Gordon Keith Goes Paycheck Peeking

The Ticket’s own Gordon Keith has an op-ed today in the Morning News (paywall) about the annual “What People Earn” issue of Parade and about our desire to know what our friends and neighbors and favorite quarterbacks make. Gordon leads his story with an anecdote involving me, Eric Celeste, and Adam McGill. Careful readers will recognize those last two names; they belong to guys who used to work at D Magazine. Here’s how Gordon spins it:

We were on the patio of a pub and the sun was sinking when my buddy brought up the matter of money.

“Let’s go around the table and every guy give his salary.”

I laughed in my beer at this gathering cloud of beautiful tension. Alcohol is an idiot’s truth serum and a daredevil’s fuel. So Eric went first, then Adam. Tim paused, pregnant with info guaranteed a complicated delivery. He and Adam had the same job at the same place. Tim announced a number several thousand richer than Adam’s.

Through our braying, Adam “figured as much” and assured us that it was “no big deal.” After the flurry, our excitement curdled and the table fell into a glassy regret. It was like the morning after for new swingers. Our version of “Wouldn’t it be great if we knew how much everyone made?” somehow didn’t feel great.

Gordon was kind enough to ask me ahead of time whether I minded if he used that anecdote. This scene went down more than a decade ago (I think at the time Eric was working at the Observer). I have only the faintest memory of it. And, anyway, Gordon had already checked with Adam, who said it was fine with him to have the story told. Adam, by the way, got out of the journalism game a few years ago and now has a respectable job that pays him a real wage. If we went around the table again, pretty sure he’d scoreboard me, which is why, when I go eat pizza at his house tonight, I’m not offering him a dime.

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