Gather around, children, and let me tell you about the boom days in the 90s

Those were debauched, heady days when there was endless money to be made. The dot com revolution was set to change the world and nothing could possibly go wrong!

I was still in my 20s, living out a rock and roll fantasy, working in a national advertising agency. I never had to wear pantyhose and could sport pink or blue hair and wear plaid, bondage outfits and shit-kicker boots to meetings with clients. 

We had a pool table in the middle of the "town hall" area, plasma televisions mounted all around and beer on Fridays. Two-hour martini lunches were the norm, real bands played our parties and Malcolm Gladwell stopped by to read from "The Tipping Point" during his book tour. Our benefits included an account to pay for yoga, massage and house-cleaning. I was given a Royal Caribbean cruise (they were a client) and never took it (blech, not my idea of a good time). 

Our jobs were to do anything to impress and please our clients. For me, at one point, it included sitting around a liquor-filled conference table tasting different combinations of Disaronno Amaretto and other spirits as we invented new drinks to be advertised on table tents in bars. At four in the afternoon that day, I was throwing up in the bathroom with a colleague. But the agency gave us car service home.

I spent most of my time working on the Audi of America/Audi Canada print and collateral account. Each year as we'd kick off creative, my job included going undercover to acquire competition samples from luxury car brands. So my colleague/buddy Rick and I would borrow one of the company A8s or TTs and pretend to be a successful young couple shopping for Mercedes, BMWs or Lexuses (Lexi?). If we'd gone out in our own cars, we wouldn't have been given the time of day, but as soon as we pulled into the lot in the high-end Audi, car salespeople were tripping over each other to open the doors for us.

Car brochures are very expensive to print and for the dealers to buy, so they don't just hand them out gleefully. Rick and I were tasked with acquiring them and bringing them back to work, but we felt guilty about tricking people who made their livings on commissions into thinking we were actually going to buy something. So we invented "fighting couple." As fighting couple, we'd go in, ask about a car, and then pretend to get in a fight. I'd make a crack about size and storm out. Rick and the salesman (it was usually a man) would share a, "Women. What can you do?" moment and the salesman would sympathetically give Rick a brochure, thinking he'd be back to buy a car that cost two years' salary.

I won't -- can't-- say that using the stereotypical girl routine caused me remorse. It made my job easy, and I was pretending anyway. Like the time I called a Mercedes dealership to inquire about the cubic square feet of the passenger side of a particular model. Poor guy put me on hold and probably had to ask his manager. He finally came back on the line to tell me he wasn't sure, then asked why it was important. "My husband was wondering," I replied. I had no husband or scruples back then.

Few of us had any scruples. We were rock stars. Rick was entrusted with the keys to an A8L when the VP it was given to was out of town once. "Let's take it out at lunch," Ben, our producer suggested. "I don't think that's a good idea," Rick replied. We did it anyway, Ferris Bueller-style, Ben driving, me in the passenger seat and Rick in the backseat worrying as we took it out on the highway to see what it could do on our way to a total joint on the outskirts of town (best barbeque in the state for $4 a plate).

When we paid for our own lunches, we little fish cheaped out. But when the client paid, we lived like emperors. I didn't travel all that much compared to other people there, maybe five weeks out of the year for press checks. And I slept in five-star hotels where a night's stay cost as much as my mortgage payment. The first time I went, not only had I never had a hotel room all to myself, I had never even been aware that people were actually paid to come and turn entire rooms down for the night, and I was embarrassed. The first night. By the third night, I was appalled that my room hadn't been turned down before I entered it and sat clad in a house-provided, Egyptian cotton robe on the sofa by the fireplace, drinking red wine and watching television as I ignored the three people scurrying around my room to prepare it for my slumber.

In real life, I didn't really get to prepare for my slumber because I grabbed sleep when I could, often at the office. We worked all the time, even on weekends. I remember watching the series finale of "Seinfeld" as I sat in the studio waiting for legal copy we had to insert to meet a New York Times deadline. 

Because we spent all of our time together and didn't have time to really hang out with other people, we became our own sociological microcosm. We all headed to the same bar across the street when we could get out, then spent what was left of the evening together, talking about work. Four years in, my best girlfriend, roommate and boyfriend were all co-workers.

Then the bubble burst. The dot com clients went away. The dot com millions company that bought the agency imploded along with employees' stock options and fabulous benefits. I speculated wildly with friends for months about who would be laid off, then had to hide my guilt and grief after seeing some of those friends walk out with banker boxes. I worked on the bread and butter account, and it stayed around when the agency was bought by a French advertising conglomerate.

I got even tighter with the people on my account after the layoffs. And I was getting out of my car in the parking deck when one of them told me that she'd just heard a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. She and I were standing speechless in the town hall area with all the 100 of us minutes later when we watched in real time as the second plane hit, and one of our co-workers, whose father and brother were New York City firemen at the time saw the first images of the NYFD in peril and fainted.

We all got a call on a Saturday night not long after that, and we all picked it up expecting to be told to come in on Sunday. But we were told the CEO had been killed in a car accident and not to speak to the media. And to be present first thing Monday morning for a mandatory town hall meeting.

At the meeting, we were briefed on how to protect the brand. The CEO was driving an A8L. Drunken and without a seatbelt, but still, we had to push the safety of the cars.

In the six months that followed, stress built on stress built on stress. My entire world was wrapped up in my job, and my world was not one I wanted to be defined by or trapped in anymore. 

So I quit. I gave two weeks' notice and smiled through it. Then, three days before my five-year anniversary when I would have acquired an entire week of new vacation (that I could cash out at the end of the year after not being able to take it), I jumped right off the diving board into uncertainty, as I hadn't secured a job. 

I was unemployed for three weeks before I landed my first freelance gig. I got that job through contacts I made at the agency. I've been doing it ever since, sleeping until 9 a.m. and being home by 5 p.m. every night. Because I had time to date, I found a husband -- who has never worked at an advertising agency.

I miss agency life, sure. But I miss it the same way I miss my club-girl lifestyle or certain ex-boyfriends. I was young, it was fun, but I never want to do that again.