Lunchtime Battle For Food Court Dominance Rages Between ICM And CAA
Our nightmarish vision of a post-agency-relocation Century City mall food court clotted with lunching, nattily attired drones left with no recourse by the dearth of local culinary options but a hastily devoured Fuddruckers baby-burger, it seems, has fully come to pass: Today's LAT looks at the turf war raging between new CC residents CAA and ICM, who have quickly made their presence felt on their neighborhood's lunchtime scene:
But that's small change compared with the tactical maneuvers required for eating lunch. Imagine, if you will, Armani-uniformed agents standing in line with soccer moms at the Westfield mall's food court or balancing plastic trays loaded up with beer-battered chicken or Fuddruckers fries. "With all the suits and sunglasses, it feels like "The Matrix: The Food Court," joked manager-producer J.C. Spink ("A History of Violence").
And with such brazenly public dining come perils. "You can't really talk business because you've got CAA right there. And they've got us," said an ICM agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity (silence is the agency policy when dealing with the press). "I've heard people at CAA having their conversations — you can hear everything." [...]
"It's gotten worse in the last three weeks," said a retired banker waiting in a long line at Barenaked Yogurt.
Around him, people — many of them in suits — were balancing trays, looking desperately for a free table. One young man grunted, "This sucks!" as he wheeled around and continued his search in another direction.
With tensions running dangerously high on both sides from the uncomfortable, privacy-hampering proximity forced upon them by the cramped accommodations, it shouldn't be long before things escalate to actual violence. We predict that by the end of the month (see above for proof of our prescience in this matter), there will be daily skirmishes in which phalanxes of expendable assistants, armed with plastic tray shields and fistfuls of disposable cutlery, assemble at high noon at opposite ends of their casual-dining battlefield, poised to join in fierce hand-to-hand combat upon their bosses's orders to "Unleash hell, you little pee-ons!," with the agency left with the greatest number of uninjured, spork-wielding call-rollers awarded the prime tables next to the California Crisp.
