I Quit!

This may come as a surprise to some of you, particularly given my new found deference and easy-going attitude, but at one time in my career I was not exactly a company man. I never dealt well with authority or criticism or anybody or anything that stood in the way of getting the job done the way I wanted it done.

I used to tell myself it was always in the service of doing the best work, but now with the benefit of age and perspective, I've come to realize that at many times I was just being a brutish ass.

This accounts for my serial job hopping. A few times I "got quit" but most the time I pulled the trigger myself. To many, those magical two weeks after handing in the letter of resignation are seen as a time to goof off and engage in some lame-duck petulance.

Not so for me.

Those two weeks were often my most productive. Not at the actual work mind you, but at leaving little "Easter Eggs" around the office that would be discovered long after I had left or been escorted off the premises.

Once I crawled under a desk and, using flashlight and a space age gravity-defying pen, inked a 300-word missive on the underside about a particular Creative Director's lack of talent and her pervasive B.O. At another agency, I employed the help of my art director to photoshop pictures of my boss engaged in odd acts of reptilian bestiality. We then buried the jpegs in some obscure file on the hard drive that to this day might not have been opened.

I mention all this because I'm currently doing a long gig at an agency. And I've been asked to work out of a now vacant office. Yesterday when my wife called to nag me about something I decided the rest of the office did not to hear our well-honed nattering, so I closed the door.

And I'm glad I did. Otherwise, I might never have seen the little present left by the last frustrated copywriter...