"Don't be bitter," he said, and patted me on the shoulder.
"Don't be bitter?!" I spat. My words were thrown like razorblades against the cheap veneer tabletop.
Getting laid off and being told not to be bitter was a bit like getting one's nuts cut off and being told not to bleed.
"Oh, I'm bitter," I said, and took an animalistic bite out of my cheezborger.
We were all at the Billy Goat - those of us who had found out just hours before that we no longer had jobs, and quite a few supporters who had survived the massacre.
Under a bridge, I thought - bitterly. How appropriate. The unemployed trolls, eating cheap ground beef while Michigan Avenue's well-heeled trampled overhead. We were the little people. The cast-offs. The drain on society.
Oh, we were bitter, alright. Like a rancid lime after a shot of shitty tequila, we were most definitely bitter.
The pat on the shoulder had come from one of my bosses - also laid off. He is someone I admire, respect, and genuinely like. Being a high-level employee, he got an additional two months to work and find another job. I got two weeks' severance pay.
"And the last door prize," my CEO said, reaching into a box full of names written on little slips of paper, "is a cruise around beautiful Lake Michigan on my yacht...and it goes to...Ryan Effington!" She waved the little piece of paper triumphantly, ever chipper.
That was over a year ago, before the abysmal state of the economy had everyone nervous as horses before a thunderstorm. We had all gathered at one of those mandatory all-agency meetings that are the stuff episodes of The Office are made of: long-winded speeches rife with cheesy achievement metaphors, stale bite-sized brownies, and condescending door prizes - bones thrown to the little people.
Now might be a good time to explain that I worked in advertising. As a writer. Advertising, like the rest of corporate America, has a deeply disturbing - if thoroughly capitalistic - pay scale. The people at the top make so much goddamn money, they give away yacht rides. The people at the bottom make so little that they actually accept them.
Another extremely well-paid agency leader once said to me, "I just don't know how you kids live on what they pay you these days." I gazed down at his $400 designer sneakers and wondered if it had ever occurred to him that he had the power to give me a raise.
When I was summoned to an empty office - the former workspace of someone laid off before me - and told that my "position had been eliminated," it was the free yacht ride that came sailing out of my subconscious, exploding grenade-like into my gut.
Everyone wanted to know if I cried. The answer is: in front of the people who mattered, no. I've said it before and I'll say it now: there is no crying in advertising.
There are only yacht rides and greasy burgers under a bridge.
Everyone got shitfaced at the Billy Goat. This was the fourth or fifth time I'd drunk away the sadness of a round of layoffs at that legendary haunt, but this was my first time as a guest of honor. Lucky me.
And this one was a biggie - 15% of the agency walked out with boxes that day. Somehow, the staggering number of us didn't offer any comfort. For years, we were comrades in arms. Now, we were all competing for a shockingly scarce number of jobs.
When my boss - who, all things considered, I liked - gave me the news at about 10:30 AM Thursday, I could see that he had been crying. And I swear to God, I started to feel so sorry for him.
Then I thought about the company Escalade and its driver - an impossibly sweet, older black man. I thought about the 5-digit bonuses and bogus expense reports. I thought about the yacht - its retail price easily four times my annual salary - the one they could no longer afford to pay me.
And, just like that, the feeling passed. Like a violent hiccup that would normally be followed by a million others, but isn't, it passed.
