My taste of advertising life
It's late night in office and AC/DC is being worshiped here. Loud music, smoking women (pun intended) and passively smoking men.... Welcome to O&M Mumbai. This place oozes with life... at night!!! It's like they hire all night creatures. For people like me and all others around me throwing their hands and legs in the air (I didn't have the heart to call it dancing), and some who are just bobbing their head with the beats, all gulping their drinks as though they had no water to drink, it's GOOD MORNING.
The party has begun and it's now that ideas float in the "light" heads of my creative friends. Some claim that creativity comes to have a drink with them!!! Well, i can't blame them, in their inebriated state, they seem to live a split life. Their thoughts seem like words spoken by someone else!
But really, these guys sometimes get on the roll. Wise advice, witty one liners, and cigarettes and drinks being exchanged more than words are. An invisible DJ changes the song - and a "HEY" is heard in unison. Two people genuinely meant it, the rest, well ever heard of mob psychology??? Once again, AC/DC is brought live on the speaker.
While some men are dancing, with legs and hands thrown to no particular rhythm, a couple of guys are busy running to a close-by printer to collect waste paper. Now begins a painful process of tearing the stack of paper to the tiniest bits. Their successful job would put any shredding machine to shame. Once this painful process is complete begins the controlled mess. While the men and women dance, these bits of paper is showered are them and sometimes flung like money in a strip club. Soon, instead of the tiled floor, all you can see is people dancing on a artificially created white floor!'
The dancing, the drinking, the craziest of concoctions, the smoke. Mix them all and you get LIFE! A life that people sometimes fancy for but actually never live it. Life that people work their ass out for. Life that makes you want to work more. Life that lures more and more people into advertising. Because, this is LIFE. You work when you are sleeping and dreaming and live right here right now - amidst that crazy atmosphere which more or less defines an agency.
I neither drink or smoke and happened to be one of the soberest people around. I was consciously witnessing some of the most bizarre visual atrocities (apart from the "dance" around). Men stripping, drunk and walking on cabin dividers of the office which is as thin as three of their fingers put together. The interesting thing is, if any one of these men walking there, was sane and sober, that act would be an impossibility. Their unconscious and inebriated state was the answer to the balancing problem that would they would otherwise have and also, it was the only way they could gulp down the guilt of doing something as stupid as walking on a divider, bare bodied, across the length of the hall.
Some even thought that the easiest way to go from one cubicle to another was across the divider and happily used the computer monitors as a stepping stone.
The music grew louder and the erratic screams and loud piercing random whistling too grew with it. Speech was understood not by sound but by reading each others lips. And most men drunk, talking wasn't the word to be used.... probably blabbering suits better!
It is now 3 o'clock. The only place that seems to have some lights shining in the office is ours. Some computer somewhere is playing the right electronic music which was acting as a lullaby. Most drunk men now have reached the state of silence. Their ears are listening to the music but the mind refuses to move any muscle. They just sit down, slowly and steadily sipping into their unknown self-created concoction. Their stomachs are grumbling. They exhausted all their money into the booze that none was left for food except the paltry amount that was kept for their salty and spicy side dish to go along with their drinks. They all are blankly staring at each other.
Slowly and even without them realising it, some men are falling off to sleep in the last position they were most comfortable in. Tall men wriggling their unconscious body into a place that barely fit them, one or two yet holding on to their glass while they fell asleep on the table, and some more crazy and unbelievable sights that made me conclude that the day was finally coming to and end.
Thanks to my tired body, I too found a nice long clean table which had neither the paper mattress nor a puddle of their weird drinks on it, and slept off.
I woke up at 6 and only when I visited the restroom that I realised that there was a man sleeping in one of the toilet rooms. I didn't have to open the door, the snoring was loud enough. Finding no reason to wake him, I realised it better for him to wake up on his own. By 7, all men were up but yet drowsy. All their actions now (washing their face and mouth, greeting each other good morning) was done by force of habit and regular practice. Most of them had to drive their way home and tried to at least look sober. By 7:30, the cleaners walked into office and the men found their cue to head home and slump onto their beds.
Some unfortunate people like me and my boss, washed our faces and headed back to our desk to finish the presentation which was to have been sent last night before 5:30 pm.
With great effort, the mind refusing to wake up had to be jump started by getting a call from the client asking for the presentation! It was 9 already and the only thing that had changed in the ppt in the past hour and half was a full stop added.
So began another boring night for me, and I was waiting for the DAY to come.
The party has begun and it's now that ideas float in the "light" heads of my creative friends. Some claim that creativity comes to have a drink with them!!! Well, i can't blame them, in their inebriated state, they seem to live a split life. Their thoughts seem like words spoken by someone else!
But really, these guys sometimes get on the roll. Wise advice, witty one liners, and cigarettes and drinks being exchanged more than words are. An invisible DJ changes the song - and a "HEY" is heard in unison. Two people genuinely meant it, the rest, well ever heard of mob psychology??? Once again, AC/DC is brought live on the speaker.
While some men are dancing, with legs and hands thrown to no particular rhythm, a couple of guys are busy running to a close-by printer to collect waste paper. Now begins a painful process of tearing the stack of paper to the tiniest bits. Their successful job would put any shredding machine to shame. Once this painful process is complete begins the controlled mess. While the men and women dance, these bits of paper is showered are them and sometimes flung like money in a strip club. Soon, instead of the tiled floor, all you can see is people dancing on a artificially created white floor!'
The dancing, the drinking, the craziest of concoctions, the smoke. Mix them all and you get LIFE! A life that people sometimes fancy for but actually never live it. Life that people work their ass out for. Life that makes you want to work more. Life that lures more and more people into advertising. Because, this is LIFE. You work when you are sleeping and dreaming and live right here right now - amidst that crazy atmosphere which more or less defines an agency.
I neither drink or smoke and happened to be one of the soberest people around. I was consciously witnessing some of the most bizarre visual atrocities (apart from the "dance" around). Men stripping, drunk and walking on cabin dividers of the office which is as thin as three of their fingers put together. The interesting thing is, if any one of these men walking there, was sane and sober, that act would be an impossibility. Their unconscious and inebriated state was the answer to the balancing problem that would they would otherwise have and also, it was the only way they could gulp down the guilt of doing something as stupid as walking on a divider, bare bodied, across the length of the hall.
Some even thought that the easiest way to go from one cubicle to another was across the divider and happily used the computer monitors as a stepping stone.
The music grew louder and the erratic screams and loud piercing random whistling too grew with it. Speech was understood not by sound but by reading each others lips. And most men drunk, talking wasn't the word to be used.... probably blabbering suits better!
It is now 3 o'clock. The only place that seems to have some lights shining in the office is ours. Some computer somewhere is playing the right electronic music which was acting as a lullaby. Most drunk men now have reached the state of silence. Their ears are listening to the music but the mind refuses to move any muscle. They just sit down, slowly and steadily sipping into their unknown self-created concoction. Their stomachs are grumbling. They exhausted all their money into the booze that none was left for food except the paltry amount that was kept for their salty and spicy side dish to go along with their drinks. They all are blankly staring at each other.
Slowly and even without them realising it, some men are falling off to sleep in the last position they were most comfortable in. Tall men wriggling their unconscious body into a place that barely fit them, one or two yet holding on to their glass while they fell asleep on the table, and some more crazy and unbelievable sights that made me conclude that the day was finally coming to and end.
Thanks to my tired body, I too found a nice long clean table which had neither the paper mattress nor a puddle of their weird drinks on it, and slept off.
I woke up at 6 and only when I visited the restroom that I realised that there was a man sleeping in one of the toilet rooms. I didn't have to open the door, the snoring was loud enough. Finding no reason to wake him, I realised it better for him to wake up on his own. By 7, all men were up but yet drowsy. All their actions now (washing their face and mouth, greeting each other good morning) was done by force of habit and regular practice. Most of them had to drive their way home and tried to at least look sober. By 7:30, the cleaners walked into office and the men found their cue to head home and slump onto their beds.
Some unfortunate people like me and my boss, washed our faces and headed back to our desk to finish the presentation which was to have been sent last night before 5:30 pm.
With great effort, the mind refusing to wake up had to be jump started by getting a call from the client asking for the presentation! It was 9 already and the only thing that had changed in the ppt in the past hour and half was a full stop added.
So began another boring night for me, and I was waiting for the DAY to come.
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