Dont Need Marketing

The psychological torture inflicted upon the most sturdy inmates in Guantanemo Bay is probably nothing compared to sitting in a meeting with my boss as she slaughters all reason, the English language and my valuable time into a steaming pile of pig feed.

I thought I was just going into her office for a brief and one-way conversation about the state of the budget reports that I was waiting for. Instead, it turned into another dragged-out exercise in endurance between herself and the media marketing manager. I had been in the middle of this discussion before, I was sure. Or at least on the outside looking in, to use a more appropriate cliché. For I didn’t say but a dozen words in the two hours I was chained to the chair while they bantered about things that neither of them understood. They were speaking a different language. Unfortunately for the media marketing manager, my boss’s language consisted of misinterpretations of wrong assumptions centered around the misconstrued notion that she knew what she was talking about. It was truly painful.

The last meeting we had like this was over a month ago, and that one ended the same way this one finally did. The media marketing manager put his pen down and declared that he was going to start on the most basic part of the assignment and they’d have to work it out as they went along. She’d be sure to change her mind about everything by the time the first stage was complete, anyway, which, if history was to be repeated, wouldn’t happen prior to the next meeting anyway.

Nothing goes right around here. Working with actual monkeys would at least be entertaining. My quality control supervisor is a born-again Christian. The variations on what that means are endless, and result in a never-ending stream of people into my office to complain about being criticized for either their work or personal habits.

Over in marketing it’s worse. Marketing managers are no different from weathermen, although the jig isnt quite up with them yet. Nobody realizes it, but I do. Marketing managers are completely useless to the foundation of a company and offer nothing against the investment put into them. They provide no information in meetings or in product planning except to either push for the status quo or “something different this time.” If any one group of people could be utterly destroyed in corporate America without affecting the economy whatsoever it would be marketing managers. And weathermen. If only I had known how much money I could have made at a career based on looking pretty and making random guesses about my field of interest! I never would have wasted time trying to learn anything in college.

At the bottom of the ladder is my staff. Most of them cant bear to be at work at 8:30 in the morning. The previous manager here didn’t seem to mind having half the staff wander in between 11 and 2 in the afternoon. But I mind. It’s a simple request, I had thought, to have them come in on time. So far, though, I’ve had to fire three of the motherfuckers, and I’ve only been here a month. It’s been a lot of paperwork, but it’s been worth it. The fear in everyone’s eyes brings me tears of joy. I want to hug their fear, embrace it warmly and raise it as if it were my own. The only way to handle one’s minions is to inflict fear upon in large and indiscriminate doses.

When I look at my staff, these poor kids, I feel great compassion for them because I’ve been in those meetings with my boss, a vice president of operations, a big wig and a bigger cheese, and I know for a fact that she’s 75% dumber than anyone on the floor, despite her rank and experience, which makes her fully twice as dumb on top of that, because she’s not only an idiot, but she obviously hasn’t learned anything. So these kids have no role models. Except for me. So I do my best to straighten my tie and polish my shoes and pronounce my words like I’ve been to school, just so they have someone to look up to. Someday, they’ll recognize how valuable I’ve been to them. Until then, they better just worry about getting here on time.

- posted by seanmh @ 10:54 AM