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The Jingle Jungle

I knew that I was getting into a weird situation when I asked my friend “Josh” if I could shadow him at his job and he responded, “Sure, but my boss doesn’t want her or the company’s name in the article.” Apparently his boss, “Sally” doesn’t want any of the company’s highly coveted secrets to get out…

Sally, who has been managing jingle singers since Cher’s face was more flesh than plastic (1988), runs her small business, “In Tune Management,” out of a rent controlled one bedroom apartment in the West Village of New York City. Somehow, Josh explains, Sally found a guy to rent out the bedroom of her office. The only snag is that the “roommate” (since apparently she can’t remember his name) can be there nights and weekends, while she has full reign Monday thru Thursday from 10 am to 6pm. This sounds more like a cell phone plan than a living situation to me, but the cost of rent in Manhattan makes this situation seem more believable.

On the wall of the office are many pictures of some very recognizable faces, Cher, Bette Midler, The Turtles (“So happy Together”), and of course, James Brown with Pope Jon Paul II. There are also CD’s Lining the shelves; upon further inspection I see titles like “Huggies”, “Clausen Pickles/Sweet” and “Cover Girl”. Basically I would say I was in a home office, but it just happens to be the home of someone other than the office workers!

Josh is Sally’s personal assistant; he gets to work at 10am Monday through Thursday. He gets the office ready for Sally. This consists of checking the mail, turning off voicemail service, checking messages and writing them in the message book, putting Sally’s ash tray on her desk, turning on her lamp, and making her special juice mixture. Just as Josh has finished getting the office tuned up, the buzzer rings, and within 5 minutes the office has gone from relaxed West Village Apartment to a category 5 hurricane.

Sally abruptly greets Josh and I and then begins to rattle off things for Josh to do, “My lunch is in this bag, put the lasagna in the fridge along with the hummus and apple, but the peach and strawberry’s you can leave out, call Harry and check his availability for a song demo today around 4pm at The Lodge, call his cell then home, make me 5 copies of this- front only (she hands him a stack of papers) , clean up that trash under your desk, find me a train schedule from New York to Philly, leaving around 5 today, returning at 8, file these (she hands him a stack of papers), process these checks (she hands him a pile of checks attached to invoices), and tell me about your weekend!” Josh furiously scribbles notes to himself on sticky pads to keep up with her. He then begins to lament about his weekend only to be cut short when Sally says, “Save it for lunch, I have too much shit to do.” She then turns to light up a Marlboro red (the first of a hundred that she will be stuffing into her vintage 1980’s lungs), and focuses intently on her computer screen.

The next couple of hours are quite boring for me. Sally chain smokes while instant messenging people and talking on the phone to clients about money and singers. Josh files, makes copies, and answers more phone calls. From what I gather (while listening to the sporadic phone conversations) the booking process involves clients calling Sally to request specific types of singers for upcoming jobs. Sally then sends the client different possibilities to choose from. Once the selection is made she contacts the singers to find out their availability for an “audition”. If everyone’s schedules align, the job is booked. If not, they go back to the drawing board and find another singer who would be right for the job.

Josh asks me to come in the bedroom, which doubles as the copy room, with him around 2:30. Josh is processing checks, which involves multiplying the gross amount a singer makes on a job by 20 percent. This 20 percent is the commission that Andrea takes from every each check that comes in. It is astonishing to see how little of the gross a singer actually receives after taxes and Sally’s commission is taken out.

Lunch comes late, around 3:15, and from the washed out look on Josh and Sally’s faces, lunch should have been taken hours ago. Over lunch Sally thanks me for coming to the office and then explains why I must change all the names for this article. She has a new division of her company launching and doesn’t want her competition to catch wind of it. It is some sort of website which she claims will change the very nature of the Jingle singing industry. Right now most of the booking process happens over the phone. On the website singers will pay a fee to post profiles and song clips so that clients can go straight to the site to find out who they want to book for the job.

The rest of the day is pretty slow. Before leaving Sally furiously goes over Josh’s “to do” list, making sure he has gotten all of his work done. Some of my favorite tasks on the list were “Get Mr. Clean!” “Fix Sally’s Box”, “Leave note for roommate about cleaning lady”, and “Find a place to buy lemon hummus in Greenwich, CT”. Around 4:45 Josh prepares two more water/juice mixtures for Sally, packs up the left over food, and sprays air freshener to clear the room of cigarette smoke (he later tells me that she rents the apartment out as a non-smoking). At 5pm Sally promptly packs up, says goodbye and leaves the office.

I am slightly disappointed by my experience at the Jingle Management company. Other than over hearing Sally book a few singers for up coming jobs and my tutorial on check processing, I feel I didn’t learn much about the industry. However, I have learned that I am going to avoid being a personal assistant at all costs. Despite the fact that Josh runs the office when she is not around, he does not get much respect or appreciation from his boss. If this is really a day in the life of a Jingle Management Company, I think I’ll keep my day job.

Olivia has been writing her entire life and finds a great sense of inner peace from putting pen to paper. She grew up in the Midwest but moved to Seattle when she was 20. She currently works as a technology specialist at a local software company.