take on the assignment and charge them a fee of somewhere around at dollar per word. The assignments were relatively simple, writing company backgrounders included in press kits, knocking out a press release on a new product. I wrote a slick small book for a hard drive company through an ad agency. It paid a bit more but those projects were few and far between. The company printed several thousand copies. They were given away to customers but ended up being shipped to competitors throughout Japan and the rest of Asia. It was a hotly demanded little book among industry insiders. That was what I would do when the end came, I said.

However, instead of relying entirely on my network of contacts in California’s depressed high tech industry, I visited LA in Manhattan. He invited me over to his offices on Avenue of the Americas. By this time, LA and his wife KA had split. It was only a matter of time before the divorce would be final. In the meantime, he was with JA, a young MBA graduate Mul or LA had hired—I don’t recall which—to help market Design while LA was still running the shop. JA was a beautiful brunette and it was only a matter of time before the two had become a thing in the office. Now in his new office in a tall high-rise office building at the intersection of Avenue of the Americas and 48th Street, JA is standing beside him, her hand on his shoulder, his right arm around her waist as we discussed where we would have dinner that evening. In New York in the middle of the 1980s everyone wore suits with a designer label inside. I was attired in an Yves St Laurent two-piece dark blue suit and pale blue Pierre Cardin dress shirt and complementary tie all from Marshalls. The ensemble looked good enough that LA offered me a job as a salesman once I had settled into a chair in front of his desk. I think he was serious but I said that I wasn’t good at closing a sale, to which he seemed to agree.

There was another editor in our California office FM. He worked for Mul’s communications magazine. He had achieved his ambition of winning a Jesse M. Neal award for his writing. I forget which year. And afterwards with no more mountains to climb in editorial decided to give the sales job a try. LA took him on as his protégé and he did remarkable well. FM was a tall, handsome, athletic-looking young man with a winning smile, a quick wit, and a boyish face: the perfect man to be asking women advertising buyers for money. He was also talented. He would juggle balls with different magazines logos on them while making a sales presentation. He would drop the ball containing a competitor during the course of his talk to emphasize a major disadvantage the competitor had. He would end his talk with the one ball containing the Design logo, which he would present to his audience of one. It was the kind of innovative edge that he brought to the job.

As in editorial FM succeeded remarkably well, becoming rookie of the year among the Design sales force and winning the admiration and envy of his fellow sales people. But, somewhere FM’s life came undone. He had a girlfriend and was completely smitten with her. She was headstrong and free-spirited; the sort of being that couldn’t be tied down. She had gone into the Lifespring self-help program and FM had followed coming out with the kind of invigorated clarity of purpose that Lifespring was purported to give its followers. I suspect that was what helped FM direct all his energy into the job of selling and achieving his remarkable sales results. After winning rookie of the year, his girlfriend left for Japan and FM followed giving up his sales job. The two must have been living off the accumulated earnings he had amassed. The next I heard of FM was a year or two later. He had returned to California sometime earlier alone and lonely.

At dinner with LA that evening I mentioned that the end was near for S&S and asked LA if there were any chance to get some freelance work from Electronics. He said there was and to get back with him after his budget was approved next year. The end did come right before Christmas. The publisher, RB, had been fired along with the editor, LC. Mul had hired a tall big-framed guy with a John Wayne build, cowboy boots, and a paunch over his belt to run the day the day operations of the publishing company. His name was BL. An ex-Marine with a growl for a voice, he could be intimidating and arrogant, but he had been the force behind Mul’s successful personal computer magazine and nothing succeeds like success. Besides, PC magazines were all the rage and electronic trade magazines were falling out of favor. I had taken vacation and driven IM and our two daughters to El Paso to be with my parents and sisters over the holidays. The day after Christmas was a Thursday that year. It was the day I got a call at my parent’s home from SK, who had been assigned to deliver the bad news to me. He said I was off the payroll and they would send me a final check. In retrospect, it resembled the end of a “Godfather” movie with a sequence of well-orchestrated hits on rival gang members all filmed in slow motion. I hung up the phone and realized for the first time in my life I was on my own. I had been fired.