The Best of February - Horror Stories From Advertising

Another happy edition of Horror Stories!

Panic Attack - A woman who on most days I love dearly. She is dedicated, hard-working, and usually friendly. On her shipping days, however, it becomes a different story. She flies around the building like her hair is on fire, barking orders at various people, and if the stress gets to be too much she vanishes, not to be seen until the end of the day as she prepares to go home. Most recently, RJ & I were preparing a shipment ahead of schedule because I was to be out of the office on the day of the shipment. Panic Attack knew the plan for me to be out and said almost everything was finished anyways, so I shouldn't worry. I was enjoying a day of leisure when RJ calls me around 5:50 sounding very stressed out, "I have no cover pages! I can't finish the shipment without cover pages!" "Calm down, where's Panic Attack?" "I don't know, but it's almost 6:00 and if I don't have them in the next 5 minutes the shipment can't go! What should I do?" "Well, just wait until 6:30 when our shipment gets picked up and if you still don't have cover pages just go home and I'll deal with the shipment next week." "OK. Got it. I'll just wait until 6:30." About 15 minutes later I get another phone call from RJ... "She says she'll have the cover pages tonight, but late. She wants me to take the shipment and turn it in on Saturday!" "No, that's not fair to you. If she wants them to go she can take them." "I can't tell her that! She told me not to tell anyone! She'll get so mad at me if I say anything. Oh, God, you can't tell her I called you. She's so mad right now!" "It's not fair to you, just transfer me and I'll talk to her." "No, no. I'm short on my hours this week, I'll do it, I just wish she had told me sooner." Come to find out Panic Attack had been in meetings all day with her manager who was lecturing her on how she needs to be more prepared for her shipments... but she felt she couldn't interrupt him to tell him she wasn't finished with her current shipment. So she delayed everything and simply expected RJ to finish things up for her on her day off. She finished her cover pages at 8:00 and gave them to RJ, but didn't help with preparing the paperwork at all... she ran about the building on her phone until 8:30 and then went home. At least RJ got her hours up to 40 for the week.

The Fish - Don't know what else to call her really... she drinks like one for certain. She gets to go on a lot of travel for the company, and always comes back saying things like, "I was so fucking hammered." or "I drank more than all the clients combined!" like she is displaying a badge of honor. Now I really have no problems with people drinking under any circumstances as long as they don't embarass themselves professionally. At the Christmas party, The Fish went up to her manager and said, "If you ever put me on (omitted) account I will quit so fast. I will never work on that. I will leave that day if you ever even try to put me on." Her manager responded with something incoherent, and I don't think the conversation was even remembered by either party involved, only those nearby who weren't drunk. Well, come to find out that on her last trip she billed the company for all of her drinks, whether or not she was with clients... and it was well over 8 drinks in just one night (our company limit is one reimbursed per day when on travel). Her opinion on the matter is that if you're away from home on a company trip, everything should be billed to the company if you are behaving as you would at home.

Hmmm... I will keep that in my for my next company trip. I tend to shop a lot whether I'm at home or on travel, the company should probably be paying for my spending habits.

Si Senor

I keep in close touch with my faceting instructor. He is a funny guy, former high school teacher, married to an amazing woman, and has a dynamic family. Friends like Ron & Donna are few & far between - - and I believe that your life is enriched by the people you surround yourself with. Why be surrounded by tainted souls when you can be surrounded by exemplary ones?

The last time Ron & Donna went out to breakfast with my husband & I, Ron told a story that makes me giggle every time I think about it... A few years back he & his wife traveled with their kids and grandkids to Carlsbad Caverns. Everyone wanted to do the camping thing instead of the hotel thing so they could roast marshmallows and cook over an open fire. Part of the purpose their trip was to take tours they had never taken, and other part was to watch the bat flights.

On their second night at the campground, Ron's two sons decided to ask one of the campground attendants if he knew when the bat flights were. They marched off to talk to the man they had seen cleaning up another campsite earlier in the day. It became after trying to speak to the man that he wouldn't be able to help them - - he didn't speak a word of English and they didn't speak a word of Spanish. Frustrated, they went back to camp and told the family they would need to speak to a ranger the following day to get the details.

Ron, however, was ready to come to the rescue for he had studied Spanish when he was in high school & college and was confident he would have an answer quickly. Ron marched off to speak to the attendant...

"¿Donde son los pequenos pollos de la noche?"

The man looked confused.

"¿Donde son los pequenos pollos de la noche?"

The man burst out laughing... and was unable to reply due to being doubled over with laughter.

Ron then realized he had just asked, "Where are the little chickens of the night?"

Best Of January - Horror Stories From Advertising

By request, I am bringing you the Best Of January... I will not use anyone's real name in my site for fear of getting fired if anyone from work were to find my site and actually read it... No one can prove anything, nobody saw me do it, I know nothing.

I work in a very busy department in an Advertising agency - - The Shipping Department! Save all the glory you see in movies like "What Women Want", Advertising is really not glamourous, ever. Oh yeah, I have an entire department to myself (save the gal who sits across the table from me who I affectionately call RJ), we got to paint the department in all the colors we wanted, and throughout a day there are relatively few interruptions. That's where the "glamour" ends. RJ and I ship about 7,000 packages out in a year. We FTP nearly 8,000 newspaper ads in a year. We e-mail over 10,000 MP3s in a year. Every day is an adventure full of PILES of paperwork, which we usually receive late in the day.

What I love about shipping is that when a day is over and I go home, the load of paperwork has gone out the door and my table is clear, I can just leave work behind me. KK, onto my top 2 stories from January!!!

Fireball - - a little ball of anger wrapped into a relatively friendly-looking exterior. This person is not friendly (unless she needs to suck your life-force and have you stay late to help her), and she has a vocabulary that makes most Hell's Angels blush. She's angry. All the time. At a meeting in early January it was my responsibility to announce to the building postage rates were changing, and to send out a mass e-mail, and distribute a written memo to all. I gladly announced the event saying our meter was receiving the update on a Friday. Fireball burst out to the entire room "YOU'RE WRONG!!!." Everyone appeared startled and confused. Fireball continues on "I BOUGHT MY STAMPS THIS WEEKEND AND THE RATES DON'T CHANGE UNTIL SUNDAY!!!" I was pretty much flabbergasted... what do you say to an outburst like that? I responed with "Our machine receives the update this Friday but..." "DID YOU NOT HEAR ME? I JUST TOLD YOU YOU'RE WRONG! POSTAGE RATES CHANGE ON SUNDAY!!!" I nodded my head and said "I have sent a memo to everyone with the full details," and let it go at that. My memo was sent just before the meeting, and read as follows:

Everyone please mark your calendars!!!

Our US Mail NeoPost scale will be having a rate update installed on our postage machine on January 6th.

IF YOU HAVE PACKAGES GOING OUT FRIDAY, JANUARY 6th, DO NOT USE THE RATES ON THE SCALE BECAUSE THEY GO INTO EFFECT OVER THE WEEKEND!!! Our machine is receiveing the update on the 6th, so please ask us to calculate your shipping rate on Friday if you have anything outbound.

This week (through January 7th) the shipping rate remains $0.37 for letters, and will change to $0.39 on Sunday, January 8th. We can print $0.02 stamps for those of you who need them in the coming weeks.

Please remember when writing a check, it must be for the EXACT amount only - - we can, however, make change for most cash transactions. Feel free to call if you have any questions!

Yay! I win! On to story numero 2.

The Boss - - she enjoys reinventing the wheel because of her power to fire people, and with her Masters Degree which gets brought up in nearly every conversation, why should anyone with an inferior education experience question anything? WHY? The Boss has decided that in my vast knowledge and systematic way of doing things for over a year, my system is horribly flawed because of one phone call one person received because of an office conversation that happened at a station across the country in AUGUST. Let's change a system that works - - a time-saving system that we can train people on and share company-wide. It's a great plan! The Boss says to me "You like roleplaying, that swords and vamipres game, right? Let's roleplay a conversation. Here's a phone call - RingRing." I can only glare. That swords and vampires game? Where'd that come from? Does The Boss want to be stabbed??? I thoughtfully play with the pen I'm holding... "C'mon - RingRing. Roleplay with me - RingRing." I want to scream. The Boss has gone bonkers and I'm going to get 25 to life for a headline that will read "Boss Brutally Murdered with Bic Pen". She finally gives up and says, "Just get all your contact information into a useable format (what does that mean?) and get it to everyone upstairs right away! Don't sit on it!" Um, I think my average turn-around time on stupid requests of 24-hours is pretty good, but hey. I get the document into a paper format, the kind people can take home, look at over lunch, correct while they are downloading their graphs, whenever. I go upstairs with the pages to hand out (an hour after the conversation). The Boss grabs the pages from me and says "What the hell is this?" "The document you asked for." "I want an e-mail, are you having a slow day? This needs to be in an EEEEE-MMMMAAAAIIIILLL." "Fine." I walk out, proceed to my department. RJ sees me come in and upon noticing the expression on my face immediately asks "Are you OK?" I throw the papers on the floor - - which for me is extreme. "It needs to be in EEEEE-MMMMAAAAIIIILLL!" RJ looks, frightened... but then (to save her own skin from my murderous Bic-pen stabbing rage) lightens up the situation by giggling and jumping up and down on the papers strewn all over the floor. I join in... and then waste away the rest of the afternoon doing other people's stupid projects. The EEEEE-MMMMAAAAIIIILLL was sent just before I went home, exactly in the "useable" format The Boss wanted.

Fat Bitch Returns

I thought she was gone. I prayed she was gone. I came home tonight to the fat bitch waddling in and out of her house with the smallest of items from her moving trailer. Her stick-figure husband has returned from Germany, so she decided they could move back here. Damn, damn, damn.

I think the only thing that made me happy was that her stupid kid was eating dog turds (from her damn dogs) he found on my lawn.