I'm starting to feel a little bruised.
Last week's S'SouthWest 'Nut (the one who thought his Nor'east 'NutNeighbor's ads were stealing from him)? Well, he's back. And, no surprise, last week's round of ill-advised changes to his campaign did not fix the basic quality problems. ('X' was broken. He changed 'Y'. This, essentially, exacerbated the problem.)
While still preferring to believe that some mysterious something elsewhere in the universe was ultimately responsible, he nevertheless agreed to NewBoss Anais's suggestion that he turn his campaign back over to us here at the Argonut Café, to see what we could do with it.
She came to my desk and told me to get started working on fixing the issues ASAP. So, I did.
And hour later, he was on the phone with her again, complaining that I was making changes and he didn't know why I was changing what I was changing. He wanted to be informed.
With me so far?
He still wanted to be informed, she asked me to call him, I did. And--wait for it--big surprise coming--he didn't want to "be informed" so much as he wanted to fight.
"I'm not getting any traffic, my changes were fabulous but now my campaign doesn't work, you want to undo my changes but it's just your opinion that that will help and I disagree, someone has to help me and it has to be now because I can't wait a month, isn't it true that Webstrainer likes my Nor'east 'NutNeighbor better and he has a better area and so I'm going down in flames no matter what I do, what are you going to do and where is my guarantee that it's going to work, what makes you say my quality is worse than my Nor'east 'NutNeighbor's and don't quote me statistics because those are just numbers and I want to ask a Webstrainer employee directly why my campaign is broken because I need to talk to someone who understands these things, you don't know this but six years ago when I had five times the territory, I ran perfect campaign for forty-two cents a day so clearly I am the expert and you're ignorant and I've never liked you." At various points in time, he point-blank refused to believe in reality.
Once he got a significant amount of that out of his system, two things became clear.
#1 His idea of Doing It Myself was predicated on the expectation that I was handing him a 100% functional campaign that would run by itself.
#2 Failing that, if he could make me describe everything I was doing and planning to do--he would essentially get a free How To course while remaining free to describe me, to the 'Nut network at large, as incompetent.
_______________________
P.S. MadBoy called today as well, but he called NewBoss Anais, not me. Cursing name-calling, abusive. His old charming self. He was pitching a fit because he hasn't received a lead in a week. Checking his campaign, I was able to provide NewBoss Anais with a potential cause for this problem. His campaign has been shut off for the last week.
posted by AnneZook on 06.08.09 at 04:28 PMI understand how these people could be foundering in the economy we have now. What I don't understand is how we ever had a booming economy with people like this as part of it. Were they just parasitic, skimming money off the top without producing anything, or was it really that easy to make money and we just missed it?
posted by: Jonathan Dresner on 06.08.09 at 07:17 PM [permalink]What is it that these people do? I mean, what is it they provide to people whose leads they get?
posted by: Dail on 06.08.09 at 07:54 PM [permalink]Jonathan - No, no, this company spun (sold) off their successful concept four or five months before they hired me. This is a New Concept that was never properly implemented.
This was a large, very successful franchise organization. Their new CEO Jason (someone with zero qualifications for the job, appointed because they had no other internal candidate) sold off 85% of the business.
It was his opinion that the 85%, the part that--wait for it--actually made money, was dragging the company down.
His plan was that the remaining 15% would form a new business model, moving stuff as the Sold Locations had done, but Big Stuff, not Small Stuff, allowing them to charge a lot more money per job.
Conceptually, the idea wasn't all bad. Had the New Concept been implemented, refined, grown, and stabilized for two or three years, it might even have worked.
Or, you know, had they had a solid (real) business model for the New Concept and had they implemented it firmly across the board, enforcing the rules and stuff.
Not to be Inappropriately Political, but clearly Jason (whom I factually know to be staunchly, even wingishly, Republican) is a neocon.
Like them, he decided in his head what would happen in the real world and then when Life got messy, he just stood around looking surprised.
posted by: Anne on 06.09.09 at 08:01 AM [permalink]I'm very cagey, aren't I, Dail. I live in fear of one of being exposed as a malcontent.
Okay, not so much "fear."
I'm sorry I haven't offered a context for my rants. They must seem very random if you can't even associate them with an industry!
They p-a-c-k stuff and s-h-i-p it. There's a category of stuff (too large for the Post Office or U-P-S but not large enough to interest a m-o-v-e-r) they s-p-e-c-i-a-l-i-z-e in.
posted by: Anne on 06.09.09 at 08:04 AM [permalink]