A tribute. I hesitated to put this up since it’s such a horrible example of my spokesperson abilities, so please forgive the umms, uhhs and stuttering ands. Gross lack of sleep.

As many of you know, as of a week ago I was getting laid off. The company that owns my company decided to move the corporate communications function to their headquarters in Cincinnati and I decided not to join them in that move. So while I was in the throws of planning the new business I would start, all the things I would do while collecting the joke that is unemployment (without exploiting the system of course) and the new career paths I would take (hairdresser, world traveler, private investigator) I was blindsided – in a good way – with the offer to take a promotion and switch departments to become the new marketing manager for Greyhound.

It is with a heavy spokesperson’s heart and roughly 1,000 media queries later that I give up the 24/7 on-call phone, the chipper attitude despite the passive aggressive fighting for information, the documentation of the monthly media calls, and the sound bites and on the fly crafted messaging. But seriously, I will miss it.

I think this is not the end of the line for the spokesperson that is Abby, but perhaps just a diversion. And besides, tweeting for multiple twitter accounts is basically like still being a spokesperson, but you don’t have to worry about morning voice when the phone rings at 4 a.m.

P.S. I now welcome unsolicited marketing advice.