Corporate America is all about making money and sucking up to the right people. You bark up the right tree, you get promotions and raises. You don’t, you are left with nothing. I was telling AM that maybe we should move to Europe. But the Brits are stuck up, the French don’t get me started. I like Italy, or maybe Germany, or Switzerland – way less stuck up and work-obsessed than Americans, not that Indians are less stuck up but still. Maybe London is different from the rest of Britain, kind of like how NY is different from the rest of US.
Parents teach you to be nice to people as a kid, and you think — let me be nice, people will like me and I will like people, and we all will get along. Then you learn that your parents were wrong, completely wrong. These days I come across negative people, and I tell myself, its just a job, move on. Don’t get so caught up and be affected by these things.
I spoke to an agency about working with them on a program, and asked him for info. The guy was an ass and was so rude and unprofessional. I ask him, are you interested? He says no go to another agency. The conversation goes nowhere, so I am like okay if you don’t want to work with us we don’t want to work with you. It ends there. The guy says he is the owner. I am not sure if he is bluffing, so I call his receptionist who gave me his number in the first place and ask her if he is the only guy to deal with. She says yes. I am like in recession, how come you have big companies working with you, when the guy has such a negative attitude? I will ask his biggest client whom I know personally whether he deals like this with them. Anyway, the guy calls me back and is now more subdued and justifies his ass-like behavior.
It doesn’t end there. He calls the client I mentioned, and tells him that I called him asking for private info about their campaign. What a fucking slime-ball. My contact emailed me telling me about this. I was not going to say much, but I told him that the guy was rude and unprofessional with us, and my colleague and I were surprised by his behavior. And I did not ask for any private info. I will never work with that slime-ball in future. How does the guy run his business like this? He probably thinks my company is not that big. Well, go read the numbers.
Another vendor I work with backtracked on our verbal agreement. And kept backtracking. The vendor is all talk and no walk, completely fake, and their numbers are unbelievable. I am so so so glad that we did not end up paying a fat set-up fee that they demanded, and ended up having a different kind of an agreement. They sold this big concept to us, we had some results last year, went ahead with the plan, and now we have all sorts of problems with their interface. And their backtracking — I hate it when people go back on their word. So unprofessional. After back and forth nothing moved forward. I don’t see why I should have to go to them when they are playing hard-ball. I expect certain professionalism and when vendors don’t show that, its like WTF. Anyway, I am going to move on from this. We have spent enough calls, emails, time, and energy on trying to make it work. In any case I am sick and tired of their hard-ball attitude when they have no goods to show for it.
Who knew working with vendors required constant monitoring? But I like being on the client side way better. Its more challenging and you are in more control.
I have a new team in one agency. The team is very opinionated, but I like that. We disagree, but I prefer a team that is opinionated because at least they have an opinion. They have some logic behind it. The last thing I want is a “yes-vendor”.