"I'll join you two ladies later... into one big lady."

Back when radio actually mattered to pretty much everyone, and you could at least pretend that deejays were allowed to not mindlessly play the same corporate-generated list of 45s hour after hour, there was a show on CBS called WKRP in Cincinnati. And I think it ruined me for any work other than advertising.

The show was about a bottom feeder AM station in a no-longer large market. New program director Andy Travis is hired to "turn things around." What he finds are a breathtakingly incompetent general manager whose mother owns the station, a sales manager who's a used car salesman's worst nightmare, a news director whose version of Eyewitness Weather is to look out the window and witness the weather, a shell of a morning man fired from L.A.'s hottest morning show a decade before for saying "booger" on air, and a receptionist who is the station's highest paid employee.

Travis' first act is to change the format. In a moment, washed-up Johnny Caravella transforms himself into Dr. Johnny Fever as he grabs the mike and, feeling blood pumping through his heart for the first time in ages, plays honest to god rock and roll music over the airwaves.

Hilarity ensues. Or rather, ensued. For four amazing years, until CBS cancelled it after playing shuffleboard with its schedule and being amazed that viewers could no longer find it. Witness these lines, signifiers of gold:

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. We're the scum of the earth. This tape is where my walls would be. Ch-eye ch-eye rodrigweez. Speed kills, Del. I don't think God likes trailer parks. In the spirit of Christmas, we went out and killed a tree for you. Red wigglers, the Cadillac of worms – we're hooked! I love you and I want you to be a golf pro. Look what I'm doing with teenage boys! Herb, I was once a man. Mrs. Carlson, I think you're full of crud.

And the title of this post, which has to be as old as vaudeville (or, I'm sure in some sort of Latin equivalent, Plautus) but still.

Anyway, WKRP portrayed a wonderfully chaotic but subtly ordered workplace. Huge leeway was granted to the deejays, and they took it all and way, way more. Huge leeway was granted to station management, and they muddled through things in ways far worse than anyone could possibly foresee. Somehow Andy, Jennifer the receptionist (who evolved into the very opposite of a dumb blonde) and Bailey the producer kept things from falling apart, while being human and understanding. Outward forms of obedience and compliance were barely paid lipservice, and were usually viciously mocked – as was anything that impaired the deejays' or station's ability to make a unique connection with the audience. The point of everything was to communicate. Um, is my reason for this post showing?

I loved WKRP.

Problem was, as I discovered over the next several years, was that most workplaces don't operate on anything like those principles. Unhappy employment experiences ensue.

So once I finally fell into an agency, you can imagine my slowly dissolving disbelief at finding a place that, although imperfect, actually shared at least some of those anarchic values. A place that understood that everyone on its payroll will not be the same. A place where making a unique connection with the audience is what really matters.