Goodbye Meridian

One of my first jobs after graduating from Wayne State was at Meridian, Kmart's print advertising agency. Within nine months I had been promoted twice, from Junior Copywriter to Copywriter, and then again from Copywriter to Senior Copywriter.

I trained new employees, old employees, and was very involved in a lot of areas. After about two years the company decided to re-train all their writers in design, and fired those who they felt were untrainable. And while I was angry about it at the time, those skills have worked out well in my post-Meridian career.

I left Meridian while Kmart was going through its bankruptcy, at the time one of the largest companies to ever file for Chapter 11. I thought the writing was on the wall, and was pleased for my former coworkers when Kmart righted itself and it was business as usual for Meridian.

There were a hundred things I hated about Meridian, starting with the client and including management's stubborn inability to recognize the creative talent they had on staff and their stubborn implementation of a database program that was both unweildly and unpredictable, despite the obvious fact that the database didn't work.

The one thing that kept everyone going at Meridian was the people. Immensely talented, fun, and hard working, we would frequently eat dinner at our desks, and go home long after midnight. It was a young work force, tatoo-covered and mildly pierced. It was a place where color, religion and sexual orientation didn't mean nearly as much as the work that was produced. A place where I was never given any religious hassles and never sensed any animosity, despite leaving others to finish my work on winter Fridays, and never felt a hint of resentment when I received special food treatment, and was allowed to go pick up kosher food while my coworkers worked and waited for their dinner to be delivered.

Shabbos. Kashrut. Kippa. All taken in stride.

Over the past few months, though, Kmart has merged/bought/been bought by Sears, and Kmart is moving its headquarters to Chicago, presumably to save money through consolidation with Sears.

On Thursday, the Detroit Free Press reported that Meridian was closing its Michigan office, and moving to Chicago as well, leaving many friends and former coworkers of mine out of a job.



I don't know if they will ever see this, but I just want to single out a few people who were extraordinary. Cindy Kenny, Beth Lee, Ben Jones and Joelle Leining from Team Eight. Also, Gigi Trajano, Paula (whose last name I can never remember but was married to Lou, was it Hyde?), Dave Freytag, Julie (another whose last name I can't remember) Scott Greenberg, Sam Bradbury, Jamie Brady, and Scott Counsell. I know some of them were laid off at the last round of belt-tightening, but they deserve mention as well.

More than anyone, Josh Wilhelmi, who was a Senior Writer and covered for me more times than I can count.

This happens every day across corporate America. But when it is your friends and former coworkers who gave everything they had to the company and find themselves on the outside looking for a job, it hits home.

Its sad, and couldn't have happened to a nicer group of people. I hope that they are able to turn this into a positive step forward in their careers.

Thank you all, and may you all find success in your future positions.

Post script: For those of you from Meridian reading this, I didn't intentionally leave anyone off the list. That includes Denise, JABBO, Sean, Adam and the rest of the fifth floor.