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 last 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.
“Awards are stupid,” Joshua Krause says emphatically. “I think this whole thing is stupid. When I won, I was thinking, ‘Oh, God. I hope I don’t have to talk in front of everyone,’ so I definitely don’t want to answer your stupid questions now.”
He punctuates his monologue with aggressive hand gestures and inflects a tone that can only be described as condescending. If Windsong was Hollywood and the Employee of the Year winners were actors nominated during awards season, Krause would be the talented, but reluctant contender. He’s Robert Mitchum. George C. Scott. Joaquin Phoenix.
And methinks he protests a bit too much.
Moments earlier, when I first asked why he thought he was picked as Employee of Year for 2014, he quipped, “Because I’m the best dresser in the office.” After stopping for a moment to laugh at his own (not entirely inaccurate) joke, he added, “And I fill a lot of affirmative action roles for the company; I give them a Mexican and a Jew all at once. Plus, I’m moderately funny. Let’s see. What else? What else?”
After pausing to remove the green drink stopper from his Starbucks hazelnut latte and placing it in his mouth — a signature Krause move — he looks at me expectantly and raises his eyebrows as if to say, “What are you still doing in my office?”
I press again. “Why do you really think you won?”
His jovial mood shifts when he realizes I’m searching for a genuine answer. “I don’t know, Haley,” he whines, the drink stopper still hanging from his lips. “Byron and Sara are the ones who picked me. Why don’t you go ask them? You’re talking to the wrong guy here.”
It would be easy for me to find out why the bosses feel Krause is Employee of the Year material, but I can just as easily make some educated guesses on my own. Krause has helped expand Windsong from the commercial world into the realm of television and documentary filmmaking. He’s the reason various members of the Windsong crew have Instagram photos with music names like Ludacris, Puff Daddy, and L.A. Reid. He won a “40 Under 40” Award from Business Street Online last fall on account of his excellent producing and editing skills. And, as co-worker Conlan Spangler is quick to point out, “He brings donuts for the office sometimes.”
On a personal level, he’s kinder and more thoughtful than his sarcastic exterior lets on. (As my Secret Santa this past December, he gifted me a shirt from his own wardrobe that I had not-so-subtly hinted about wanting for the past year and a half). He’s also more sentimental than he’d like people to know. (His office is littered in trinkets and mementos from his personal and professional life, and the cover on his Facebook page is a picture of him down on one knee, proposing to his [now] wife, Chelsea). But he’ll make you work hard to see that side of him. At first glance, you get someone who is more hip than earnest. More calm and collected than passionate. More swagger than sensitive.
I ask if I can take a picture of him for this blog. “Sure,” he says as he pulls his beanie over his face and raises his middle finger toward the camera. After pleading with him to cooperate, I manage to snap a few shots and then start to head back to my desk to download them.
“Wait!” he says excitedly, already laughing at his own duplicity before he can even spit out his next sentence. “Aren’t you going to show me how they turned out?”
Here is Krause’s acceptance speech, given at the Imaginary 2014 Employee of the Year Awards Banquet. To set the scene, it was a formal event and yet he showed up wearing a faux-tux t-shirt with jeans and Chuck All-Stars. After he gave the following speech, he literally dropped the microphone on stage and walked off quoting the chorus to “I’m The King” by The Game.
“I’d like to thank the people at Windsong Productions who believed in a young, moderately funny Mexican Jewish boy and his dream to tell stories that are moderately funny and semi-well produced and edited. But really, all in all, when it comes down to it, at the end of the day, when all is said and done, at its core, when you really look at it, the moral of the story is, I need to thank Sheldon and Carmen Krause, my parents, because without them, Mexican and Jewish together wouldn’t really be a thing. I mean, I’m Mexican. So therefore, inherently, I’m a hard worker. But I’m also Jewish, which means I know a thing or two about the entertainment industry. When you put those two things together, hard-working and knowing a thing or two about entertainment, you get me. (Orchestra music starts playing at this point) Wait! There’s a few more people I’d like to thank. Don’t let me forget the little people: everyone at Chipotle, the baristas at Starbucks, Kayne West, and the guy or gal who came up with Spotify. Because without them… (his voice cracks with emotion) …without them, life just wouldn’t be worth living. (At this point, he walks away from the microphone, then rushes back) Oh, yeah. And let me thank my wife, too. Boom.”
