I see laid-off people.

A local art director who had been with the same agency for 20 years was pink slipped recently, I learned from a friend. I don’t have any specifics beyond that, though I respect my friend and am therefore predisposed to suspect the AD in question is talented and productive. Ho-hum, right? It’s the tyranny of the job marketplace. From what I’ve seen, more often it’s the tyranny of the shameless.

In my working life I’ve never been fired, but if I hadn’t quit my last agency job, right about now they would probably be asking what I wanted for my last meal. As my still employed friend said, “Sooner or later, we’re all taken out and shot.” I’d guess we’ve all seen it happen. Someone gets within five or ten years of retirement age, and suddenly they’re sucked into the HR dustbuster. Maybe their salaries have grown to the point that they’re vulnerable to a younger person filling the same function cheaper. Maybe a new manager wants to recast the agency in his or her own image. It’s possible the pink-slipped person never aspired beyond his or her job to a position “managing” others and so must now suffer management. Plus, sometimes management needs people who don’t know any better.

Add to those possibilities the automatic loss of credibility an ad foot soldier bears in a youth driven industry and you must accept the fact that each day you go to work in advertising, you’re less likely to go to work tomorrow. Ah, but with a title, it’s a whole new world. Manage your industry image properly and you can get paid huge amounts of money to join the agency and huge amounts of money to leave it.

None of this is news, of course, but it still saddens me, and I don’t blame it on capitalism but on lazy and unethical management that refuses to acknowledge loyalty that’s been earned by employees, yet expects loyalty in return, natch.You’d think those who ascend to offices with doors and windows might grasp the concept of “earned,” but often they don’t. In fact, some might argue that this trait is why they need a door to close periodically while speaking in hushed and paranoid tones.Now that I’m in full hallucination, and at the risk of sounding like David Brent in the Brit version of The Office, I’ll give myself the assignment of what values I would like to see in an agency. For starters:

• Loyalty is never demanded but earned. It’s a two-way street.

• All departments are staffed by people who are problem solvers and know that the problems to be solved are the client’s.

• Since they’re all problem solvers, there are no barriers between account service and creative. The only difference between the two departments is wardrobe — and maybe golf.

• Every member of the creative department aspires to something beyond advertising — film, novels, music, editing, fine art, animation, cartooning –whatever. If asked, no employee imagines himself on his deathbed thinking, “Hey, in my time on this earth I sure did some ads.”

• Creativity is not limited to the creative department. These days media is a powerful creative discipline, maybe the creative discipline — for now. Account service could be next. It could happen.

• All awards, with the exception of those recognizing results, will be stored in a giant rolling trash can in an agency common area, maybe the lobby.

I’ve said this before, but now I think I might make it the freelancefred positioning statement:

Some people see things that are and ask “why?” I dream of things that never were and ask, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

Upon further research I now find a pretty funny George Carlin quote based on the same famous RFK speech. George Carlin lets no one get too uppity.