13 Lines Raymond Chandler Might Write if He Were Alive Today and Working in Advertising.

1.
He thought he had the stuff. He had the accent. A mastery of meaningless terms. The thick-rimmed glasses. And the timeliness of always being late. But everyone who knew him knew he was as pointless as the phone numbers at the bottom of a Zoom invitation.

2.

She was as cool as the ice-maker in the Agency's Sub Zero. But beyond the martinis in her veins and the red soles of her $400 Christian Louboutin flip-flops, she was nothing but nail polish.

3.
The old copywriter sipped at his scotch whiskey. If the client were paying he would have gulped at it.

"You know what I've learned after 30 years in the business?" He spoke into his hands, but two young creatives were listening as well. "The longer meeting, the less it needed to happen."

4.
I wouldn't say he was dumb but he saw a sign on the highway that read "FOOD GAS LODGING DIESEL" and thought they were talking about Vin's brother.

5.
From looking at their social feed, the agency looked like a lot of class. From inside the agency, it looked like something better seen through a social feed.

6.
It was a blonde. A blonde to make a project manager miss a deadline. No, two.

7.
I won't say she was a lush. I wouldn't call her debauched. That's none of my business. But she did take her stand-up meetings lying down.

8.
His copy was flat. As flat as a puddle of piss on a pool table.

9.
I don't know, call me naive. Maybe it's my hayseed upbringing, maybe it's the horse that kicked me in the head when I was a kid. But if you call someone a Director of New Business, they should bring in new business. Otherwise, they're a Director of No Business.

10.
You could tell how much business they were losing by how much business they said they were winning.

11.
"Their trophy case got bigger and their revenue got smaller. That's what you call an oxymoron," I said.

"You're kinder than me." She exhaled a Pittsburgh's worth of cigarette smoke, most of it into my face. It seemed to take a good two minutes but I enjoyed it. Then she said, "I call it a death rattle."

12.
He was low on the totem pole. How low? He still wrote ads for a living.

13.
We were taught to love our customers like a Priest loves a collection plate. That's why we robbed people of their data and sold it every time they visited our site. We learned to love them like the axe loves a turkey.