Some people are A#*@%?!'s—just thinking about them makes you curse a blue streak. And some days, it takes everything inside you not to beat them into a coma.
“Mistah Carter”
While at BBDO Chicago, I worked with a guy named “Carter.” He was your classic office A#*@%?! He wasn’t in management; he was just from New York. Even though he was in Chicago and had been for some 5 years, Carter constantly justified his A#*@%?!-ish behavior with a dismissive “I’m a-New-Yorker-so-get-over-it.” In his world, being an A#*@%?! was a sign of inner-strength and self-confidence. Carter was your classic late ‘90s Gen-X copywriter: Long hair, pale, fancy coffee sipping, obnoxious, judgmental, narrow-minded, Howard Stern loving, obscure indie-flick referencing, Village Voice-quoting punk. Basically, he was a slightly taller, louder David Spade, only with talent.
Carter regularly insulted female coworkers about their weight. He insulted colleagues’ wardrobes. He insulted people’s taste in music. Knowing that she’d just returned from her beauty salon appointment, he told a secretary she that needed to dye her hair again because her roots were showing and she looked old.
When an account exec died in a horrible skiing accident Carter spent days trashing the guy and his girlfriend, also a fellow coworker. Carter once got himself banned from his own commercial shoot because he bugged the director and the crew to the point that they refused to continue working until Carter was sent home and not allowed to come back. The entire accounting department wanted to kick him in the nuts—once a day. And while he never took aim at me, after seeing some of his handiwork, I confronted him one day. He told me that everyone else, not him, should just lighten up.
But the most amazing thing about Carter was that he was completely asexual about anything you said to him. People would curse him out, call him every name in the book and it would go thru one ear right and out the other. He wouldn’t even acknowledge what you said, which made arguing impossible. People usually argue for three reasons: (1) They’re stubbornly passionate about their beliefs. (2) You hurt their feelings and they want to make sure you know it. (3) They don’t like you and will stand against you on anything, no matter what. But none of this applied to Carter because he truly didn’t care what anyone else thought. He just didn’t care. He was unreal.
Nobody liked Carter. Not women. Not men. Not nuns. Not priests. Nobody. Even if you started out liking him, as I did, eventually he made you want to beat him until all his meals had to be eaten thru a straw. No one liked Carter. Actually, I take that back—there was this one guy “Kurt” who liked Carter. But Kurt was such a high-strung neurotic goof that his sense of judgment was often suspect.
Nearly every week a different person walked into our boss’s office demanding that Carter be fired. But there was a problem: Carter was good at his job. Dude cranked out quality ads by the pound. Plus, a couple clients actually liked him—the ones that didn’t hate his guts, that is. Carter was profitable. And for our company that meant he stayed no matter who wanted him gone. And of course, Carter was smart enough to never insult anyone who could fire him—not to their face anyway.
The only guy that could handle Carter was his partner, “Mac.” Mac was a senior art director who’d been in the game for years and was liked by everyone from secretaries to clients to CEOs. He was just a good guy that worked hard and stayed loose. He was the consummate professional. So no matter what Carter said or did, Mac always brushed it off. One day I asked him how he managed.
“Pages and pages of ideas,” he’d say.
Like I said, dude was talented. And when money was on the line, Carter usually came thru with the goods, which made Mac’s job easier. But one day Mac quit—bounced to another agency. The money and responsibilities seemed so comparable that it came off as a lateral move, even a step down. On his last day I asked him why he was really leaving. He said he’d had enough. Among other things, Carter had worn him out to the point that he needed a change of scenery.
After Mac left, Carter went thru several art directors, one after another with none ever lasting longer than a few weeks. The only one that ever measured up to Carter’s standards was “Deek,” an award-winning freelance art director. Deek had an ego too, but show me a creative who doesn’t. Anyway, after a few months, even he wouldn’t work with Carter no matter how much loot they threw his way. Deek bounced to Wyoming. A few months later, Carter got bored or frustrated or something and quit himself. Some celebrated his last day; just about everyone else celebrated every day afterwards.
“Mistah Carter”
While at BBDO Chicago, I worked with a guy named “Carter.” He was your classic office A#*@%?! He wasn’t in management; he was just from New York. Even though he was in Chicago and had been for some 5 years, Carter constantly justified his A#*@%?!-ish behavior with a dismissive “I’m a-New-Yorker-so-get-over-it.” In his world, being an A#*@%?! was a sign of inner-strength and self-confidence. Carter was your classic late ‘90s Gen-X copywriter: Long hair, pale, fancy coffee sipping, obnoxious, judgmental, narrow-minded, Howard Stern loving, obscure indie-flick referencing, Village Voice-quoting punk. Basically, he was a slightly taller, louder David Spade, only with talent.
Carter regularly insulted female coworkers about their weight. He insulted colleagues’ wardrobes. He insulted people’s taste in music. Knowing that she’d just returned from her beauty salon appointment, he told a secretary she that needed to dye her hair again because her roots were showing and she looked old.
But the most amazing thing about Carter was that he was completely asexual about anything you said to him. People would curse him out, call him every name in the book and it would go thru one ear right and out the other. He wouldn’t even acknowledge what you said, which made arguing impossible. People usually argue for three reasons: (1) They’re stubbornly passionate about their beliefs. (2) You hurt their feelings and they want to make sure you know it. (3) They don’t like you and will stand against you on anything, no matter what. But none of this applied to Carter because he truly didn’t care what anyone else thought. He just didn’t care. He was unreal.
Nobody liked Carter. Not women. Not men. Not nuns. Not priests. Nobody. Even if you started out liking him, as I did, eventually he made you want to beat him until all his meals had to be eaten thru a straw. No one liked Carter. Actually, I take that back—there was this one guy “Kurt” who liked Carter. But Kurt was such a high-strung neurotic goof that his sense of judgment was often suspect.
Nearly every week a different person walked into our boss’s office demanding that Carter be fired. But there was a problem: Carter was good at his job. Dude cranked out quality ads by the pound. Plus, a couple clients actually liked him—the ones that didn’t hate his guts, that is. Carter was profitable. And for our company that meant he stayed no matter who wanted him gone. And of course, Carter was smart enough to never insult anyone who could fire him—not to their face anyway.
The only guy that could handle Carter was his partner, “Mac.” Mac was a senior art director who’d been in the game for years and was liked by everyone from secretaries to clients to CEOs. He was just a good guy that worked hard and stayed loose. He was the consummate professional. So no matter what Carter said or did, Mac always brushed it off. One day I asked him how he managed.
“Pages and pages of ideas,” he’d say.
Like I said, dude was talented. And when money was on the line, Carter usually came thru with the goods, which made Mac’s job easier. But one day Mac quit—bounced to another agency. The money and responsibilities seemed so comparable that it came off as a lateral move, even a step down. On his last day I asked him why he was really leaving. He said he’d had enough. Among other things, Carter had worn him out to the point that he needed a change of scenery.
After Mac left, Carter went thru several art directors, one after another with none ever lasting longer than a few weeks. The only one that ever measured up to Carter’s standards was “Deek,” an award-winning freelance art director. Deek had an ego too, but show me a creative who doesn’t. Anyway, after a few months, even he wouldn’t work with Carter no matter how much loot they threw his way. Deek bounced to Wyoming. A few months later, Carter got bored or frustrated or something and quit himself. Some celebrated his last day; just about everyone else celebrated every day afterwards.
You drive a brotha to drink!
—Robin Harris
—Robin Harris
