You're Invited

Today is not July 17th.

It's nowhere close to July 17th.

But as sure as the unwanted hair recently shaven from my ear will grow back at an astonishingly fast rate, I will receive a meeting invite for July17th.

The electronic meeting invite has become as ubiquitous as the 5 second pre-roll ad on every Youtube video.

Not long ago, I was contacted by a Creative Service Manager from an out of town agency. She had inquired about my availability, my outrageous day rate and my attitude towards travel and hotel preferences. If awarded the gig, I was told, I'd receive a letter of confirmation and would need to sign an NDA, a nondisclosure form for you laymen.

Before any of those formalities had been dealt with, I had already received a meeting invite.

And that was just the first.

Minutes later, the fastidious production coordinator (I guess they're not Traffic people anymore) had sent me another meeting invite. This one, for a day and a half later, was for a preliminary check in. Not a formal review, just a temperature check so the Associate Creative Directors knew we were headed in the right direction.

Two meeting invites and I hadn't even seen the brief yet.

Ding!

I'm alerted to check my mailbox again.

I thought it could have been from Patagonia. You buy one fleece pullover from these sons of bitches and then they don't leave you alone until you've seen their entire collection of fleece pajamas, fleece underwear and fleece tea cozies.

But it wasn't from Patagonia.

It was a third meeting invite!

Scheduled for the the same day as the Associate Creative Directors soft temperature check in. This meeting was for later in the day. With the regular creative directors. They wanted to make sure any course correction given by the ACDs, just 4 hours earlier, had been executed faithfully.

By this time you'd think the detail-oriented coordinator would have put away the calendar and moved on to Zappos or posted a few more selfies to her Instagram account, but you'd be wrong.

The three previous meeting invites were supplemented with three additional meeting invites, including a telephone call in conference call for 9pm on Sunday night, just 14 hours before the client "tissue" session on Monday morning.

Ding!

I have another email.

It's not from Patagonia. It's not another meeting invite. It's from the Creative Service Manager informing me the agency has given the assignment to an internal team and my services and my attendance for the six previously mentioned meetings will not be necessary.

Maybe I'll play some golf on July 17th.