Monday

When I met our IT guy, Bert, he was a happy man with a pretty, bubbly wife and two wonderful children. A couple of months back (no one is quite sure when) (or why), his wife started doing drugs. I don't know what, but something pretty hard, because she went from a normal 23 year-old to an emaciated crone in just a couple of months.

She died over the weekend. The official line is "we don't have many details yet" but the assumption is that it was a drug overdose.

TeamChaos and the onsite Argonuts were predictably subdued after the announcement.

The Argonuts Afield were not informed but clearly there was something unsettling in their own morning kool-aid because various and sundry of them called up freaking and squeaking about their marketing campaigns. Internet marketing produces about 55% of their monthly business. They persist in demanding 100%, no matter how carefully we explain the stupidity of that kind of thinking.

And they persist in believing that if they shout loud enough, go over our heads to complain about us to TeamChaos often enough, and call Gidget enough bad names, they will get what they want. By the end of the day, Gidget and I are both battered and bruised.

Tuesday

The company-wide biorhythm trough continued, as yesterday's Argonuts Afield (and a few new 'Nuts for good measure) continued to call and demand that we produce the impossible with no money or resources.

While I privately agree with them that our internet marketing efforts could be working better, I also know that the Next Level Plan that Gidget and I produced five or six months ago laid out, very clearly, precisely what we needed to make it happen.

After months of waffling, Jason finally hired the Crazy George Company as "consultants" to tell us--wait for it--what we need to do to improve our internet marketing efforts!

Once Gidget had talked me down off the ledge, I agreed that as long as they got us the tools and improvements we needed, I could decide not to care that Jason hired an outside company to tell him exactly what we told him--and he believed them where he didn't believe us.

I can't seem to stop minding that they were hired a month ago and all they've produced so far is confusion and delay. Although the agreement was that they'd work directly with Gidget, as the manager of all our internet marketing efforts and our onsite "expert," they continue to bypass her in favor of working with our own personal ChaosManager, Vela, who knows nothing about internet marketing and is already doing the work of 2-1/2 people, leaving her no time to really understand the value (or, otherwise) (most emphatically otherwise) of some of the things they say we "need" to do.

I think the problem started with the introductory meeting, when they were trying to baffle the 'Nuts with bullshit and I kept interrupting to translate their jargon into English. They seem to feel that Gidget and I are hostile, when we're really just unwilling (and unable) to spend time on things we've already tried and know won't work, or being patronized by someone more worried about impressing us as an "expert" than in producing results.

Anyhow, what with this 'Nut saying he was going to close his doors unless we drive 100% of his business to him with no effort on his part (and, by the way, he's only willing to spend 1/3 of what it would take to drive any business), and another 'Nut saying we were being "vindictive" by not giving him the all-powerful administrator login that would allow him to view not only his own data, but everyone else's, and another 'Nut calling to scream and call names because we can't force the internet to behave the way he thinks it should behave, it was kind of a rough day. Again.

Wednesday

Thanks to the YakketyYak email company taking eight days to produce our new email template instead of the three days they promised, we didn't received the draft of the design until yesterday.

I've already had to tell Vela (twice!) that no, we cannot both make changes to the design and use it for this week's newsletter. We either use it as is, or give YakkektyYak a reasonable 2-3 days to make changes and use it next time.

And, BTW, where are my 'NutNews files? It's 10:00 on Wednesday morning and I haven't seen a single piece of this week's newsletter yet.

Gidget and I had a lunch date with OpieGirl, but she didn't show, so we spend the hour bitching and moaning instead. I think it did us good.

Pardon me if I'm misremembering, but isn't this new, low-paying job supposed to be providing me with a nearly stress-free lifestyle?