There was one serious side to the party. That’s when the president reviewed the year’s business, announced how much the annual bonus would be, and then named the Board’s choices for People of the Year, the five lucky employees who made the most significant contributions to the agency’s success during the past twelve months.
The unwritten part to this latter (although everyone knew it, anyway) was that each one of the five would receive a very special individual bonus— some said as high as $50, 000 apiece.
Then French & Saunders bought fifteen floors in the tallest, shiniest new office tower on Broadway, the one that had actually been praised by the N. Y. Times architecture critic.
The original plan was to hold the party in the brand-new offices that were to be ready just before Christmas. A foolish idea, as it turned out, because nothing in New York is ever finished when it’s promised. The delay meant the agency had to scramble and find a new party site—either that, or make do in the half finished building itself.
Amazingly—cleverly? —enough, that was the game plan the party committee decided to follow. Give the biggest, glitziest party in agency history amid half finished offices in which paneless windows looked out to the open skies, where debris and building supplies stood piled up in every corner, and where doors opened on nothing but a web of steel girders and the sidewalk seventy floors below.
Charlie Evanston, one of the company’s senior vice-presidents (he had just reached the ripe old of age of fifty), was chosen to be party chairman. He couldn’t have been happier. For Charlie had a deepdown feeling that this was finally going to be his year. After being passed over time and again for one of those five special Christmas bonuses, he just knew he was going to go home a winner.
Poor Charlie.
In mid-November—the plans for the party proceeding on schedule— the agency suddenly lost their multi-million-dollar Daisy Fresh Soap account, no reason given. Charlie had been the supervisor on the account for years, and although he couldn’t be held personally responsible for the loss a few people (enemies!) shook their heads and wondered if maybe someone else, someone a little stronger—and younger—couldn’t have held on to the business.
Two weeks later, another showpiece account—the prestigious Maximus Computer Systems—left the agency. Unheard of.
The trade papers gave away the reason in the one dreaded word “kickbacks.” Two French & Saunders television producers who had worked on the account had been skimming it for years.
Again, Charlie’s name came up. Not that he had anything remotely to do with the scandal. The trouble was that he personally had hired both offenders. And people remembered.
There’s a superstition that events like these happen in threes, so it was only a question of time before the next blow. And, sure enough, two weeks before Christmas, it happened. A murder, no less. A F&S writer shot his wife, her lover, and himself.
With that, French & Saunders moved from front-page sidelines in the trade papers straight to screaming headlines in every tabloid in town. In less than a month, it had been seriously downgraded from one of New York’s proudest enterprises to that most dreaded of advertising fates—an agency “in trouble.”
It was now a week before Christmas and every F&S employee was carrying around his or her own personal lump of cold, clammy fear. The telltale signs were everywhere. People making secret telephone calls to headhunters and getting their resumes in order. Bitter jokes about the cold winter and selling apples on street corners told in the elevators and washrooms. Rumors that a buyout was in the making and nobody was safe.
And yet, strange as it sounds, there were those who still thought there would be a happy ending. At the Christmas party, perhaps. A last-minute announcement that everything was as before—the agency was in good shape and, just like always, everyone would get that Christmas bonus.
Charlie was one of the most optimistic. He didn’t know why. Just a gut feeling that the world was still full of Christmas miracles and, bad times or not, he was going to be one of F&S’s five magical People of the Year.
Poor Charlie.
A few days before the party, his phone rang. It was the voice of J. Stewart French, president and chairman of the board.
“Hi, Charlie. Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“I wonder if you’d mind coming up to my office. I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to talk to you about.”
Nothing menacing about that, thought Charlie. J probably wants to discuss the party. The food. The caterers. The security measures that would be needed so that no one would be in any danger in those half finished offices.
Very neatly, very efficiently, Charlie got out his files and headed upstairs. When he arrived in the president’s office—it was the only one that had been completely finished (vulgar but expensive, thought Charlie)—J was on the phone, his face pale and drawn, nothing like the way he usually looked, with that twelve-months-a-year suntan he was so proud of. He nodded over the phone. “Sit down, Charlie, sit down.”
Charlie sank into one of the comfortable $12,000 chairs beside the desk and waited. After a minute the conversation ended and J turned to give him his full attention. Charlie had known J for fifteen years and had never seen him so nervous and ill at ease.
Then he spoke.
“Charlie, they tell me you’ve really got the Christmas party all together. Looks like it’ll be a smash.”
“We’re hoping so, J.”
“Well, we can certainly use some good times around here. I don’t have to tell you that. It’s been a bad, bad year.”
“Things’ll be better. I know it.”
“Do you really think so, Charlie? Do you? I’d like to believe that, too. That’s why this party means so much to me. To all of us. Morale—”
“I know.”
“Well, you’ve certainly done your part. More than your part. That’s why I called you in.”
Here it comes, thought Charlie, here comes my special Christmas bonus! Ahead of time, before anyone else hears about it!
“I wanted you to be one of the first to know. The Board and I have agreed that, even with all our troubles, there’ll be something extra in everybody’s paycheck again this year. Nothing like before, of course, but it will be something.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Yeah. Wonderful. We monkeyed around with the budget and found we could come up with a few bucks. The problem is, we’ll have to make some cuts here and there.”
“Cuts?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m afraid there won’t be any of those special bonuses this year, Charlie. And I’ll level with you—you were down for one. After all these years, you had really earned it. I can’t tell you how sorry—”
Sure, thought Charlie. “It’s not the end of the world, J,” he said. “Maybe next year.”
“No, Charlie, that’s not all. With our losses and the cost of moving—I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’re doing something else. We’re cutting back—some of our best people. I’ve never had to do anything like that in my life.”
You bastard, Charlie thought. “Go on, J,” he said. “I think I know what you’re going to say.”
J looked at him miserably. “You’re one of the people we’ll have to lose, Charlie. Wait a minute, please hear me out—it’s nothing personal. I wanted to save you. After all, we’ve been together fifteen years. I talked and talked. I even threatened to resign myself. But no one wanted to listen.”
Sure, Charlie thought.
“They said you hadn’t produced anything worthwhile in years. And there was the business of those two crazies you hired. And—”