Man who pitches same idea female co-worker did minutes before receives medal of honour

TORONTO, ON—Jared Thrift, a 34-year-old marketing consultant received a medal of honour Thursday when he pitched the same idea his female co-worker Julia Dryden, 39, had pitched just moments before.

CEO John Johnson gave glowing reviews of Thrift's work.

"You know, Jared has always been one of our top employees. He's worked here for less than a year but consistently hits the ball out of the park."

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When asked why Thrift's female counterpart had never received recognition for her ideas — ideas that were clearly written from the female perspective —Johnson questioned with a furrowed brow, "who?" and went back to messing up Thrift's hair as though he had achieved yet another touchdown.

Thrift, who takes up the space of a football player but speaks like he's constantly in a post-hockey game interview, spoke out about his creative process stating, "Uh, I don't know. It's like, every time I get an idea I hear this muffled sound — almost like that teacher from Charlie Brown — monotone and unimportant. Anyway, like 12 seconds after I hear that, it hits me."

"That's me," Dryden reveals in a separate interview. "That's my voice Jared's hearing."

When CBC sat down with Dryden at a local pub, she looked a little worse for wear. She'd been up for the last 48 hours coming up with the perfect pitch that would finally get her heard — the pitch that won Thrift a spot in the Marketing Hall of Fame, which she swears exists. Dryden, who has worked at Johnson Imaginative for just under eight years now says at this point she could "light her desk on fire and no one would notice."

Thrift says the idea for his pitch came "out of nowhere" and that in the moment, he didn't fully understand the words that were seeping out of his mouth. "It's like when you're still drunk but you've already started barfing. You don't quite know where you are and why it's happening, but… hey, that's just life." Thrift stops dead in his tracks. "That's just life… Hey! That's not a bad slogan!"

"That's Just Life is what I pitched as an insurance slogan just before lunch today," Dryden sighed as she threw back another tequila shot during our interview. At the moment she threw down her empty shot glass, Thrift was overheard yelling at a group of his male colleagues, "Bro, we should get tequila shots!"

It was hard to hear what Dryden had to say over the cheers, but honestly? It probably wasn't important.

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