How ironic and depressing that Ogilvy is punishing staffers for this year’s enormous voter turnout. Despite CEO-at-large, Shelly Lazarus‘s, voter video and Ogilvy’s aggressive encouragement for staffers to be civic minded (emails, registration drive, installation in the lobby) they are also penalizing staffers for following through. Hunh?
In a final email to Ogilvy staff, management said that they would be
“flexible” on voting day. If staffers need to come late or leave a little early, well, that was okay. Except that, all employees needed to “account” for the “minimum required hours.” If they needed more time? Employees were asked to use personal or vacation time.
There is no such thing as taking too long to exercise one’s right to vote, especially considering that the polling stations are backlogged to the max. My polling place had a line that began two blocks away. One Ogilvy staffer said: “I live in Brooklyn and the line was 3 hours long! This is so fucked!”
So, really really? You guys are going to dock an hour or two from someone’s personal time? Everyone knows that Ogilvy’s very competent staff is worked to the bone, so you’d think management would cut them some slack. Especially, since Ogilvy has been pushing the vote or die agenda. Totes. Ridic.
As Joe Dempsey, an advertising agency owner in Arkansas recently said, “What early voting has done is make it more convenient, especially being able to vote on Saturday for people who work during the week. It’s expanded the opportunity for people to vote.” Except that early voting was NOT available in New York.
Meanwhile, BBDO New York has closed the office for the day. That’s right. No propaganda. They just did it. Oh Ogilvy… Well, you guys have a PR arm. Better put it into crisis mode hasta pronto. Your staffers? They’re righteously pissed and damn it, they should be.