My Second Job, Intro To An Ad Agency

 After I got my Bachelor of Science in Marketing at Ohio State and completed some art courses at Columbus College of Art and Design, I set out to find a job.I was hoping to find one in my chosen field of advertising.  It was during a recession, there seems to be a lot of those. Recessions hit usually hit states like Ohio really hard. It also didn’t help that I was fresh out of school with no real experience except for a few freelance illustrations and that job at the letter service. Employers want some experience, but they don’t want too much experience. It’s a tough market. It always has been and probably always will be. It wasn’t easy, I had accumulated a large pile of rejection letters and those were the ones who actually bothered to write and let me know they weren’t interested. My parents were nervous because I think they were afraid I’d bum around the house without a job. I had no intention of doing that. I had to type my resume on a typewriter. I hated typewriters. Computers are so much nicer; you don’t have to use that correction paper or correction fluid.

 Fortunately, I landed a job at a local ad agency known as Byer and Bowman. It was a kind of secretarial job where I passed out mail to the various account executives and made airplane reservations for their business trips. This was in the days before Travelocity and the internet and the reservations were made from a thick book that resembled a telephone book for some large city. I had to look up the available flight and time and call it in to the airline. I also had to mail out their stuff. People would frequently come to me to buy stamps, most of the time, for personal use. I had to type stuff, order office supplies and sort through a bunch of newspaper ads they ran. It wasn’t rocket science. I hoped that maybe I could start in on the ground floor(literally, my office was in the basement) and perhaps get promoted into a job as a layout artist or something like that. At least that’s what I had hoped for.

Byer and Bowman was in an older 3-story building in downtown Columbus, just off of Broad Street, close to the bus line. It was the only business in that old building and the offices were pretty nice. I had a big office in the basement, next to the maintenance area that I think housed some unintentional wildlife that must have found a few of the basic needs of life, food, water, shelter and space. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a cigarette machine, you don’t see those any more, thank goodness. The art department and the accounting department were also in the basement as well as the audio-video department.  I made friends with one of the artists, a lady named Sharon. She liked cats like I do and was a very interesting person to talk to. 

My supervisor was a really nice lady named Karen. She was always pleasant, no matter what. She told me once about a lady who came to an interview in hippie clothing and sat Indian-style on the chair (legs crossed, feet up) during the interview. One year, Karen gave all of us that worked with her, each a beautiful Christmas ornament made out of beads. Mine was a little Christmas tree. It is one of the prettiest Christmas ornaments I have ever seen and I still put it up on the Christmas tree every year.

When I first came there, people occupied offices on all three floors of that building. I got my exercise delivering mail to all of them. Also, when I first came to work there, over the lunch hour, I would have to man the main switchboard in the front lobby. I had to learn this switchboard that by today’s standards would belong in the Smithsonian. It was pretty easy to learn. That didn’t last long, however, I guess nobody had any problems with me; they just worked something else out.

When I was in middle school, I had a best friend named Debbie. She was a creative gal who was easy to talk to and I liked hanging out with her. I’d been to her house a number of times and made a small ceramic statue of their beagle dog for her and her family. In high school, we lost touch. We hung out with different crowds. Then, shortly after high school, I found out that she died of Leukemia. It was a total shock. While working at Byer and Bowman, I found out that her younger brother was working there. When I hung out with Debbie, I remember him as a typical annoying little brother. I was surprised to see how tall and grown-up he had become.  While I was watching the switchboard one day, his mom came in to see him and I got to talk to her and we got to talk about Debbie and what had happened. Their mom said she still had the little dog statue that I had made for them.

The economy had started to get even worse. The agency lost a few accounts and had to lay-off a number of people. The third-floor offices became vacant and some of the people that were still there had to move downstairs. I had to collect the office supplies from the vacated offices.  This was a prelude of things to come.

One of the two main accounts the agency had that I remember was an agricultural company called ‘Landmark.’ I don’t think it exists anymore because I tried to Google it and didn’t come up with anything. Anyway, this was a huge account and the account executive even had a secretary, a very prim, proper young lady named Linda.  The other great big account that they had was a beer company, Schoenling’s  Little Kings Cream Ale. That still exists, I was able to Google it. I remember the account executive and that department got free samples of beer from them and from what I heard, had a few real fun and interesting meetings after hours.

I remember there was some major soap opera named ‘General Hospital’ that every one there was following. I was never real big on soap operas, I got bored too easily with them. Anyway, there was this couple on the series known as Luke and Laura. Luke and Laura had a wedding on this show that was a major event. I remember most of the people at the agency took time off to gather in the audio-video room to watch this wedding. Everything came to a complete standstill for this wedding in a television drama.

The agency also had an account with a company that promoted movies for local theaters. We got to see local premiers of these movies for free. I also got press kits for several of the movies when they had extras. One of the movies that they promoted was the first Indiana Jones movie. I didn’t get to go to that premiere but I remember the people talking about it the next day, saying how amazing it was. I remember seeing all of the promotion materials and realize how much it would be worth today.

The Charles Chip truck made regular stops at Byer and Bowman. We could by potato chips, licorice sticks and all kinds of goodies from them. Those were the best potato chips. They came in canisters and I couldn’t get enough of Charles Chips.

I was dating the guy who was to become my future husband. He would drive me to and from work almost every day. We got matching Schoenling’s Little Kings Cream Ale Tee-shirts that the agency had given us. He was going to Ohio State at the time and working at a Radio Shack store in Westland Mall. We didn’t have a whole lot of money at the time. When we went to a dollar movie at this place in Westerville, I would bring a bag of Twizzlers in my purse that I had gotten from Charles Chips, to munch on during the movie. It was a lot fresher than the expensive stuff they sold in the theater.

Then the agency had a major blow. They lost the Landmark account. That was a great big account, so it was a great big blow to the agency. The account executive and the prim and proper lady who was his secretary left. It wasn’t long after that, they lost the Schoenling’s Little Kings Cream Ale account. Things started to really slow down. I didn’t have all of the airplane reservations to make and there were fewer people to deliver mail to. The building was getting more deserted. Then, one day, Karen called me into her office and told me that they were going to have to lay me off. She had no problem with the job I was doing, they just didn’t need me any longer. She was totally nice about it but it was sad. I had to clean out my office and say goodbye to everybody. I never did get to work in the art department, but at least I got a taste of what goes on in an ad agency.

I don’t really miss it, there were some things in that job that were really annoying, like when I was busy and would get paged to go to my office only to find out that it was an account executive who wanted to buy stamps so he or she could pay their personal bills.  Sometimes, it felt like some of the account executives looked down on me, which may or may not have been my imagination. That’s what I love about mongooses, you know where you stand with them.

That ad agency went out of business some time after that. Now, the building itself is no longer there. Every time we visit Columbus and if we should be making our way down Broad Street, I’ll look down that street to where the building used to stand. I don’t really think much about it, I just say, “There’s where Byer and Bowman used to be.”