Every business has rituals and the ad business is no different. One of the most vile ad biz rituals is "doing lunch". Or, I should say, "trying to do" lunch.

Now one would assume that making a lunch or drink plan is no big deal. Not in the ad biz. I blame it on The Confirm.

When most ad people schedule lunch you hear things like, "Great, we'll do lunch. Let's talk next week." Or, "Great, we'll do lunch. I'll call you, or you call me." So, when that happens instead of having real plan, all you really have is a plan to talk about a plan.

Being asked to confirm really means that lunch might be nice, but not so nice as to actually plan something. It makes you wonder if that person really wants to have lunch, until you remind yourself that they're the one who suggested doing lunch in the first place. So, you go along with The Confirm, and hope for the best. You have a lunch date penciled in your busy schedule with about a 50-50 chance of it actually happening. By needing to confirm, youıve also just added one more pain-in-the-ass thing to your overflowing To Do list.

Now, if they suggested The Confirm, it you could easily argue that they should be the one doing the confirming. The reality is, that if you really want the lunch to happen, you canıt assume theyıll do the confirm.

So, the days pass and maybe you actually remember to call your lunch date to confirm. Inevitably, you'll find yourself talking to either a) a machine, or b) a clueless, slightly retarded secretary who will inform you that your prospective lunch date is either: a) in a meeting, b) on the phone, or (the very popular) c) "away from his/her desk." So, even if you try to confirm, you probably won't. So, maybe you leave a message with no idea of what to really say and no idea if they will even get the message soon enough to matter.

Or, if you just returned from a particularly affirming therapy session, you donıt leave a message and decide to never "do lunch" with that person again.

İ2005 John Follis. All rights reserved.