Money, Money, Money

Stock prices were climbing and Rob Shmaltz was excited. He worked in an advertising agency as a writer and he constantly was investing in penny stocks. He remembered the story of Bre-X. It had been a fraud but a friend had bought ten thousand shares at twelve cents and sold them at a hundred and fifty dollars a share. Rob wanted to emulate that success story but so far he was not having luck. The most a share had gone up was forty seven cents.

Lucy Wang was the Creative Director at the Blue Blue Ad Agency and no matter how hard he tried she never seemed pleased with Rob's work. She had been hired after Rob and she constantly hinted to him that she wanted ''her own'' people in the department. Her dilemma was Maria Calrone.

Maria was the President of Blue Blue and she had appreciated Rob's work ethic from the moment she met him. He had written commercials for their biggest client ''Bubbie's Delicious'' and they had loved them. When Lucy came to Maria one day and suggested that she wanted to replace Rob, Maria threatened to fire her, and suggested that the topic was never to be discussed again. As long as she was President of the Agency, Rob was safe. This did not sit well with Lucy and she resented his ''safe'' situation.

Rob was working on a campaign for a launch of a new apple cake created by the ''Bubbie's Delicious'' people. He had spent weeks working on it, writing a series of commercials and the presentation was coming up.

Lucy had been somewhat guarded with her response to Rob's campaign and he took that as Lucy being Lucy. He thought she had a very hard time giving out compliments. She was over seeing a number of clients and he felt confident in his work.

On the day of the pitch, Lucy and Rob drove in separate vehicles to the Bubbie's Delicious Headquarters. Rob had offered to drive with her, but Lucy had declined his offer and said she had other places to go once they were done. She refused any offers of friendship.

In Bubbie's boardroom, everybody sat around a comfortable dining room table, and small apple cakes were placed in front of them. The head of the company ''Bubbie'' was there and Rob was excited. The smell of the cakes permeated the room and he could have floated away.

His presentation went flawlessly and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Bubbie stood up and applauded. Tea was brought in to have with the cake and the feeling was positive and jovial.

When he left with Lucy, Rob was on a high. Lucy however seemed angry. She looked at Rob and shook her head ''I've never seen such bullshit. Those Bubbie Delicious people wouldn't know a good campaign if it would bite them in the ass. I've had enough of your crap. I can't stand it when underlings are getting credit for campaigns. I am the one who should be acknowledged as the creative genius.'' Rob was confused. He had created all the commercials, Lucy had very limited involvement.

She jumped into her Land Rover and drove off in a frenzy. Rob felt the high he was on was dissipating fast. He didn't know what had gone wrong, but never receiving a compliment or a word of encouragement from your boss was very frustrating.

When he returned to the Agency, Maria Calrone called him in to her office. ''Rob, here's the deal, I received a call from Bubbie's Delicious to tell me they were thrilled with the campaign you presented. I want to Thank You for the good work. Now here's the other side of the equation, Lucy felt you could have done more to include her in the pitch. She said you basically ignored her. She is very upset and said she was planning to give me formal notice tomorrow. If she does leave I would like you to take over her job as the Creative Director. Your salary would be raised to two hundred and forty thousand plus benefits.''

Rob was shocked, he had gone from a Writer to being offered the opportunity to lead the entire Creative team. It would be a huge amount of responsibility. He loved working on Bubbie's campaign but did he want to handle all the Creative business that the agency was responsible for? It was a tough decision.