The Pay Day

By Ron Elgin

"The Pay Day" is the zany sequel to Ron Elgin's best-seller "Hucksterville" featuring Megan Santucci, the once beautiful, brilliant advertising whiz kid who became addicted to booze and drugs and ended up homeless under a bridge. After kicking her addictions, she became the star creative director of Tight Fit Athletics. After her boss is eaten in his Seattle office by a crocodile, his sister Lotta shows up from an animal farm in Africa to take charge. Megan hates Lotta as much as she hated Max, but she leads her motley team to unparalleled success regardless. Lotta was a multibillionaire used to getting her way, and that doesn't sit well with Megan.
Many familiar characters reappear, including Carmen, a physiologist; Meat, a former cage fighter; The Herman, genius creative team with the same name and terrible personal hygiene; and Possibly Peter who still suffers from a bad case of Tourette's. Scene after scene of this novel is filled with witty dialogue and absurd situations. The Herman fled for their lives from the Tight Fit campus after pooping in Lotta's camp/site office and went to London, England to participate in the International Crepitation Contest. For you less-sophisticated readers, that's a farting contest. Wait until you read the results!

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350948349

Ron Elgin

Ron Elgin's fourth book, "The Pay Day," offers a humorous glimpse into his forty-year career in the advertising industry. Elgin shares his journey of success, failures, and experiences from being expelled in high school to co-founding a successful agency with major clients like Microsoft and McDonald's. His philosophy of avoiding working with "assholes," hiring talented individuals, and believing in hard work led to his expansive, entrepreneurial success. Ron and his extremely beautiful, bright, and patient wife of fifty-five years Bonni lived in Seattle most of their lives. As their bones got older, they moved to Newport Beach to be closer to the world's most wonderful daughter, Alison; their equally wonderful son-in-law, Brett; and their absolutely perfect grandchildren, Logan, Hutton, and Ripley.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Did I ever tell you about the old biddy who kicked me out of the downtown public library? Megan asked. She and Helen were sipping steaming lattes in the Starbucks on Sixth Avenue across from Nordstrom’s flagship store in Seattle.

I don’t think so, Helen replied.

It was a typical rainy, chilly Seattle winter day back when I was living in a cardboard box under the I-5 freeway. I used to visit the library primarily to use the restroom to clean up as best I could, but also to relax with a good book in a warm, quiet place. I’d found a book by a local guy about how he and his partner started their own advertising agency from scratch and grew it to the market’s largest. Their story was really inspirational.

And the biddy?

Sorry. I admit that back then, I was always dirty and smelly, but I wasn’t bothering anyone. It was way before social distancing, but around me, people were always distancing. Anyway, I was reveling in a particular episode of the book when this old biddy came up to me and told me to wake up and get out.

She accused you of sleeping? Helen asked.

She said I was sleeping and it wasn’t allowed. I said I wasn’t sleeping; I was imagining the joy of someday getting back on my feet and owning my own agency. She really got in my face, albeit from ten feet away, and told me very loudly to put down the book, get out, and never return. She humiliated me even more by spraying air freshener at me all the way out the door.

She sounds like a heartless asshole. That’s the story?

No, Helen, that was the heartbreaking beginning of a story that has recently had a much more satisfying ending.

Megan Marie Santucci began life as the precocious only child of Gino and Maria Santucci in a Seattle suburb named Lake Forrest Park at the north end of Lake Washington. Her dad was a skilled carpenter, and her mom was an administrator at Shorecrest High School. They lived in a very nice but modest 1930s Georgian Tudor at the end of Perkins Lane overlooking the lake.

Megan was their firstborn. But then again, Megan was always first. First in her class academically. First in swimming and track. First in her judo and karate classes. And always first to test trouble.

But by her junior year at the University of Washington, Megan’s first-place finishes began to wane. The reason? She had discovered the joys of boys and beer. Although her grades were slipping, she could still balance boys, beers, and academics while remaining near the top of her class at the School of Communications. At least she thought of it as balance.

Megan was stunning—brilliant, beautiful, and charming. Her athletic figure had rounded out in the right places by her senior year, and by graduation, she stood five-foot-seven with long blond hair, blue eyes with green highlights, and a sparkling, out-going personality. She was an absolute knockout.

Megan’s first job out of college was as a junior copywriter at a small Seattle advertising agency. There she met and fell in love with her art director partner. He was talented, handsome, and a stoner. He taught her the joy of combining beer with weed. More balance. But he moved on.

Her next love affair was with an associate creative director. With his guidance, she moved up to hard liquor and drugs. In those early days, her work was superb, but her attitude and attendance were becoming less than sterling. Then her career began to unravel. The quality of her work was still well above average but no longer the best in its class. She also earned a well-deserved reputation for unreliability. That era ended when a weekend with a guy in Vancouver turned into an unexcused week and a half off. She was fired. So was he. That ended their relationship.

For the next three years, Megan worked at agencies in Portland, San Francisco, and Denver. The story was the same at every agency in every new city. For the first time in her life, Megan was no longer a winner. She had become a loser.

One morning, in a second-rate motel in a Denver suburb, Megan’s cell phone cut through her boozy fog. A long-time neighbor told her that her parents had been killed in an automobile accident.

Megan’s once charmed life ended back in Seattle—alone with the loss of her parents, self-esteem, and a career she had once loved. On top of it all, she discovered her parents had been deeply in debt and passed away without a cent of insurance.

Deeply depressed, Megan thanked her high school friend for letting her crash at her place in the West Seattle area for a few days. Then she gathered the few things she still valued in a backpack and headed out on foot to find a convent or monastery. She planned to live out her days celibate and, hopefully, clean and sober. She got as far as the I-5 Freeway when she ran into a torrential rainstorm. She took shelter under the freeway in a vacant cardboard box. It became her home for the next two years.

Life was beyond miserable, but her dreadful, humbling situation was the stimulation Megan needed to rediscover a missing element of her personality—courage.

Courage had gotten her walking at an early age. Courage had made her the first in preschool to recite the alphabet in front of the class. Courage had always led her to a lifetime of being first. That same courage helped her survive the degradation of nearly two years of homelessness and finally enter a Twelve-Step program and get clean and sober. Finding meetings with other homeless people, whom she felt would be less judgmental than regular addicts, was easier than she’d feared, and she embraced the regimen. Her sponsor lived two boxes over, which was good, because Megan had no phone.

Then one day, a local employee recruitment firm was given an impossible deadline to find and hire a dozen people with advertising agency experience. Using some very creative headhunting strategies and tactics and with the promise of triple fees, the firm met the challenge. It was pure and simple luck, however, that two of the recruiters stumbled upon Megan in that homeless camp on a hunch that perhaps some of the spray-painting graffiti artists were burned-out former advertising people. Remarkably, they actually found several. After some initial harsh words between the recruiters and this particular transient, a compassionate female recruiter offered to help the now sober Megan clean up, stake her to some new clothes, and give her a much-needed makeover. Within a few miraculous days, Megan had a job in the newly formed advertising department of Seattle-based Tight Fit Athletics, a worldwide athletics wear company.

Those fortunate happenstances were all Megan needed to reignite the creative fire in her belly and soul. In remarkably short order, she earned the position of creative director of Tight Fit Athletics’ brand-new, in-house advertising agency. That’s where she met her now best friend, Helen Wait, Tight Fit’s COO/CFO.

Tell me about the more satisfying ending, Helen said.

"You remember Stuart Pedd; he was recruited along with me to Tight Fit. He once built a fair-sized agency only to have it ultimately fall into bankruptcy. I told you back then that I thought I could learn a lot about building a successful agency from his mistakes. Once in a while, he’d lay a gem on me. For example, he told me one of the best ways to get connected with a business community’s muckety-mucks was to get involved in some of their favorite, high-profile non-profit organizations.

I called Stu over at Tight Fit a couple of weeks ago to ask if he knew of any non-profits in Seattle that were currently in search of an agency partner. He did and, of all things, it was a rebranding assignment for the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library. Stu heard about it from a friend of a friend. The library had issued a request for proposal about six months earlier, but to date, it had been unable to find a firm to accept the pro bono assignment. The Friends of the Library organization had offered a million-dollar grant to cover the production costs for the creation of an entirely new image. One of the grant’s stipulations was the work had to begin within six months of design approval and be completed within twelve. The problem was the library had been unable for five-and-a-half months to find a single agency interested in working with them. Time was running out.

Why couldn’t they find an agency to work with them? Helen asked.

I didn’t question that at the time. I was content to believe the agency that provided an approved solution would be viewed as a hero in the eyes of the Seattle Public Library, the Friends of the Library organization, and the business community in general.

Sounds like a perfect entrée to some possible paying customers. Do you want a warmup on your coffee?

No, thanks. Let me finish; his friend briefed me on the assignment. I developed the strategy and Possibly Peter, you know, the Tight Fit art director with Tourette’s syndrome, took some vacation days and helped execute the graphics as a favor to me. We had it wrapped up in less than a week. I was pretty happy with the solution, so I told Stu to tell his friend we were ready to present to the board.

Are you finally getting to the exciting part?

Yes, smart ass. The meeting was to be held in a conference room on the forty-ninth floor of the new Rainier Tower. It was to be last Tuesday at 2 p.m. I was to go it alone because Stu’s friend was out of town. Possibly Peter offered to come along, but he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t suffer one of his embarrassing Tourette’s episodes and end up yelling, ‘Fuckfuckshit!’ in the middle of the pitch. So I dusted off my most conservative business suit, applied a little makeup, and showed up with my portfolio case at exactly 1:50 p.m. The receptionist led me into this huge room with rows and rows of theater-style seating. There had to be at least one hundred expensive black leather and chrome chairs. All empty. In the front of the room was a slightly raised stage with fifteen people seated in even more expensive-looking chairs and a woman standing in the center behind a podium. Ten feet in front of the stage was a very simple single chair facing them. Next to the chair was a microphone atop a four-foot stanchion.

That sounds a bit intimidating even to me.

"The woman, speaking into a microphone attached to her podium, welcomed me on behalf of the marketing committee and introduced herself as Ms. Simpleton, the esteemed chair of the committee. Her voice boomed from what must have been a hundred unseen speakers throughout the auditorium. It was initially quite intimidating. She said, in the interest of time, she would not introduce the other committee members, and I should dispense with any opening remarks because they had all seen my CV and she was not impressed. She then held up a very large digital clock and said I would have exactly thirty minutes to present my work. Thirty minutes from the time she hit the big red start button, a very loud buzzer would signal the end of my presentation, at which time I was to immediately cease talking and sit down. The committee would then discuss all the cons and any possible pros of my proposed solution. She reminded me I was to remain silent during their critique and concluded by saying, ‘Now, before I start the clock, you may ask a single question.’"

You’re not shitting me, are you? Helen asked.

I’m not shitting you, Helen. I was pissed beyond reason, but I maintained my cool and said, ‘I have but one question, madam. Who will be the ultimate decision maker for my work?’ She looked somewhat startled and said, that, of course, it would be her.

I would have rushed the stage and slapped her upside the head! Helen exclaimed.

"I felt like it, but instead, I stood up, leaned into the microphone, and calmly said, ‘Please push the big fucking red button for your very loud fucking buzzer right now; this presentation is over.’ I assembled my materials while the chairperson struggled to find words amid the committee members talking over themselves. With my portfolio case in hand, I turned back to the microphone and said over the commotion, ‘You don’t remember me, Ms. Simpleton, but I remember very clearly the day you cruelly threw me out of the downtown public library. You rudely said I was dirty, smelly, and sleeping. I wasn’t. Sleeping, that is. I was simply imagining with my eyes closed for a moment what my future could be with a little help. Instead of sympathy, you sent me back to my soggy cardboard box under the freeway. As I was leaving with my tail between my legs, you humiliated me further by spraying air freshener on me all the way to the exit.

‘I suffered a lot of humiliation during my two years of homelessness while battling my addictions. Most people simply ignored me. Many people at least seemed sympathetic. A few were even kind and considerate. But no one, not a single person, was intentionally cruel to me until your heartless act. That act of inhumanity helped propel me out of homelessness. However, rather than thanking you, I’m taking perverse pleasure in hoping you alone will take the entire blame for being unable to find a single agency willing to work with you and, subsequently, losing the library’s million-dollar production grant. I hope you rot in hell with the memory of your colossal failure and the reason for it, you heartless bitch.’

Pay back is a bitch, Helen said. Wish I had been there to shovel a bit more shit her way. I’m proud of you. That took real courage. I have a strong feeling you’re going to own the rest of this year and the next few decades.

1.

SINCE MEGAN LEFT TIGHT FIT

So those are the highlights of what I’ve been up to. What’s the latest at Tight Fit? I hope you’ve been encountering more success than me, Megan said as she and Helen lingered over their second cup of coffee.

A lot has happened since you left us, Helen said. "We still have very healthy sales, and I have some interesting and good things going on personally…but I’ll save the details until I have downed a drink or three.

"Remember my love-hate relationship with Max Foreskin, the seventy-something CEO who inherited Tight Fit Athletics along with the rest of their enormous fortune. By then, Max was an old man with less than a grade school education who never had an actual job beyond scrubbing floors or deodorizing shoes at the local bowling alley. His domineering father, Formidable Fred Foreskin, hated Max from birth and barred him from Tight Fit. Max’s mother, Pinky, kept him alive by turning a blind eye when Max snatched money from her unattended purse during their weekly dinners at his preferred soup kitchen. On her deathbed, Pinky finally made Formidable Fred add Max to his will and give him a job and a place to live—of course the job was cleaning the company’s restrooms and the place to live was a tent pitched on the campus. Unfortunately for Fred, he didn’t cut Max from his will before kicking the bucket.

Resentment and hatred toward his father poisoned Max’s mind, body, and soul. It made him hate everyone and delight in knowing everyone hated him. I was only moderately successful in keeping him in line. Then you came to work at Tight Fit and everything changed.

What do you mean?

You stood up to him. That took brains and balls. Your brilliant marketing was about to double, possibly triple, our sales, and I had the financial acumen to use your efforts to double our profits. Our bonuses would have been off the charts, or our buyouts a couple of years later would have made Jack Welch and Lee Raymond cream their shorts. Then that asshole Max got himself eaten by a fucking crocodile in his own fucking office. I mean, who the hell gets eaten by a crocodile anywhere in Seattle?

I’m sure you’re getting at something, but I’m not getting it, Megan said. I just asked what’s going on at Tight Fit to be polite, and I don’t really care. Cut to the chase.

You’re right. In general, not much has changed. Our old tyrant was replaced by a new one. Max’s long-lost sister, Lotta Foreskin, is perhaps equally evil, but Lotta is a lotta smarter. Get that? Couldn’t resist.

Megan groaned audibly.

"Okay, like Max, she has ideas for the company to make more money. But unlike Max’s insane ideas, such as making the company’s logo a pair of jiggling tits, because ‘everyone loves tits,’ her ideas run more toward cutting production costs to increase profits. I’m rambling again. Let me give you the short version of what’s been going on at Tight Fit since you left.

I guess the biggest thing is everyone, I mean everyone, is convinced Lotta Foreskin was absolutely responsible for the crocodile eating Max in his office. The Feds were all over it for the first few months, and for all I know, they still are, but they only come around every now and then. However, the Seattle police are still obsessed with the case. I think they’re embarrassed they can’t figure out how a thousand-pound crocodile got into Seattle and ate one of its residents. Recently, they even assigned a new detective to lead the investigation. By the way, Megan, he’s pretty hot. I told him he should interview you. You’ll thank me later.

Not likely. What about my old team? I talk to Possibly Peter and Stu often enough and chat with Carmen every once in a while. But I haven’t asked about anyone’s work life because I’m still sensitive about walking out on them. I have no idea what the team is or isn’t doing to promote the Tight Fit brand or its products.

Before I get into that, let me talk big picture.

Okay, shoot.

I think the company is heading on a sure path into the toilet. You know we were never high on product quality—

I know. That’s why we created the six-month automatic refill offer. Since we couldn’t get the company to improve the quality of its products, we had to get new shit in their hands before their old shit fell apart. That was my lead creative team’s idea. God, I miss them. Turning one of our biggest problems into a promise that the customer would always have the latest styles was a stroke of genius.

Yeah, Helen continued, that was a brilliant way of hiding the fact that we were producing shoddy merchandise. Lotta, our new fearless leader, decided the idea worked so well we could cut back even more on quality and pocket even bigger profits. However, now we’re getting returns from retailers because shit is falling apart in the store’s dressing rooms. The advertising and merchandising campaigns are still driving sales, thanks to you, but between customer returns and merchants cancelling orders, the company is heading for some deep shit.

Won’t Lotta listen to you?

I tried at the beginning.

And?

She made the conversation complicated. This is the part I’m not exactly proud of. I explained she was undermining the company’s long-term health. But she said a company selling only athletic wear could never compete long-term with the likes of Nike or Adidas. She said she would bleed the company until it went out of business unless I took control and made Tight Fit a truly competitive athletic wear company.

No shit? What did she mean by that?

She knew her father had been a chicken shit who refused to produce anything that couldn’t be made with a sewing machine. She said strictly selling apparel in such a huge category was stupid, so she was siphoning off all she could while she could. She predicted that even without her cost cutting, the company would be out of business within two years.

Do you believe that?

"I’d tried countless times to convince Max if we weren’t growing in the total athletic wear category, we would soon be dying. We needed to offer a full complement of sportswear or someday we’d find ourselves silk-screening T-shirts out of a garage. He was adamantly against getting into shoes. He said it wasn’t our core business. I think he just didn’t want to risk the capital investment.

When I shared those feelings with Lotta, she shocked the shit out of me by saying, ‘Then let’s become a full-line athletic wear company.’ She said she owned a huge rubber plantation in Africa and a few smaller ones in South America and Asia. She said if I was willing to head up the effort, she’d stop bleeding Tight Fit and give me a sizable up-front bonus and performance bonuses for bringing the shoes to market. All of that in addition to my regular salary and bonuses. That’s what I’ve been working on for the last month.

That’s a lot to absorb, my friend.

Well, absorb this—Lotta gave me the authority to shut down our in-house advertising group and hire whoever I want as our new advertising agency. I told her I wanted you. She didn’t flinch.

What? You’re shitting me. Does she know I don’t even have a real office and zero employees?

I explained you’d need to build some infrastructure, but you were the best—I said you’d saved Tight Fit before and you could do it again, so she gave me the authority and budget to help you transform your one-person shop into a real agency. All you have to do is say yes.

No.

No, what?

I told you and Lotta I’d never work for her. I meant it.

"Grow up. Stop being stupid. You’ll be working with and for me. You may have to see her occasionally, but you’ll be answering to me. I’ve decided to keep Stella Bright as marketing director, but she’ll simply be our conduit for the next year or so while I’m getting the shoe company off the ground. She shows a lot of promise, and I remember you two liked one another.

You know I love you, but Lotta…that’s a big ask. I’ll need some time to think about this.

You have ten seconds. One, two, three, four, five. Time’s up.

That wasn’t even five seconds. I’m still absorbing. Who’s still around from my team?

Some are busy updating and modifying the current ad campaign, Helen said. "Those who aren’t have become very adept at staying out of sight. Truth is, the department has become a rudderless ship. Carmen lost interest in being COO, and in the company for that matter, as soon as you left. I think Carmen and your six-foot-nine enforcer, Meat, are trying to decide if they even want to stay in the ad business without you. Billie/Bill, your girl/guy, has been spending more time clothes shopping than working. You should see some of the evening gowns she/he has been sporting at work. Possibly Peter is still having Tourette’s episodes, but I think that’s because he has so much free time on his hands.

"I don’t know for a fact, but I think the handsome production guy, Grant, and Kim, the shy writer, are trying to decide if they should be an item. I understand media queen Keri is still at the company, but she works pretty much from home. Or a local bar. The media continues to run, and she keeps cashing her paychecks, so it must be true.

"Your ultra-weird creative guys, The Herman, got themselves into deep trouble with Lotta. Apparently, Herman Also continues to constantly plug up all the toilets in the creative department area. Carmen, with Meat’s help, locked down one bathroom, making it off limits to both Herman. Everyone except The Herman have keys. Anyway, The Herman went searching for a functioning toilet and wandered into the executive wing. Somehow, they got into Lotta’s office. Did you know she had it remodeled to look like her campsite in Madagascar? Anyway, Herman Also took a big dump on the AstroTurf next to the tree stump. Lotta went crazy when she found out it wasn’t a wild animal but a wild person and ordered me either to kill or fire them both. They barricaded themselves in your old office. Lotta had barricades put up on the outside