The Flack Files, Vol. 17: Did You Make Her Burn Book?

Our favorite Flack has had another brutal week in the PR trenches. The only thing keeping her on the right side of sobriety is her deadline for this column, so as an act of basic human kindness, digest and discuss! 

Dear Diary,

Loads of different people are ticking me off lately! A general burn book list might be in order to safely purge my darkest thoughts and avoid ending up face-first in a bucket of martinis. In no particular order:

1. People signing off desperate emails to editors with a casual, “While I have your attention, what are you working on?” I’m willing to build a shrine to the editor who actually responds to this query.
2. A editor who responds, “Cool idea! But can you think of something different?” when I send a pitch filled with four options for coverage and a note that I’m open to her suggestions.
3. A client who ignores a strategy for eight months until he sees his competitor doing the exact same thing, and then decides he must pounce on “HIS” idea immediately and berates me for not “PRESSURING” him to do it eight months ago.
4. Those who are dancing around the “Becky” thing in order to bask in Queen Bey’s dictatorial glow.
5. Clients who ask if we receive editor feedback from every single sample sent out. Of course not. Most bags return without ever being opened—even those bags that we prepare at 7:30 p.m. on a Friday night and rush out to a warehouse studio in outer Bushwick because a D-list stylist “really, really, really wants to use them on [redacted D-list pop star].”
6. Anyone who has written one of those “6 Weeks Until Summer” fitness posts/slideshows. Do you really need to remind me that my inner thigh rash is going to return as soon as I start wearing skirts in heat and humidity? Actually, you know what? I don’t hate you. I just remembered: IT’S ALMOST CAFTAN SEASON!

Oh, screw it. Make that martini simply filthy, sir.

Flacktastically Yours!