Kinetic Loop

The following is a job posting from craigslist Chicago:

Cake Administrator (not ‘Cake Engineer’? ‘Cake Facilitator’?)

Custom cake shop is seeking a full-time “Front Man” that can perform both administrative and design tasks. This individual must be detail oriented and able to handle a wide array of assignments. This is a phone based job working with upscale clients; communicating effectively and confidently is essential. Tasks are not limited to administration.

*Artistic and visual talent necessary
*Administrative experience necessary i.e. Microsoft Office
*Must be a team player and able work outside job description
*Must be familiar with Chicago

Tuesdays – Saturday/9-4, Training wage $8/hr, Hourly Wage $10/hr. No benefits.
Send resume to [deleted]. Please include the word “Pink” in your cover letter.

No benefits? You know, there are a lot of things you can put inside cakes. Things that would displease upscale clients.

And this post is obviously a coded front for the real job. Consider:

• “Front Man”
• “Able to handle a wide array of assignments”
• “Tasks are not limited to administration”
• “able work outside job description” (sic)
• “Please include the word Pink in your cover letter”

So what do these things indicate? Is the job for a hit man? A cleaner? Or maybe the job requires that you procure and smuggle trans-fats into Chicago?

Wynton Marsalis is playing a ballad and his audience is entranced. A cell phone rings near the climax. The audience giggles, the spell unravels.

“Still frozen at the microphone, Marsalis replayed the silly cell-phone melody note for note. Then he repeated it, and began improvising variations on the tune. The audience slowly came back to him. In a few minutes he resolved the improvisation - which had changed keys once or twice and throttled down to a ballad tempo - and ended up exactly where he had left off. The ovation was tremendous.”

- David Hajdu, from “Wynton’s Blues,” The Best American Magazine Writing 2004

How do you choose to react to an unexpected and unwanted situation? Wynton stopped for a moment to think about it. He took the mundane and made it uniquely his. He made it into an opportunity to be creative. And he did it with grace.

The original 13-story Chicago Stock Exchange, designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, was built in 1893–94, then demolished in 1972. The Art Institute reconstructed the Trading Room in 1976–77, using preserved sections of Sullivan’s decorations, molded plaster capitals and art glass. This is a light bulb from the Trading Room with a stained glass ceiling in the background.

I haven’t been in Chicago long enough to have been to Berghoff, the beloved and recently-closed German restaurant that had been in business since Leif Ericson explored the North American coast. Herman Berghoff sold his beer at the World Colombian Exposition and opened his place in 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War.

The Berghoffs retired and closed their restaurant, but a fourth generation Berghoff opened a few new concepts in the original space, at 17 West Adams Street and State. One of those concepts is 17/west, a contemporary German restaurant open for lunch and dinner.

The bar area, which allows smoking (as well as portly, bespectacled, gregarious/bitter men), has an incredibly long bar, but there are plenty of tables around it, too, in case you want to hold your next board game club there. I would say there are even more tables at the far end, but there was a large gathering of men in their 30s obscuring the view. They could have been running a dog fight betting circle, performing surgery, or working on a maths proof they drew on the floor with chalk. But probably none of those things. Regardless, the bar has weekly appetizer specials from 2:30-6pm and drink specials all day, including steins of Berghoff Draft on Monday and Tuesday, a flight of bourbon on Wednesdays, veggie quesadillas, cheese pizza. Gregarious/bitter man recommended the artichoke apetizer, but that’s not one of the specials.

The bar was busy, but the dining area was not. The diners there were almost all boomers, and there were quite a few in their 60s. The atmosphere is masculine clubby/medieval (no, really), with a lot of wood in caramel and walnut tones, tobacco-colored leather on the chairs and long benches, and a huge amount of stained glass. The smell, and I know you’re asking, is of sauerkraut. The music is instrumental, mellow jazz, and since I’ve been hearing mid-1990s frat bar music wherever I go, it was a pleasing aural respite.

There are large stained glass windows all along one wall. Most of the windows have a wine and grape motif, but there’s one, inexplicably, with a lobster. My dining companion, a professional sea monster photographer, thought the lobster should have a top hat. I would like to see it with a tap cane, but I doubt that customer modifications to 100-year-old stained glass windows are welcome. It would be more correct if the lobster had night vision goggles on, because a lobster’s jointed feet have sensors that allow it to hunt in the dark. Give the top hat and tap cane to the male codfish (it’s a dancer).

We weren’t impressed with the food. My pot roast with mashed potatoes and vegetable mix was okay, but I think my sea monster-photographing companion was more dissatisfied. They had the halibut, which was topped with lentils. We gave the restaurant a 3 on a scale of 5 for the food on their survey card. Their wine menu should be expanded, especially with a crisp, dry Riesling. 17/west should be embarrassed to have just one (and on the sweet side), when there are so many excellent German Rieslings. We both had the pinot noir, which was approachable, and for dessert, we shared the pecan caramel chocolate gateau, which was very good.

We liked the service: Chivo (what a great name) was obsessive about refilling the water, which he did with a single-minded intensity, and Brad, our waiter, was attentive in the right measure, easy-going, with a good sense of humor. As for his humour, I would say that he’s sanguine and maybe a bit phlegmatic. Chivo, hard to say. He’s an inscrutible man.

I’ll probably go there again, because the place has has been there since the Battle of Tours (okay, since Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay), and I love that. Also, it would be a good, low-key place to go if you want to eat alone, at least on weekdays.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I’m new in Chicago (cue theme song from Alice). We often hear some kind of broadcast here in the Loop, but only when we’re at home - never when we’re out. And it doesn’t just happen during a game.

We don’t know what the hell it is, but since Chicago has always had a strong civic spirit, we think it may be some kind of message to the people: “Continue with your daily lives. Think about how you can help the city of Chicago. If you see litter, put it in an appropriate container. If you see a graffito, paint over it. If you see an ad hag, kick her to the curb. Chicago is here for you. Be here for Chicago.”

Paul Pressler has stepped down as president and CEO of Gap Inc., effective immediately. The company has initiated a nationwide search for a new CEO. Robert Fisher, non-executive chairman of the company’s board, will serve as president and CEO until a successor is found.

I nominate Important Bald Man as Pressler’s successor.

I know what Gap is really going to do. They’re going to hire a mercenary recruiter. Think Rutger Hauer in dusty, weathered cowboy boots, or Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name, in a poncho, with a flinty stare.

This mercenary, who has no more than three personal belongings and no verifiable background whatsoever, will roam the U.S. on foot in a search for the new CEO. The mercenary’s orders are simple: make sure the Chosen One does not die, but also ensure that he regrets the day he was born.

Fisher will be “a miserable shadow” by the time he realizes that the man under their employ is out of their control. What the mercenary returns with may shock and destroy them.

I present an easier path, with a proven hero for our time. Important Bald Man has been holding to the pursuit of distant goals, conquering pride and learning humility for nearly three weeks. After spending much of his life in anxiety, enduring sorrow for the sake of loyalty, he cultivated meekness of spirit while reviewing the work for the traffic department. After all, if he can manage to review and correct ad placements for thousands of media outlets, using a pocket language translator to tell a newspaper in Budapest that the insertion order is wrong, surely he can manage a few jeans, T-shirts and jackets.

This is Jerry. He drives this Wonder Bread delivery truck in the Loop, but he’s going to go north, because there are more grocery stores. Hence more money. Right now he delivers to Jewel and Dominick’s.

Last week I went to an IABC/Chicago luncheon on “Cutting Through the Clutter: Writing for Today’s Employees,” presented by Steve Crescenzo, Ragan’s top-ranked speaker. The meeting was held at the Maggiano’s in River North, and this is an abridged account of Steve’s hilarious presentation.

Steve goes through 100 employee publications each month as part of his job. He says that writers for these publications have to catch up to the rest of the world and start writing for busy, cynical, distracted employees. These employees are like gerbils, he said, always churning, churning, churning. They’ll read what they want to read, and there’s lots of competition. But employee publications have horrible headlines. Would your employees rather read headlines from Cosmopolitan (Steve shows a cover, points out some provocative headlines), Men’s Fitness (likewise), or something with the cover article, “A Bias for Profitable Growth”? Would an employee ever point to an article like “Vision 2010: Positioning for Continued Success,” in the publication Formula, and say “No breakfast for me today, honey - I’ve got to read Formula!”

A recent issue of Boeing’s Frontiers magazine had “10 Top Job Tips” and “I Took Charge of My Career.” Steve said that Boeing had to reprint that issue (a first for them). That kind of demand wouldn’t happen with headlines like “Operational Excellence: We Can All Help Achieve It” or “Senior Management Team Meets Offsite.” Is an employee going to say “Honey, put the kids to bed - I’ve got to read this article!”

In the CEO’s message, the exec is constantly in shock and awe that time has passed. “It hardly seems possible that it’s already [a new month/a new year].” They use no specifics, no details. Steve used an example of a CEO’s message that buried bad news about the company three paragraphs in, under the headline “Keep it up!” The company is failing, so…keep up, what, mediocrity?

Be specific even if news is bad, Steve says. Especially when it’s bad. I would say that applies to PR, too - immediately acknowledge any bad news and give as many facts as you can. Do you think whatever company Steve mentioned does PR like that, or that their agency does? Yeah, right. It’s like multichannel efforts - if each channel doesn’t complement the others, if the channels are giving off competing messages to the customer, the effort is wasted.

Likewise, if a company’s communications to employees say “we’re failing, and hope you won’t notice,” and they drown employees in a sea of meaningless corporate jargon in the magazine - “providing best-of-breed industry-leading solutions to assist global 1000 enterprises in maintaining their mission-critical systems and processes to ensure optimal communication with diverse groups of stakeholders” - that company’s PR efforts are going to be total bullshit.

Today was my second Chicago Coffee Morning, which is basically an informal, semi-regular gathering of people who are interested in media, PR, marketing and other such things. It was just me and Clay and Eric and Katie at Intelligentsia, which my boyfriend pronounces in a dramatic Spanish accent. You know, just like that SNL skit: “Bob Costas: I heard you had some an-chee-lah-dahs!”

The conversation included these topics:

• Meth ingredients and the annoyance of not getting enough Sudafed when we need it
• People in the suburbs who have Fisher-Price snap-on hair and women with makeup so heavy it has to be a snap-on makeup mask
• Wondering if being “highly inappropriate man” and making people recoil in horror (with jazz hands) when you drop your pants and appear to have nothing on underneath can be considered a superpower.

I asked Katie about her job as a strategist, and then she talked about being a planner. We had an extensive discussion about it, but I want to talk to her again and take some notes so I can do some justice to what she says, which is brilliant. All I know about planning I learned from Russell Davies’ blog, so she asked if I did the Account Planning School of the Web. I’ve been following it, but haven’t participated, I said. I didn’t want to be an idiot and submit something that would make Russell recoil in horror (with jazz hands).

But I mentioned that I was especially taken with the apples task, and had thought of Greek mythology - Heracles’ task of getting the golden apples of the Hesperides, Atalanta throwing a foot race for a golden apple. Also, goddesses fight over apples, I said. And Katie really liked that. She said I would make a good planner, which made me feel fantastic, even though brand strategy is an odd little hobby I keep in my pocket.

As I’ve come to learn in my brief experience so far, the date of the next Chicago Coffee Morning is, well, undetermined. “Soonish” is my best guess. Based on how well we get along (unless it’s just me thinking that), I think we should work on a mini-project, maybe kick it old school with something paper-based, or fix the latest CTA crisis, or put art in the pedway (see below). Something.

In the tall building across the street from us, an Important Bald Man (one of many, I’m sure) has an office on the top floor. We first noticed him because he never seems to move from his chair and regularly works from 7 am to 11 pm: a corporate Captain Josh Slocum, who circumnavigated the globe by himself over a period of three years. We presume that he manages some collection of arbitrary and complex operations tasks with an infinite set of things to go wrong - a grueling, lonely, thankless job.

We don’t keep a log book or anything - we just glance over there when we’re working or I’m cooking. But Important Bald Man is the only one in all of the offices we can see that we’ve really noticed. And we notice him because he’s so still.

Important Bald Man sits with his back to the window, his head slightly down, and facing slightly to the left. (Not once did he move from this position during December.) Also, he never looks out the window - and his view is really good. When he finally puts on his coat and turns off the light, at an hour when most people have gone to bed, we can see the silhouette of his Aeron chair in the light that spills over from the hallway, and it’s like the boy’s rocking chair in “The Changeling” (understandably, I get a little creeped out when I glance at the chair).

We joke about how he doesn’t move, and this is coming not only from me, but from someone who himself works 13 hours a day. And one night in December, after my boyfriend worked his usual 13-hour day, we went out for a leisurely dinner, and when we came back, Important Bald Man was still in his office, in the same exact position.

Then he was gone for the holidays, while we stayed here in Chicago.

When we saw him again late in the first week of January, he didn’t fall into his usual schedule. He was leaving much earlier, for one thing, spending only a few hours a day in his office. And he was much more active. One day, in the third week of January, Important Bald Man suddenly became a maelstrom of motion - getting up, coming back in, standing AND looking out the window, walking around the office, allowing other people into his office to talk to him - even gesturing with his arms. He moved more that day than he did in the entire month of December. And he was wearing all black, which was such an aberration from his light-colored shirts and non-black pants that I was going to consult an Oliver Sacks book.

I don’t know what Important Bald Man did over his holiday, whether it was fly-fishing in Wyoming, sea-kayaking in the Galapagos, or trekking the Kongmaru La pass, but whatever it was, it sparked something in him. All men live in whale lines, as Melville wrote, and maybe Important Bald Man’s coil was tightening.

He still sits in the same position, but he’s almost frenetic at times, compared to before. He’s also been leaving the office way earlier than 11 pm. More like 6. So, what changed over his vacation? Maybe he released a few of his cows, in Buddhist parlance. Maybe his relationship with his spouse was revivified. Maybe he was able to just rest. Whatever the reason, a toast (prosit! skol!), a tip of the hat to Important Bald Man working in the Loop, who has more energy, is taking some risks with fashion, and is leaving work earlier - maybe because he’s going to move to New Zealand and work from a boat.