jay/day

It was back in the early days of the New York office and we had just lost a big account. (New York Air, as I recall.) I had to lay off somebody and I had two great people working for me: Peter Franke and Scott Salmon. It was a decision that would have given Solomon a migraine. Who to lay off? It would have been so easy if one of them had been a loser, but they were both terrific.

Peter had a wife and a baby to support, while Scott was single, so I decided it would be easier for him to rebound. Since the office was small and "open plan," we only had one private, enclosed room in the whole joint, which happened to be the light booth where we checked color proofs. That room got a big workout that day, as we had to let about a third of the staff go. If you went into the light room, you knew you were toast.

I eventually took Scott into the light room and gave him the bad news. He was fine; I was the one who burst into tears.

I felt so terrible about laying him off that I took out a classified ad in Ad Age with the headline "Canned Salmon." The ad went on to say that layoffs had forced me to get rid of my right-hand man and wouldn't SOMEBODY out there give this great guy a job? I'm not sure if he ever got any leads because of the ad, but regardless, he had a job within about two weeks for more money than I was paying him.

To this day, whenever I am around Scott and he introduces me to a friend or a member of his family, he knows what's coming: The "Canned Salmon" story.

I stopped by to visit Scott at the Manhattan Plaza Health Club a couple of weeks ago and Scott made the mistake of introducing me to his boss, the owner of the corporation. I promptly said, as I always do, "Let me tell you the story of how I had to fire Scott ..."

I can hardly wait for Shayne to grow up so I can tell him the story.