Why do people always think that the way to make you work faster on their pet project is to bug you every hour or two for a status update on it, as if it were the only thing in the world you're trying to get done? How does pulling me away several times a day to spend 20 minutes a pop answering their email or phone call about it increase productivity? It doesn't--it decreases it by the sheer volume of time wasted on the distraction. All it serves to do is make the other person feel like he or she is "on top of things."

When you're a sales person, the less you know about the status every fucking hour or two, the better, IMO, because all your itchy trigger finger will do is pick up the phone and call the client, or send email to relay the information, and paint the whole company into a corner when you can't deliver on whatever deadline you thought to make up regardless of reality.

Torpedo Tits laid a really huge egg Thursday morning by emailing a client that Quality Assurance and Analytics (my department) were both numbers testing some software we developed for him, and that he could have access to it by the end of next week. She never checked with anyone in either of our departments before sending that email. We didn't even have anything yet from programming to test when she did that. The next day, when QA got access, it wouldn't even generate numbers. Therefore, back to programming to fix the bugs, and I have nothing to numbers-test if QA says it won't generate numbers. Torpedo Tits totally lied to the client, and told him what he wanted to hear, with complete disregard for the truth. It wasn't as if she knew the truth and sugar-coated it--she didn't even feel the need to find out the truth before going off half cocked.

Fat Albert got yanked off all West Coast sales duty, and shoved into client support full time, instead of doing a bit of both. He doesn't belong in sales, so that aspect is good, but he doesn't belong in client support, either. This is a guy who can't even figure out how to install our software on his own laptop, and he's going to man the client support hotline in LA? Every goddamn question he gets is either going to be given a wrong answer, or he'll simple email or call NY to get an answer. I'm not in client support at all, yet this jerk expects me to use industrial strength baby wipes on his double-wide for him, whenever he lays a turd. Mostly, he doesn't know how to use our software, and thinks everything's a numbers issue. Hell, he thinks there's a bug in a program whenever he or a client forgets to specify a demographic target and the system can't generate numbers--even though the error message clearly states that you need to select a demographic!

And don't even get me started on the sales person who works out of her home in suburban St. Louis. She was just given additional sales responsibility beyond her region. She tries hard to understand, but she has a mind like a sieve, and doesn't write things down. She got promoted into her boss' position, when the other woman got assigned business development instead of just media sales. Nobody deserves the business development position more than the woman who got it, but it means her previous position is being filled by a semi-incompetent person.

What planet are these people living on? They'll envision a product called Schuyler X, sell it to a cleint, and come back saying you figure out how to do it. I sold it, and we'll look really bad if you can't deliver. I'm so fucking sick and tired of it. We get many more projects like this, and I'll quit. In the old days we used to have interdepartmental meetings to discuss the feasibility of a project before submitting a client proposal and contract. Now it's ass-backwards.

Okay, rant over. Have a good weekend, everyone.