It's always the one day when you forget to check your email first thing in the morning that you find one of those "come and see me" emails from Upper Level Management waiting for you, isn't it? And then, when you finally notice that you have an email from ULM, you go to their office and someone else is already in there, right? And then you sit at your desk for the next 45 minutes, wondering what in the heck is going on and who's complaining about you now.

That was how my week started.

Anyhow. Turns out that one of the Southern'Nuts had called, convinced that the 'Nut on the other side of town was stealing his business by encroaching on his Webstrainer campaign. But he didn't call me with this (idiotic) complaint. No, that would have been too sensible. After all, I'm the person who handles the Webstrainer campaigns, including the one in question, and the one who works on them every day. Asking me a question would be just stupid. No, this 'Nut contacted Jason directly.

Hey, he whined. My Nor'east 'NutNeighbor's ads are trumping mine online! Clearly he went into his campaign and told Webstrainer to take all my leads! Anne's supposed to be watching this! When did she last check it?

So stupid. Who calls the president of a company asking how recently some low-level employee has completed a routine task?

Story so boring even I don't care cut short--he's a DIY 'Nut--he chose to manage his own campaign, beginning the first of last month. I went and looked at his campaign. It took ten seconds for me to figure out the "problem."

Someone else isn't deliberately encroaching on his territory--he's made such an unholy, gross mess out of his campaign that Webstrainer has just pretty much opted out of showing his ads.

Like PeaNut from earlier entries, he couldn't wait to destroy a campaign I spent a year building, testing, and refining. And then he couldn't wait to blame someone else.

Cause and effect, people. If you make 500 changes one day, and the next day, your campaign seems broken? Maybe it was your changes and not someone somewhere else in the world sneaking in to your campaign and "breaking" it.

You know what I like? I mean, even aside from getting blamed for people somewhere else doing something I have no control over? I like working with a bunch of people, none of whom have the slightest concept of the basics, much less the nuances and complexities, of marketing, but who nevertheless have the power of 100% veto each and every step of the process.

TGIF