Wednesday, October 1, 2003

Stupid things that women have done that made me like them even more

Not to suggest only women do stupid things. But they are the only ones who do stupid things that make me like them even more.

Kerry You’ll perhaps recall that every couple of years Kerry and I have dinner. On one of these occasions, we arrive at the restaurant to find it is full and we have no reservation. The maitre d’ helpfully suggests that if we’d like to give him a name, we can retire to the bar and he will let us know when a table is ready. Sounds good.

“The name is Task,” I tell him, because that is my name.

Kerry says, “I usually just say Smith.”

I’m somewhat surprised. She says, “It’s easier for them to remember.”

“But it’s harder for me to remember,” I tell her, “because it isn’t my name.”

So we go to sit at the bar. I try not to think about why she is used to telling men behind desks that her name is Smith.

Eventually the maitre d’ appears behind us. “Party of Task and Smith,” he says.

Maybe in this story it’s really the maitre d’ I ended up liking. Moving right along.

Shelly When I was a young man with little idea what to do with myself, I naturally ended up in advertising. My first gig was as an intern with the creatives, which was a pretty good place to be. Adding to the agony and ecstasy of this was my fellow intern, a gorgeous young woman my age who somehow, no matter how I tried to pretend, wasn’t all that bright. Sometimes she was charming to have around, but sometimes I wished she would go away. And die.

So we’re working on a television ad for a bank. Some idiot has come up with the idea of cartoon dollar bills running around. So that’s what we’re working on. Shelly and I are in charge of the treatment for the script. I take a look at her draft, and she’s got them working together to build a big wall, which then has the corporate logo on it.

“You see,” Shelly says, “the dollars work together to build a new future for the bank’s clients.” Or something like that.

“I don’t like the wall,” I say. “It’s a negative image: building a wall. Why can’t they do something else?”

“Like what?”

“Well, what if, I dunno, we want the logo in there. What if they hauled up a flag that had the logo on it?”

Shelly looked aghast. “A flag! But Jack, how can they do that? They’re only little dollar bills!”

This story has a happy ending, because she is today CEO of Ogilvy.

by Jack, October 1, 2003 11:39 AM | More from Kerry | More from Women

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