Serving Two Masters
SERVING TWO MASTERS – July 27, 2023 – Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
Business Assessment Meetings on Thursday mornings were the most stressful hour of Essie Snow’s week. All branches of the AWS Law Firm were represented on the video calls, which were overseen by Mr. Alexander, the “A” in AWS. Updates on expenditures, major cases, and new hires took up most of the meeting, but Essie always got five minutes to explain the firm’s advertising strategy.
As AWS’s only graphic designer, Essie handled all print and digital media. She took photos and videos, composed commercials, and designed billboards and brochures. She often felt misunderstood and intimidated by the firm’s countless lawyers. After her short Thursday morning presentations, everyone in attendance waited for Mr. Alexander’s reaction. His sharp response was either, “That’s fine,” or “No, try again.” The others quickly agreed.
Essie learned to design for Mr. Alexander’s taste. After three years on the job, she averaged two pronouncements of “That’s fine” for every “No, try again.” During that period, she could count with one hand the times she met Mr. Alexander in person. She was required to work from the main office building one day per week, but she stayed far from his executive suite. If she was not filming or interviewing lawyers and clients, she mostly stayed in front of her home computer.
While she found parts of the law firm stimulating and challenging, Essie missed interacting with other artists. She felt a creative boost surrounded by fellow designers when she was a college student. They fed from each other’s ideas and without that encouragement, Essie was afraid she was growing stale. She finished jobs faster than ever, but they all began to look the same. She also wondered if anyone at the firm even cared about quality. If it took her two hours to design a poster, she got 90% of the work done in the first hour and spent the second hour adding artistic flair. She doubted Mr. Alexander recognized the difference between the crude one-hour version and the finished two-hour product.
On a weekend when Essie was feeling disillusioned by her job, she met some friends for dinner. Klint Dobbins sat next to her and bragged about working in computer support.
“Now I have two full time jobs,” Klint proudly explained.
“What do you mean full time?” Essie asked skeptically.
“I’m getting full salaries and benefits from two companies. The first one’s here in town. The second one’s in Texas.”
“How does that work?”
“I was only spending five or six hours a week on the first one. You know, making sure the internet stays connected and fixing people’s computer problems. They don’t have office space for me, so I do it from home. I was mostly bored so I figured I could do the same thing for a second company.”
“All from home?”
“Yeah. That’s the only way I could take the Texas job. They were happy to find someone with my skills, so they let me do what I want. They have no idea how little time it takes me.”
Essie smirked in disbelief. “No one’s keeping track? What if people from the different companies call at the same time?”
“I keep two different calendars and share when I’m available. If I’ve got a meeting with one company, on my other calendar I block off the time as ‘Development’. No one knows what that means so they don’t question it. Managing the two calendars is the only tricky part of my job. I mean jobs.”
“It doesn’t get stressful?”
“Once or twice a week I get two people wanting attention at the same time. But it’s no big deal. I still have plenty of time for goofing off. I’m learning about tile. I’m replacing all my floors.”
“And you don’t feel guilty? I mean both companies think you’re working full time for them.”
Klint laughed. “Why would I feel guilty? Lots of people like me do the same thing. And if the companies are happy, what difference does it make?”
“Are you sure they’re happy?”
“One manager is talking about a big raise so they can keep me around.”
Essie spent the next few days thinking about Klint’s work approach. When she then got a message from a college friend about a new job opportunity, the two ideas felt like more than mere coincidence.
“You’d work for a single agency but have multiple clients,” Essie’s friend explained. “You’d come in once a week but it’s mostly remote. You’d be fantastic and you could really stretch yourself.”
“What kind of advertising?”
“Everything you can think of.”
“Would I mostly work alone?”
“A mix of solo and collaborative projects.”
Essie liked the security of working for AWS. She liked being trusted and the way they saw her as an expert. Still, she missed creative collaboration. Working for an agency would bring more variety and potentially more fun. After she weighed the pros and cons of the two jobs, she asked herself why she could not have both. Why not work them Klint style? She was a big believer in signs and premonitions and the dinner with Klint seemed like the universe telling her she should try something new.
Essie agreed to an interview at the ad agency. Based on her friend’s recommendation and the massive portfolio of work done at AWS, she was offered a full-time position.
“We need you to come in once a week, but otherwise you can set your own schedule,” the hiring manger explained.
“How about I come in on Tuesdays?” Essie offered.
“That should work just fine.”
Essie started the following Monday. She took Klint’s advice and set up two electronic calendars – one for the ad agency and the other for AWS. She blocked off all of Tuesday to work on site at her new job and all of Wednesday at AWS. When she was scheduled for remote meetings, she made sure the competing calendar showed her doing “Development.”
The new schedule proved challenging. If Essie set aside one hour for AWS and the next for an agency client, it was hard to pivot from designing a law brochure to editing a social media video about swimsuits. Her brain needed warmup time before she could concentrate on any particular topic. And interruptions by her new collaborators spoiled momentum.
After four weeks of the new work arrangement, she turned in her first jobs for the ad agency while developing a new TV commercial for AWS. All her work had rough edges. The ad agency managers judged the results as okay, but Essie was sure they second-guessed hiring her. The first attempt at the AWS TV commercial produced, “Try again,” from Mr. Alexander.
“They know something’s wrong,” Essie told herself. She became convinced it was only a matter of time before she was caught and fired from one or both jobs. The stress showed on her face and in the paranoid way she spoke with coworkers. She had planned to work only eight-hour days, but they stretched into twelve. Her attention grew so unfocused it took two hours to accomplish what used to take one.
“Are you sick? I hear there’s something going around,” her colleagues said.
“Yeah, I’m probably coming down with something,” Essie answered, trying to cover up what was actually wrong.
On the fifth week after accepting her second job, Essie was assigned to compose a video for a circus. She strung together clips of elephants, clowns, and trapeze performers inside an enormous tent. At the same time, she made another attempt at an AWS commercial. That video used serious looking lawyers and boring client testimonials.
Thursday morning and the Business Assessment Meeting arrived. Essie emailed her video file to Mr. Alexander’s assistant before the 9 am deadline. Then she logged into the video call and acted like she was paying attention while drawing sketches for an ad agency client.
“Time for Essie to talk about media strategies,” Mr. Alexander’s assistant announced. “I’ll start the video she sent in.”
Essie expected shots of lawyers in suits to appear on her screen. Instead, she saw elephants and clowns. In her brain fog, she sent the wrong file. She cringed as her heart raced. She wanted to blank her camera, mute her sound, and scream. Instead, she froze wearing a pained grin. What could she possibly say to avoid getting fired? Thirty excruciating seconds seemed to last a lifetime.
The video ended and no one made a sound. Essie watched the feed from Mr. Alexander’s camera. She could not be entirely sure, but he looked to be smiling for the first time ever. He spoke with a chuckle in his voice and he did not say, “That’s fine,” or “Try again.”
“A different approach. I like the energy. The message is that life can feel like a circus and you need someone like AWS on your side.”
Essie did not hesitate to say, “Uh yeah. That’s exactly what I was going for.”
“I like the circus,” Mr. Alexander continued. “I visited as a child and saw an elephant grab a lady’s purse.”
Mr. Alexander usually stayed on topic, but for a few minutes he drifted into a story about the circus and how an elephant terrified him. For the first time, Essie saw him as an actual human and not a machine in a suit.
“I like the circus idea too,” echoed the other voices on the call.
Essie smiled and nodded and agreed to create a more complete version of the commercial. That weekend, she had dinner with friends again, including Klint. They laughed as she recounted the video mix-up.
“But it all worked out,” Klint concluded. “It’s a sign you should keep going with the two-job thing.”
“No, that was me dodging a bullet,” Essie replied with the shake of her head. “I’ve been living too close to the edge. I’ll finish what I’m doing for the circus people, but then I have to quit the ad agency. Two jobs might work for some people, but not for me.”
“You said you liked the way the agency got your creative juices flowing,” Klint replied.
“It was a nice job, but I need to find that in other ways.”
True to her plan, Essie completed her assignment for the circus and then resigned from the ad agency. Then she put all her energies into a circus-themed commercial for AWS. For weeks in the late summer, stations around Poughkeepsie aired strangely similar spots advertising that the circus was coming to town and you might need a good lawyer to protect you from the elephants.
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