Jill McCloe
The chance to have lunch outside with employee experience maven and wonderful human being Jill McCloe? Count me in!
Jill holds a special place in my heart for, first of all, having a heart of gold and secondly, bringing joy to the workplace every day. That’s not an easy thing to do with deadline pressures and office operations and different personalities all creating a dynamic, emotionally-charged environment. Despite the stereotype, a “fast-moving” marketing/advertising agency is not always a fun, buzzing place. It can be stressful. But Jill always worked to make it better.
I first met Jill after we hired her husband Cliff to be a copywriter on the creative team. Cliff was a improvisational comedian with a big heart and a million ideas, and seeing Cliff and Jill together was always a treat because you could tell how much they loved each other and made each other laugh. Jill’s winning ways were not lost on others at the agency, and soon she was hired for an office assistant role. She dove in to the role and would do anything the agency needed to support the business, client visits, employee events, you name it.
But that’s where the story gets interesting. On the creative team, we had a position open up for an associate producer on our video production team. I oversaw that work directly so Jill and I would be working together. I was excited to have Jill in the role because we needed the help and I could see from her event production background and great work on our office operations team that she would make a terrific associate producer and would hopefully grow into a more senior role on the creative team. But early on, Jill could tell the role was not quite right for her. She tried her best and kept most of her anxiety to herself, but the workflow and the type of work (and perhaps working with me, who knows?) caused her to step down from the position and take some time off from the agency.
I was disappointed, and honestly a little hurt that Jill hadn’t talked to me about it, as I would have loved to have helped her get past the initial growing pains. I knew she was a gem of a person and potentially a great producer once she got more comfortable with the work. After some time away, Jill came back to the agency in a role similar to her previous one, in our people development group. Once again, she shined in that role and you could see her spirits lift with each week. Jill felt badly about what happened between us and offered to get coffee together as an olive branch. I was reluctant at first, mostly because I felt a bit abandoned by the whole ordeal and left out of any chance to understand or help things. But to Jill’s immense credit, she was patient with me as the weeks and months went by, always offering a smile and the offer to catch up over coffee whenever I was ready. Eventually, I got over my disappointment and learned to appreciate Jill for the wonderful person she is and understand better that the associate producer role (at our agency or with me, at least) was not the right fit for her. She saw past my disappointment and waited for me to come around, which I 100% did.
Jill’s positive impact on the culture and the employee experience at the agency continued to grow and she became an indespensible member of the team, particularly when the pandemic hit in March of 2020 and everyone starting working remotely from home. Jill organize and led virtual meetings multiple days each week, coming up with fun games for employees to play, hanging out and chatting at virtual lunch hours, and keeping everyone’s spirits up. I’m sure it was exhausting for her and may not have felt that important, but as a manager and an employee I can say it was hugely valuable and so appreciated by all of us. Jill had found her place and she is amazing at her job. It was a happy ending to the story, except for one thing. Jill and I had never made time for that coffee together.
So after leaving the agency myself and taking some time off, one of the first people I wanted to reconnect with was Jill. In early July of 2021, I drove to her and Cliff’s place in Federal Way and we all sat in the living room and caught up. Then Jill and I took off for lunch at Wally’s seafood restaurant in Des Moines. It was a bit of a drive from Federal Way, but the vibe was perfect and once again, Jill had set things up for success.
It was such a joy to catch up and share a little bit about ourselves and get to know each other better. We even had fun dodging the flying tarter sauce when our waiter accidentally flung it while serving us. We had a great laugh. Our reconnect meeting was a long time coming and very much worth the wait. Thank you Jill!