Office Polit-licks (gxg)

Chapter 2

My office isn't an office. It's a small conference room that I took over as my personal workspace. I had a main table in the middle, though I'd gotten rid of all the chairs but four to give me more room in there. I rarely had more than another two people in there, so it worked fine. I had a low storage piece on both sides of the room, and a large flatscreen TV mounted on the far wall for video calls with clients. On the wall that I faced was an old fashioned cork board that I used when working on new projects to put up ideas on.

Nobody said anything about me stealing the room, because they knew I needed the extra space to do everything I needed. Since I was doing other jobs on top of my own, having the big table to spread out on, and cabinets to keep logs on every client was a huge help. If I was feeling spiteful, I could easily stop doing that and let the people that should be doing those jobs flounder. But I'm nice, so I don't. Besides, that would sink half of our clients, and I wouldn't want to make a mess for my coworkers.

This floor office had five other conference rooms. Three other small ones like mine, and a pair of big ones where we had staff meetings. Evidently, like this one. With that much space, nobody minded my use of one of the little ones too much. We hadn't had a meeting like this since we were in the running for a job for Apple, which we'd botched. It was pretty bad when Bryan gave a presentation, and then Jax got up to follow him and contradicted everything he'd just said. What a pair! I was just glad it hadn't been my pitch, or I'd have been pissed.

The meeting today wasn't with the entire staff, just those of us reporting to Bryan and Jax. They loved to refer to us as the Dragon team. I have no idea why, but I guess they thought it sounded cool. Oh, and there was a new girl sitting up at the head of the table with them. She was very young, with short brown hair in a wavy little cut while wearing a nice black button down shirt that showed just the hint of some nice breasts. Not that I was looking of course. Knowing the way things worked around here, she'd be banging Jax or Bryan by the end of the week. Or both. Looks like one of them had a new personal assistant, or maybe someone new in accounting.

"Thanks for joining us, Kris!" Jax called from the head of the table, no doubt trying to make me look bad for being the last one into a meeting that I didn't know existed. Yeah, I don't care asshole. Anyone with a brain knew better that to think it was anything other than a ploy to make me look bad.

"Any time, Jax. Sorry I didn't get the invite." Oh, and fuck you, there was no invite.

Bryan cleared his throat to make sure all eyes pivoted to him. "This is a very exciting day here. We have two things happening, and I'll get the easy one out of the way first. This is Brooklynn, our new senior copywriter. She'll be working with Kris, so try to be patient as she gets settled in."

I almost choked on my own saliva. A senior copywriter? She looked like she could still be in high school! What the hell! And why she was working with me? I always work alone! I guess I was babysitting the new girl. Lucky me. I'm sure that would go well.

"Now, here is the other exciting news," Bryan continued. "Nike is throwing an open pitch for a new campaign."

At that point the whole room erupted into chaos. I'd heard rumors that they were less than pleased with their last ad agency that staged a gimmick tortoise race that involved little sneakers on the tortoises, not realizing that they were an endangered species, and it only got worse from there. Hard to believe the tortoises didn't want to race! Whatever the reason, if they wanted to throw open a competition, I was down to try for that!

"Calm down people!" Jax bellowed. "Let Bryan finish!"

"Thanks, Jax. Nike would like to sponsor a new team, a new league or a new player, and then do an ad campaign around them. They've already done that in many pro and college ranks, but they need something new and different. We need to find them something big, something that they can own and promote in a new campaign that will take off. We need a campaign that will blow their sneakers off!" He just couldn't help but chuckle at his little jest. "Each team here will be spending time coming up with a pitch, and we have four weeks until the deadline. That means that for the next month we're going to bust our asses! Also, there is a promotion on the line here. We need a new creative director to help out the teams, so good luck! Now, does anyone have any questions?"