The Squeeze, July 21st

When I was in my early 20s, I worked for a small, privately held radio broadcasting company. My main job as promotions manager was to barter commercials during our on-air shows in exchange for prizes that would entice listeners to tune in. My boss, the promotions director, gave me her contacts at some of the Broadway venues and I was able to successfully trade literal air for show tickets. I also contacted a whole slew of restaurants I knew, like Café Iguana and Canastel’s and bartered for meal vouchers. I of course got to see the shows I promoted (wow!) and occasionally the restaurants would throw in an extra meal voucher for me, and one for my boss, too. (I was learning about the perks of networking.) I also created flyers and collateral sheets to send to the radio stations alerting them to our upcoming promotions.

The dress code was casual– jeans and sneakers most days, but the hours were 9:30-6pm with no exceptions and everyone on the whole staff was required to take lunch from 1-2pm. The owner liked to keep a tight leash on every single employee. Having worked only one other full-time job since graduating college, I didn’t question his management style– hell I was thrilled for medical benefits that were covered at no expense to me, and a full 10 days of paid vacation. But every day around 6pm when the office would be packing up, the owner would stand near the front door like a prison guard with his arms folded watching us, and not release the exit door until precisely 6pm. He liked to squeeze every possible working hour out of us since we were on “his” time. (Don’tcha have better things to do with your time, Mr. CEO?)

Anyway, this was the early 90s, and back then all employees were given a cube, a desk phone, an actual rolodex, a file cabinet, and access to the fax machine. Bare bones, this job was the true definition of no frills. There was absolutely no privacy, nor was there a community coat closet. We even had to bring our own pens, as one day Sir Cheapo walked into the supply room to get a pen and there were none, so the whole office turned into BYOP. (Ya, crazy.) We had no break room and my promotions group of three shared one slow PC that graced an adjacent desk flanked by a loud page-at-a-time, low-resolution black and white printer. I really liked my team, and I was determined to enjoy the hell out of the job.

A year later, the promotions were going smoothly, my prize calendar was booked a full three months in advance, and my computer graphics work was given regular shout-outs by the CEO. So I was called in to discuss my bright future. At that meeting, I was given a one thousand dollar per year raise. (In my head I was of course calculating how many pens I could buy with that windfall.) In hindsight I felt like Randolph Duke in Trading Places snapping that crisp one dollar bill when he won the bet against his brother Mortimer that Louis Winthorpe III would turn to a life of crime while Billy Ray Valentine (Capricorn) would become a huge success. A whole thousand bucks? Seriously? Fuck you very much. I stomped back to my desk in utter disgust and then blabbed about the raise to my boss who was visibly horrified. She told me she’d take care of it… and I believed her.

A week later we were downtown together at Tower Records. One of our radio shows, Shipwrecked Songs, asked listeners to send in a playlist of tunes they would pick if they were stranded on a desert island. Once a month we would select a winner at random, visit the record store, pull all the CDs on the lucky winner’s list and gift them the whole stack. At the time, I did not have a CD collection– my player was brand new. (It was the early 90s remember.)

So this is what happened. I helped my boss pick out all the music… none of which I liked– AC/DC, The Best of Bread, Foreigner? No thanks. (Ok, maybe Foreigner.) All the discs had labels on the back with the Tower Records sticker. Back at the office, I helped her bag all of the winner’s picks into a huge mailbag and then at the last minute, she slapped a label on the front. Then she shoved the mailbag deep into the giant outgoing sack with the rest of the packages for the day, and with a wink, asked me to drag it out. My heart was beating through my chest as I lugged the heavy sack into the hall for the mail carrier to collect.

Four days later, I received an enormous package in the mail. I sat there in utter bewilderment amongst the bounty of music riches, until a huge smile crept across my naive face. Apparently, the last-minute label she attached to the outgoing CDs had my name and address printed on the front instead of the real winner’s info. Too afraid to be caught by The Village People at the Tower Records downtown, I casually strolled into the Upper West Side location and exchanged all of those CDs (except Foreigner) for Erasure, Hall and Oats, Journey, Queen, Marc Cohn, Pet Shop Boys, and the rest of my personal favorites. Yes, I gifted my boss a few too since she singlehandedly found a way to create a stealth spot bonus program for me.

Although my music collection grew quite nicely that day, my broadcasting career did not. Two weeks after the shipwreck went aground at my front door, my boss was unceremoniously let go due to restructuring and my job was cut a month later. My guess is that she knew it had been coming, so her almost out the door stunt was planned perfectly just prior to her exit. And when I was given the news, the CEO winked at me and said, “You have to make the most of every opportunity while you can, Jen.” And I told Sir Cheapo that I was sure that I had squeezed everything out of the job that I could. That day, personal pens in hand, I left promptly at 5pm and nobody stopped me at the door.