Professional Advice from Marco, A House Painting Vietnam Vet

The following is an editorial piece we ripped (with permission, of course) from "the Mothership" - The Denver Egotist contributed by Chris Maley.

Before going further, this isn’t directed at any department. My issue here can’t be defined by a job title. That said:

Twenty years ago this summer, there was this kid, thirty feet up on a ladder placed on the side of a turn of the century home. The temperature is 102 degrees. He is scraping decades of paint and weather from the side of this house with a chewed-up piece of sandpaper. His hands are covered with splinters and his incessant muttering reminds you of Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining.”

Only instead of writing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over, he’s babbling, “Chris is going to study hard in school. Chris is going to study hard in school...”

My summer, painting houses. A job I should—and I’ll totally own this—remember more often when I’m having a bad day.

While the work was less than pleasant, Marco’s crew rocked. It was mainly he and I. Others rotated in here and there, but Marco was the lead and I was the scrub.

Marco was rail skinny, with a scraggly, unkempt bowl cut, bushy mustache, almost always had a Kool Menthol 100 dangling out of his mouth. 99.9% of white guys simply can’t get away with smoking Kool Menthol 100s. White guys: do not attempt this. To do so is disturbing.

But Marco could.

And hipsters today wear Wayfarer imitations with the neon green or pink temples because they’re kitschy. Marco wore these sunglasses because someone forgot them at the bar, and now they were his.

Because of Marco, I learned what a “unit” was.

“Chris, keep an eye out for Earl and Randy. Rough one last night. Gotta do a unit.” Earl and Randy owned our company.

“Doing a unit” was a bump of cocaine. “Puff a unit” was pot. “Smoke a unit” was cigarettes. “Drink a unit” meant we were going on a beer run at lunch.

One time over lunch, he and I had one of those what-if-you-hit-the-jackpot talks.

Marco’s answer was “I’d get a Harley and ride the fuck off.”

Just like Captain America and Billy in “Easy Rider”.

Marco ran the crew like this: we worked in overdrive for an hour. Then goofed off for an hour. If he was certain Earl or Randy wouldn’t be by, he’d make me drive him around and we would check out women.

Marco was easy-going, but when he gave you a direct order, you followed it. Period. “Gotta have the north side scraped and masked off by Wednesday so I can hit it with the sprayer.” No subtle, threatening undertone in his voice, managerial chest-beating, or attempts at intimidation. Just git ‘r done.

Marco never told me he served in Vietnam. One day, we were driving to get some units to drink. This was the months before Gulf War I. There was talk of a draft. A woman was being interviewed, saying that she hoped to God this wouldn’t happen. This flipped Marco’s switch. Through my radio, he screamed at her. Where was she when he got drafted? He unequivocally let her know that being dropped in the middle of a jungle at 18 years old was vicious and mean. Plus, they could have at least issued him a rifle that worked. Marco screamed at my radio, demanding answers.

I almost opened the driver’s side door and jumped out while my car was moving.

When we got back to the job, it was silence. At the first appropriate moment, I went to work. Marco and his demons needed some alone time. He never mentioned another word about Vietnam, and I had zero desire to ask him about it.

Some professional advice, from Marco:

“Never call in sick after a night of partyin’. If I called in sick to work after partyin’, I wouldn’t work.”

“Double check that the ladder is firmly anchored before getting on it. You can’t get no nookie from a wheelchair.”

Sometimes, sandpaper wasn’t enough because the decades of weather on a surface were too tough. In these cases, we needed The 666 to strip a house. If The Cleaner in “La Femme Nikita” needed a new solvent to help dissolve bodies, I’d recommend The 666. Its real name was something pseudo-scientific that could double as the alien villain in a 50’s science fiction movie. Zymarzipoxxx or something. I guess the creators of this name wanted it to sound more formulaic, so they added “606” to the end of the name: Zymarzipoxxx 606.

Marco renamed it The 666.

Marco’s safety seminar, qualifying me for The 666:

“Chris, if you’re near The 666 with no safety goggles and The 666 fumes hit your eyeball, here’s what you do: stand up, open that eye real wide so that eyeball can look around at the world as long and as hard as it can. In a few seconds, that eyeball ain’t gonna never look at the world ever again.”

Then he was back to work. (We were in overdrive, not goof-around, mode.) If I was within 20 feet of The 666, I wore goggles. Even if the bucket was closed and sealed.

But the spark for this article was inspired by the next piece of Marco wisdom, and it’s directed at those people in our business that spend their professional lives walking on eggshells, terrified of the slightest misstep. (To reiterate: these people work in EVERY department.)

This is for those in our business who spend their entire workday playing defense instead what they should be doing: playing offense. Let the lawyers play defense. They make better money than we do. Why help them with their job? Make ‘em earn their pay. Clients need you on offense.

One day, a new guy showed up to spray the soffits on the garage. Earl and Randy sent this guy so Marco and I could focus on the house.

This guy, well, he forgot to put in the brain that day. (We all do this sometimes. You get up. Shower. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Only you leave the house without putting in the brain. This is called being human.)

He didn’t lay down any drop cloths, or even mask off the red brick underneath the soffits. He just fired up the paint sprayer. The soffits? They got their coat of oil-based white paint. So did the gutters, the red brick, the azaleas, the lawn—even the lilac bushes got a touch-up.

Then, Earl showed up.

Earl never needed an excuse to be angry. Whatever he endured in his almost 70 years on this Earth gave him plenty of fuel.

He saw where Marco and I were, called us lazy, yelled that we were behind. Earl did this every time.

Then he went to check up on the guy spraying the garage.

To Earl’s credit, he didn’t keel over and die right there. With his health, that’s exactly what should have happened.

As the screaming began, Marco said, “I think Hurricane Earl just hit, c’mon.” We rushed around back. Earl was always angry, but this was rage. Even though this guy was bigger and stronger than Earl, if they were in a cage match I would have bet everything on Earl knocking this guy out in the first round. Then ripping his throat out.

In the middle of the tirade, the guy, teary-eyed, threw the paint sprayer at Earl’s feet, glared with hurt-filled eyes and stomped off. I never saw him again.

Marco whispered to me that my job for the rest of the day would be to get The 666 and strip as much paint as I could off the garage before the owners got home.

This guy was gone, but Earl wasn’t done yelling. So Marco and I got it.

After Earl stomped off, Marco burst into hysterics. I’m feeling awful for the guy who is now jobless. And I was shell-shocked from Earl’s screaming. Marco? He was in stitches. Theatrically imitating Earl’s tirade. “Stop the sprayin’! Stop the sprayin’!” How could Marco be so cruel?

Maybe Marco saw my expression, because he stopped, sat me down, and imparted more Marco wisdom. “Chris, part of life is ass-chewins’. They suck, but you can’t be afraid of ‘em. Sometimes, like that guy, you deserve the ass-chewin. Happened to me last month, I deserved it. And sometimes, you don’t deserve that ass-chewin—like Earl yelling at us. Mark my words: ass-chewins’ happen. But there are ass-chewins’. Then there are ass-kickins. I’ve had some good ass-kickins. Once you’ve had a good ass-kickin, you’ll deal with an ass-chewin.”

Here’s my theory: those in our business who 100-percent focus on avoiding an ass-chewin’ aren’t very effective. CYA—ironically—damages a client’s bottom line.

Years ago another boss, Randall Erkelens, gave me a copy of Goodby’s new hire manual that he acquired. One nugget of wisdom that stuck with me went something like this: failure is encouraged—as long as this failure isn’t repeated.

Make a mistake. Learn from this mistake. Make this mistake again, now you got problems.

This runs counter to the one-strike-and-you’re-out mentality that is WAY too pervasive. One-strike-and-you’re-out justifies the “safe” option. It legitimizes “we can’t show this because it’s too creative.”

Maybe I accidentally huffed too much paint and The 666 working for Marco, but could we create a new dynamic with our clients? Clients are the ultimate authority. They can kill anything we put in front of them. If they’re not tracking with us, they have the full right to say so and send us back to the drawing board. But we shouldn’t be afraid to show them something. Let them censor us. They’re the client. We’re the vendor.

I’m not advocating striving for failure, not one bit. I’m just firing it out there that many short-term failures lead to long-term successes. Or a tense meeting now can maybe shed light on some necessary issues that weren’t being addressed before.

These days, we’re all moving too quickly, executing before we’re done strategizing—or even defining the problem that needs to be solved, for that matter. Ready. Fire. Aim.

And you wanna know what?

This creates more potential for misfires. Increases the likelihood of a misstep or two.

And if this terrifies you, and this feeling guides your every move, if you’re 100% focused on not failing, guess what? You’re 0% focused on succeeding.

And for this, you need an ass-chewin’.

Creative Direction, Copywriting, Brand Strategy, Naming—basically I help clients think of interesting ways to sell their stuff. My answer to the "Creative vs. Strategic" debate is replace the "vs." with an "and." When I do this, consumers are happy, the client is happy, and I'm happy. And I'm all about being happy. I'm Chris Maley Contact me. Let's hang out and be happy.