Conspiracy Theories on the Home Team

This summer, when I was at a summer fair and approached a competing company’s booth, I sort of expected the cold shoulder.

Well, actually I didn’t expect it – that’s what I got. I wasn’t spying or looking to cause trouble, I just wanted to say ‘hi’ and see how they found the fair.

But the cold shoulder is what I got – they hushed up real quick once I opened my mouth.

It is one thing to get the cold shoulder from a competitor, it is quite another to get it from a co-worker where you work.

Supposedly we all work on the same team at work. Usually the goal of any employee is to help out his or her fellow employee – you’re all working to keep the company competitive, profitable and enjoyable for you and your colleagues.

So when I approached someone in marketing for information about a program I’m working on for another project, it surprised me at how fast the doors of information were suddenly thrust closed in my face.

Marketing again!

Another horror story from the depths of hell at my office, more commonly referred to as the marketing team.

I should preface this story of woe with a caveat – I was talking with a co-worker in the compliance department and she needed the same information that I needed. I mentioned that to the marketing person I was talking with, and that’s when she suddenly went brain dead about all that I needed to know.

Usually when you mention anything to do with compliance and someone has a mental crash, you just know they are up to no good.

Marketing has a nasty habit of no good deeds. They have over-spent their budget not once, but twice in a row. They leave everything to the utmost last minute. And despite all the money they spend, and all the money the marketing executives make, they don’t feel confident in their own knowledge and wisdom in their area. So they continue to over-spend their budget hiring the largest and most expensive advertising agencies in the free world to do the job which they should be doing themselves.

PHEW!

Sorry – I vented – but I feel slightly better now. I’d feel even better if the marketing team was fired and replaced with a competent, friendly bunch of people that actually knew what they were supposed to know and act on that knowledge.

In a perfect world perhaps, but not mine.

Anyway – back to the tale of marketing misfits and how they snubbed me and my colleagues.

I asked for the most basic, primitive even, of information – exactly the same types of information we give to our sales force. I’m designing training materials for the sales force on these initiatives of marketing.

The marketing person told me to go talk to the marketing director for that – knowing full well that the marketing director never provides anyone with anything. We’re not sure if it is because she doesn’t know where it is, or if she is covering up another fudged budget, which will cause our poor Chief Financial Officer to go into convulsions of rage, and despair.

See, for some strange bizarre reason, as publicly incompetent as our marketing team is to everyone else in the company, the executives have not taken any action to rectify the problem.

We had one person who’d been with the company 17-years just get up and leave, because she couldn’t stand working in the marketing collective.

I hear grumblings from other people that have to deal with them about their impending departure too. And those that don’t have to work with them, just complain about them and shake their heads in disgust.

Must be a sweet deal they have concocted in marketing – over-spend, don’t do any real work for yourself, never work with anyone not in marketing, piss off the entire company, but still – somehow – keep your job.

I wish the marketing misfits went to work for the competition. At least then, when they snubbed me, it would make sense. But to snub someone at the very same company – oh yeah – they are up to no good.

Right.

That’s it – that’s why they don’t have any information to provide. They don’t want to get caught doing no good.

But wait a second – they do nothing good all the time (in fact always) yet they still have jobs. So why are they suddenly afraid to get caught?

Stay posted – maybe I’ll be able to do the dance of joy on the FORMER marketing manager’s desk. . .