Windsong has been in business for three full years now. As such, we’ve given out three Employee of the Year awards. This is likely the first time you’re hearing about them, though. As a means of not feeding the constant barrage of paparazzi hassling us at our studio, we’ve kept the prestigious winners list closely guarded and hush-hush.
Until now.
The following exposé is the second of a three-part series where our production coordinator, Haley, goes in depth to find out what really happened on the days that Kyle Gentz, Joann Mercado and Joshua Krause won their coveted metal origami bird statues.
“It’s all a blur now,” Joann Mercado says of the day she won her Employee of the Year honors. She looks off into the distance and appears to zone out for few seconds, seemingly lost in a bout of nostalgia. Eventually, she shakes her head and directs her gaze back toward me. Whatever fleeting memory she’s just experienced, she keeps to herself for the time being.
“So. What do you want to know?” she asks, her tone serious and earnest. Almost immediately thereafter, she collapses into a fit of characteristically inappropriate giggles.
“This is so ridiculous,” she squeals. “Let’s do it!”
Mercado earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from Fresno State, focusing her studies on public relations. As such, she is constantly connected — to her phone, her iPad, her laptop — in an effort to stay on top of pop culture and social media trends. When I ask her if she remembers approximately when she won Employee of the Year, she grabs her nearby iPhone and says enthusiastically, “Gimme one second and I can tell you the exact day, Hales. The exact day!”
It is mere moments before Mercado has found evidence of her victory and launched into sharing some of her memories from October 2, 2013. According to her, the Windsong team was really busy that day. So busy, they were forced to schedule a staff meeting on a lunch break between shoots.
“I remember it was really hot and I was wearing a soft sweater,” Mercado says. “After Byron [Watkins, Windsong Productions creative director] announced my name, I felt like I was going through menopause or something. I was sweating. My heart was beating really quickly. I was pretty uncomfortable.”
She pauses and furrows her brows. “Is it offensive for me to compare myself to women going through menopause?” she asks. “Don’t write that. Just say it was hot. Like, really, super hot.”
The clarification is not just Mercado being sensitive; it’s part of her job as head of PR. She must constantly weigh how the company should and should not represent itself. How individuals in the company should and should not represent themselves. She does this sort of thing instinctually, even when she’s not at the office. It’s part of what makes her good at her job.
In the years since taking home the award, a lot has changed in Mercado’s life. Little things, like moving from the back office she originally shared with 2014 Employee of the Year, Joshua Krause. And big things, like becoming engaged to (as she puts it) “the man of my dreams.”
Though wedding-planning has become a recent priority in her life, Mercado still manages to juggle the many other responsibilities she has at Windsong, all while (usually) wearing really high heels. The balancing act is nothing short of impressive.
“We all wear a lot of hats,” Mercado says when asked to explain her different roles at the company. “I mean, we all do everything. It’s hard to narrow my job responsibilities down to a 30-second elevator pitch.” She buries her face in her scarf like a nervous child, and appears to silently attempt going about doing just that.
Eventually, she resurfaces and offers, “I help estimate jobs. I help manage the office. I’m in charge of all the marketing and PR. And I dance. I’m also the loudest person in the office.”
She looks at me for approval: Did she cover everything?
Not quite. All of this is true, of course, but she’s left out plenty of other accomplishments. She manages Windsong’s largest account. She produces commercials, as well as the three-season web series Nothing To Do, which was a favorite among Fresno locals. She helps coordinate all major Windsong events, including the annual anniversary party and The Germ installments. She helps run the Bike Happy Foundation and its I Bike Fresno campaign, a non-profit organization dear to Windsong’s heart. In addition to all of this, she’s the Windsonger who’d most likely be voted “Class Clown” among her colleagues if the company had a yearbook, which it doesn’t. She break dances on her way to the bathroom. She does things like abbreviate short words down to even shorter words (‘Asian’ to ‘Aashze’, for instance). She gives herself faux pen ink tattoos that say things like “food”. She sings Homer Simpson songs, loudly, unapologetically, and on repeat.
When I remind her of all of this, she is decidedly less modest than Kyle Gentz about her contributions to the company and her co-workers.
“I’m hella tight!” she exclaims. Then, as is common with Mercado, loud laughter almost instantaneously follows.
Here is Joann’s acceptance speech, given at the Imaginary 2013 Employee of the Year Awards Banquet. To set the scene, she was wearing a dress by Stella McCartney and nine-inch heels by Sophia Webster. She fell, twice, when walking up the stairs to the microphone, but laughed it off both times, a lá an Asian (‘Aashze’) Jennifer Lawrence.
“I’d like to thank the partners at Windsong — plus Sara, because she wasn’t a partner at the time I won the award — for recognizing me. But, I mean, it was kind of a no-brainer, let’s be honest. I’d like to thank my eight godchildren, because they taught me how to manage people and feelings. And coffee, because coffee is pretty cool. Lastly, I really want to thank Sara and Byron for trusting me to manage the sh** out of this office! Oh! And my dad. My mom and my dad. But especially my dad. Because he’s really proud of me for not really knowing what I do. “
(Windsong issued a formal apology for not having time to bleep out the profanity at the original broadcast. It was very uncharacteristic of Joann to use such course language; we were caught off guard.)
