555-1212

So much for Dave's retirement last week. His deal was that we get seven hours out of him every other week for the next three months. Our head of programming has already used seven of his hours on conference calls regarding our P&G client yesterday and today alone. We're only halfway through the first week of his retirement. We've already used his hours for next week.

At the end of our conference call this morning that included Programmer-Head, four of his loyal programmers, two QA people, Retired-Guy, and me, Programmer-Head went around asking for everyone's phone numbers, but mine and one of the programmers, so he could call us at all hours of the evening after his flight landed in Cincinnati. He said he didn't think he needed mine. I was crushed, and told him that I was feeling really neglected that he wanted Retired-Guy's number but not mine. He said I could give it to him if I wished, so I volunteered "555-1212," which made everyone laugh.

I have no idea which three people's jobs I've been performing lately, but I know none of them is mine. My statistical analyst has become a de facto programmer. My statistical modeler has become a data services code creator--for syndicated databases the Data Services loads anyway--because they aren't in the habit of creating radio and tv daypart codes for more than a couple of dayparts. This is not what my staff was hired to do. Then clients who actually are paying my department to do work for them start wanting status reports on their work, which we can't even get around to doing, because we're wasting all our time on stuff that others can do which doesn't require our expertise.

Sales-Bitch demanded that my assistant create the missing ones by hand. Data Services uses a utility program to automatically generate these codes--we don't have that utility program, so we have to do it by hand. Data Services won't create them unless someone sits down with their department head about their doing it for them, at which point the discussion will turn to compensation for all their extra labor.

Nobody's demanding these media codes except sales for sales pitch presentations, and our company's not getting compensated for them by any client, as is normally the case. Sales used to go to Data services to get cost quotes on behalf of clients wanting media codes created. Now they come to Advanced Analytics and demand that we just do it for them for no compensation whatsoever--easily ten times as many of them at Data Services routinely produces with each database load.

I'm bringing up this issue with our CEO at tomorrow morning's meeting. Now that my boss has quit, the powers that be think it's a free-for-all to make demands of us that are a very poor use of our time and skills. Just because I know how to ice skate doesn't mean I can do it without a pair of ice skates.

Problem is, we've got one particularly expensive software product that Sales is pushing really hard, but they're selling it as a 12-string guitar. The problem is, it's a one string banjo. They don't really understand that it can't do what they think it can, and by and large aren't interested in even understanding what it can and can't do, let alone why. Then they tell us to figure out how to make it do what they want. We didn't design the software, nor did we program it. Part of this goes back to my former boss who threw together really quick and dirty presentations from smoke and mirrors, essentially making up numbers for purposes of the Powerpoint deck, and Sales-Bitch thought all that stuff was for real.

We used to have interdepartmental meetings, where some of these details were discussed so those who needed to be involved were aware of the issues. These meetings don't happen anymore. The upshot is that intradepartmental communication is virtually non-existant unless I scream until I'm hoarse--"Look, Data Services needs to be in this discussion!" "Why?" "Because they load the data, and they have to account for their labor costs."

Then I got a real lulu of a "bug report" today from a client service rep of ours in Chicago. Actually, it was a produce enhancement she was requesting. We have a product that spits back cinema attendance/ad viewers data by movie theater advertising company. Some of you may have seen advertising in a movie theater and seen a tag stating that a company called Screenvision or NCN/Regal put together the advertising/upcoming movie trailers loop. The client service person wanted that advertising broken out by television network. Um--this advertising is not on television. It airs on movie screens before the movie begins. Why would you want to know whether it airs on CBS, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB, UPN, or whatever? It doesn't, period. It airs on the big screen, not the small screen. None of the tv networks have a deal with movie theater chains like Loews or Clearview to air network tv advertising there. It's not their line of business! People, get a grip! Hollywood dreaming, indeed.