The Mailroom Episode

When my parking lot job ended, it was mid winter.  I went to the classifieds and looked for an indoor job. There i saw a small ad for a mailroom position at a company I'd never heard of.   It turned out to be a company called Warren, Muller, Dolobowsky and I interviewed for the job two days later.  I had no education to speak of, no relevant work experience, nothing to suggest  I was capable of walking the halls with a shopping car,  delivering mail to executives of this company.  But my interview went well and on the strength of that and -- what else could it have been -- i got the job.  And I was thrilled.  I would at least be warm and have the companionship of other humans.  The following port of this story is not only a well known cliche,  even now and even though it happened to me, it's very hard to believe.  Yet it really did happen.   After a few, very few, months on the job at this ad agency, i began to think that what these copywriters and art directors were turning out was something I might be good at.

 I knew the work that was being done because it was also my job to file proofs of all the ads.   In fact, on my second day at the job I decided, to simplify my proof filing, that I would tape up a tiny alphabet above the proof file to quickly remind myself which letters followed what letters in the alphabet, so I wouldn't have to sing that dumb song every time I had to file a proof.  And I would have followed through on the idea took if my boss (Tino Polino) hadn't come in at lunch the day before and said, best I can recall, "You know, Bob," Everyone takes the liberty of calling persons named Robert, Bob.  I hate it. "You know, Bob," he said, "The last guy I had in here was so f'ing dumb he actually had an alphabet taped up on the wall so he could remember which letters came first."

I shelved the plan and muddled through.  But each day from a few months on I would pester the big enchiladas to give me a shot at an ad and after what seemed an eternity, they finally made my dreams come true.  They gave me a promotional sponge to write for.  These would be the words printed on a sponge handed out at shopping malls. I wrote something like "Don't get soaked by that other dry cleaner.  Moultry Saves you Money,"  These may not be the exact words, but they're close enough to convey the ease of the assignment.

After that, a radio commercial for Hohner Harmonicas.   I decided to tell a little story about a character named, Robby Austin who was a loner till he got his Hohner.  Pandemonium broke loose in my home town.   All that summer the ad played on top 40 radio stations and, to my friends, I became a sort of a hero.  By August, when I told people my name, they thought I was kidding.  That's how much the ad played.

Within four or five months I had done enough advertising that I was able to send samples to the best agency in the world at the time,  Doyle, Dane, Bernbach.  They had run an ad that said simply 'Doyle, Dane needs 3 Copywriters."  Everyone in the business answered the ad but I was one of the guys they hired and in the process tripled by salary from $80 a week to more than $300.  I thought I had slipped one past them, but in fact they were ready to pay much more.  The job was for an intermediate copywriter.