I was looking at some of the 'Nut campaigns I haven't touched yet this week, but I can't muster up any enthusiasm for writing another six dozen ads, five and a half dozen of which will fail because the websites don't have the content necessary to support the advertising.
I've been worrying about the panic attacks (arguably an improvement over having panic attacks) and reminding myself to call the doctor's office when they open, to schedule my physical. I also need to call HairMan in a couple of hours and get an appointment to get my roots touched up.
I'm making a lot of ommm and telling myself I don't care. I'm over it. I'll do whatever they tell me they want me to do, regardless of my personal feeling about how stupid it is. Caring just isn't worth it. (In the matter of intellect, the difference between an Argonut and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar shop is not spacious.* So, why fight it?)
From whence, you might ask, comes this apathy? Well, it's not apathy. It's--well, I guess it's self-interest. Having found out yesterday evening that someone I know passed away this weekend after a sudden, massive heart attack, I've decided that life is for living, not for beating yourself up over other people's ignorance.* *
Also, I'm kind of down. I didn't see Stuart often or talk with him frequently, but he was, inexplicably, one of the people who mattered. Warm, generous, funny, snarky--he had all the best qualities. The world is less sparkly without him.
I'm going to focus on the fun in life for a while. Because that's the kind of thing he would have approved of.
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* Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences (M. Twain) - paraphrase
* * Like second-hand smoke, I suspect that second-hand stress can kill you.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:17 AM | Comments (1)Just talked to a New'Nut, who said, and I quote, "It never occurred to us to go out and find customers.
Posted by AnneZook at 04:13 PM | Comments (2)The circus. I sweartogod, I'm running away to join the circus.
This morning, one nitwit 'Nut got snippy with me because he's in Kentucky and he can't claim a Webstrainer local mapping listing for a city in Tennessee. Apparently the concept of "local" is too hard to understand.
The S'SWest 'Nut was unsatisfied with the report I ran demonstrating that his campaign is pulling three times the traffic of his Nor'East 'NutNeighbor's campaign. He was unsatisfied with the report I ran showing that, during the five morning hours when he claims his ads do not show, he receives over 30% of his daily ad shows. He was unsatisfied with the report I ran showing that quality issues, most of which could be easily fixed are the root of his problem. He was, in fact, positively belligerent.
And, in spite of (very) grudgingly giving me a week to produce a series of miracles, he was back today, less than twenty-four hours later, threatening legal action if, as near as I can tell, we don't change reality to suit him.
MadBoy, still unhappy with the performance of his campaign that is now under outside agency management is nevertheless blaming us for his unhappiness. Yesterday and today, he's been screaming into our email about how his 'NutNeighbor's campaign is stealing his traffic. He asked an incomplete question of some random Webstrainer person he got in touch with and got a misleading answer--one that served to reinforce his belief that we are deliberately trashing his life.
NewBoss Anais, in spite of my hissy fit when she mentioned it, forced me to actually call our Webstrainer rep and ask if reality can be changed for these two lu'Nutics. (I mean, how humiliating is that? Who makes someone call an "expert" to ask if C is part of ABC?)
"Don't feed the bears," I told NewBoss Anais. "If you do, they'll never leave. They just keep coming back, getting meaner and meaner."
While agreeing with me, she still made me call.
I know she doesn't mean to diss me by making me get "expert" advice to prove that I know what I'm talking about, but it's still very demeaning.
Also? So embarrassing. There was no way to disguise from our Webstrainer rep that I was being made to call and ask her to alter reality. I did try, but at one point, she told me how sorry she was that I was having to deal with all of it, so it's pretty clear she understood what was going on. In response to my request. She was also flatteringly grateful to find that I'm still here. (She's had to conference in with 'Nuts before and has few illusions.)
Yesterday's wig-out might have had one positive result. This morning, NewBoss Anais told me that Jason was calling the S'SWest 'Nut, telling him that it's clear that separate campaigns are not working, and that he and his Nor'East 'NutNeighbor have to annul their (marketing) divorce and bring all their toys back to one sandbox.
Also, NewBoss Anais swears that they have a company hired to do some of this, one that will start on July 1. And an individual to replace our lost web design/tech person. And two companies who will sell the 'Nuts leads, which will hopefully keep them busy enough to shut them up.
The way this week is going? July 1 will be too late. Yesterday's panic attack happened at 2:00 pm. Today's symptoms kicked in at 11:00 am. Tomorrow's will probably commence the second my alarm goes off in the morning.
Gidget and Vela cancelled for lunch today. Vela is apparently so socially popular and active she can't make lunch for two or three more weeks. Gidget and I are getting together next week. (No word on whether or not Lina accepted Gidget's invitation at all.)
Fortunately, I have friends who are better to me than I am to them and, if I can survive until Monday, are going to help me with that talking down off the ledge thing.
Also, I have a NewBoss who saw through my feeble protestations about Fatness and who is going to provide me with almond M&Ms one day soon. :D
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P.S. Sadly, NewBoss Anais also confirmed, in no uncertain terms, that they have no plans to lay me off at all. My vague vision of a summer funded by unemployment checks has evaporated.
Posted by AnneZook at 03:31 PM | Comments (2)Right now, the biggest trouble with being Me is that there is no one I can call and scream, "Talk me down off the ledge!" at.
I might just sit here and have a quiet heart attack or, as I threatened to NewBoss Anais this morning, I might run away to join the circus.
I know--generally I have a joke about it all, but for the last couple of months, my stress levels have been climbing daily. So much so that I'm now back to having at least one interval every day where I sit here and feel my heart pounding, wondering if I'm going to make it. It's starting to be harder to find any funny.
As you will realize, at least in hindsight, my increasingly frequent references to weekend shopping sprees signal a return to Retail Therapy. I've gained another 1-1/2 lbs. I can't get out of bed in the mornings because I sit up so late at night--reluctant to go to sleep so that I have to wake up to face another day.
Anyhow.
Today, it's both the S'SWest 'Nut and MadBoy. I won't bore you with the details, just assume it's more of the same.
Mostly, I'm just sitting here at the moment.
You know. Breathing. Doing a little ommmm.
Reminding myself that Big Girls Don't Cry.
Sigh.
Honestly, I just can't afford to lose an hour a day to stress. I already had to spend an unanticipated six hours (out of the last two work days) working on the S'SWest 'Nut's campaign, so I'm already behind schedule for the week.
Make people not be so stupid, okay?
Posted by AnneZook at 02:36 PM | Comments (2)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 at 04:28 PM | Comments (4)I've spent a lot of time missing opportunities to go out and frolic with friends in the last five months.
Partly, I blame Rapunzel, as I said once before. She recommended a new DS game to me last fall, Santa brought it to me for Christmas, and it ate my brain for the next few months. (Not the least because the buggy game file has crashed on me four times, forcing me to start over from the beginning.)
That's the sort of thing I do when life gets stressful. It used to be nothing but books--I'd go live in fictional or historical worlds when life got tough. For the last few years, the GameBoy has been right up there as one of my favorite hide-outs.
The point is that I realized, last week that it was June.
I mean, it's summer!
I have practically no memory of the past five months. It's all a sad-colored blur of work-related freak-outs and endless hours staring at a 2"x3" game screen, pretending that the biggest problem in life was keeping my cows happy.
This must cease. As the R.C. and I have been discussing for the past couple of weeks, we stepped back on the "career" ladder, taking lower-level jobs for (a lot) less money, to eliminate work stress and to help cure ourselves of workaholicism.
Gradually, I find myself sliding back into the bad old ways.
Granted, staying at the office for an extra hour a day to work on my free-lance projects (a tactic I decided on last night) isn't a sign of the apocalypse, and granted that working 4-5 hours a week to get a new business going is incredibly minimal, and granted that with the Six Month Frugality Plan still in place, evening and weekend amusements would still be limited to those things costing little or no money, but still. June!
By gosh, I decided, it's time to Get Out and enjoy summer as it arrives!
So, this weekend the R.C. and I went Out. And, yes, we Shopped. I am the proud possessor of a new beigey-champagne jacket and a complementary necklace and earring. And a shirt for weekend wear.
I'm lunching with Gidget and Vela and another former member of Team Chaos, Lina, on Wednesday. She's one of the Fortunate Few who has already found new gainful employment. I'm going to wow them with my muted but stylish ensemble.
And, as if to emphasize that Life Is For Living and that golden days and opportunities pass if we don't take advantage of them? The outdoor/walking mall we visited on Saturday we all-but plowed under by a tornado on Sunday, including massive damage to the one store we spent the most time (and money) in. (Okay, maybe not plowed under, but certainly extensively tilled.)*
It was quite a storm yesterday. About a mile from where I live, they had egg-sized hail. Fortunately we didn't quite get that. We had--not pea-sized but let's say lima-bean sized pellets. Although, they could have been larger before they landed. I was giving thanks for the carport as the hail pounded down so hard it broke on impact against the parking lot asphalt.
Yesterday I put a snap on a jacket, tightened the buttons on two shirts, hemmed a pair of pants, did a couple of loads of laundry, took out the trash, ironed, made a big pot o'soup, ran the dishwasher, did some work for Gidget, and (so embarrassing) spent at least six hours staring at a 2x3 screen, trying to make my cows happy. I'm starting to wonder if I have a problem. Maybe there's a 12-step program for recovering gameaholics?
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* That's the second time that's happened to me, that a store I was shopping at was destroyed by a tornado a few hours later. Very peculiar.
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
It's aggravating when you get a Bad Moment in the middle of what should be a triumph, isn't it?.
I'm just, you know, over breaking my heart for this place. It's hard to keep caring. You've all heard my endless whining about ingratitude and stupidity, so I won't repeat that particular theme today. Instead, I'll offer a variation.
Three locations have closed in the past three weeks. Two were owned by one pair o'nuts and the other by a hitherto unmentioned she'Nut. In both cases, I've been beating my head against the wall for a year trying to find business and drive it to these people. No matter what I drove, they just were getting enough "good" leads to keep the bills paid.
Or, so they said. Just now, I was told that these Bad 'Nuts did not, in fact, "fail" due to lack of business.
No, in fact, they seem to have had an abundance of business. So much so that they decided they would be better off taking their little gold mines and running away from the home office. Each of these former 'Nuts has, in complete violation of their non-compete agreements, reinvented themselves as a competing, stand-alone businesses.
And, yes, they left owing us here at home tens of thousands of dollars.
The pair o'Nuts are suspected of having spent the last six months funneling money into a sekrit account, while crying poverty and not paying us their contractual fees.
The she'Nut actually declared herself bankrupt--but not until a month after she incorporated her new business (operating out of the same physical location) and moved all of her assets over to it. About all she left in the old 'Nut business was her debt to us and now, via bankruptcy, she's asking the courts to absolve her of having to pay it.
Why do I even bother?
Although this is a unique situation, I honestly do feel, much of the time, as though I've spent most of my business life enriching people who subsequently pack up and move on without so much as a good-bye wave.
I was already in a funk today. It's month-end reporting and for the first time since I wandered into the Argonut Café--sixteen months ago--leads were flat last month from the same time last year. That's the first time I haven't delivered an increase.
I had a different sort of a weekend.
In an attempt to achieve 150% on their approval ratings* The Bates Motel, the RC's new employer, offered staff member f&f ** a free night's stay (and a meal, of course) if they'd come, check the place out, interact with the staff, and report back on any inadequacies. I volunteered to play.
Sadly, the RC is very popular with the handful of Managerial Type she supports. I say "sadly" because, no doubt in an attempt to be very, very nice to her f&f, they upgraded me to the Skyway--the nosebleed floor of the Motel where you find such things as the presidential suite and the speshul sekrit concierge club available only to those willing to fork out beaucoup bucks to keep from having to rub elbows with the hoi polloi.
The thing is, you see, in a place that considers outstanding service and amenities to be the starting point for how they operate on a daily business? Once you hit the Skyway level, there are just no inadequacies to report.
I did try. The free food in the speshul sekrit club, I decided, was not precisely hot either of the times I tried it. (Okay, I didn't expect the smoked salmon to be hot. Nor the cheese, although they could have made an effort with the brie--something approaching room temperature would have been enough. But the gourmet pizza should have been at least warm when I bit into it.)
The name tags, I fretted, needed to be bigger. I was supposed to identify the staff members I interacted with, but I draw the line at staring fixedly at women's chests. That's probably not something a "normal" guest would think about, though.
Someone in the restaurant was wearing pants with a raggedy hem and they delivered the wrong newspaper on Sunday morning. That's it. It took me two hours to come up with that much.
I'm not sure the Managerial Types are going to consider that kind of feedback a good return on the rather pricey room bill.
I'm sorry. The big-screen television worked perfectly, the oversized bathroom with separate tub and shower stalls was immaculate, the pillows heaped on the bed were fluffy. I took white socks and walked around the hotel room in them and they did not turn black, so the carpet was clean. The turn-down service was prompt and courteous. All the staff members I interacted with were helpful and smiling--they all looked like they were actually happy to be there.
Did I mention I fell in love? I dined in the restaurant after sampling the lukewarm hors-d'voures--dev'rous--dev'rous--snacks in the speshul sekrit club. Good ambiance, great food, and the cutest little server boy twinkling at me over my modest glass of iced tea and my Caesar salad.
Seriously, I could have just wrapped him up and taken him home with me. He was that delicious. (That's how the server in the restaurant became "someone" with a raggedy hem. At one point, I saw her nametag, but no strange woman's name is going to linger in my mind after I've been grinned at by a sexy guy.***)
Anyhow. Should I ever do such a thing again, I'm going to find a way to make myself a little less pleasant. I'll be a Problem Guest of some kind. You really need to make waves (or at least a few ripples) to find out how deep "great service" goes.
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* Can I just say how much I'd like to work for a company that considers excellence to be the starting point?
* * friends and family
*** Yes, okay, he was mostly just angling for a good tip because I'm old but it was dim in there and I look younger in a dim light and anyhow I'm perfectly happy to hand an attractive man an extra buck or two if he smiles at me with any degree of sincerity.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:23 AM | Comments (4)