HP Customer Service Update

No call from my case manager. Guess my issue wasn’t as “escalated” as promised.

I called tonight. Raveena(?) was incredibly incompetent, not taking my information correctly and making me repeat things over and over. Needless to say, English was not her primary language.

When she finally got it right, of course there was nothing she could do but give me the case manager’s number to call myself. I have no idea if I will get an English speaker when I make that call.

Oh, and when I asked if I could call tonight, she checked and said their working hours were 10AM to 7PM. So another night/day will go by without my laptop.

I have the strangest feeling that this will be an unfixable issue and they’ll have to replace my laptop for a second time.

Of course, my MacBook Pro from work has been crashing anywhere from once to seven times a day.

It’s like our crappy two-party political system. If you don’t want to vote Democrat or Republican, you’re pretty much screwed. And if you don’t want to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on a PC or Apple, you’re also up the creek without a paddle.

Argh. Oy. Meh.

Rant: Advertising Job Search (& Welcome WAS readers!)

One of the sites I visit daily is Why Advertising Sucks, a multi-writered blog that covers pop culture, has funny “Top 5″-type entries, and of course, poops on advertising.

Here’s a mini-rant, dedicated to the WAS peeps and their many other devoted readers:

(Disclaimer: I am blessed enough to be currently employed and NOT searching for a new position.)

A colleague of mine (never worked with or even met the guy in person, but he’s a fellow copywriter in the DF-Dub, funny/brilliant/creative/etc. and we “met” through online networking) who’s currently unemployed hit me up yesterday, asking if I knew anybody interested in a copywriter gig.

Now why was this guy – who’s been at several of the “major” shops in the area – not even considered for the job? Because he didn’t have enough experience with the certain industry/market in which the major new client did business.

So this writer who’s been putting words together professionally for the better part of a decade, a guy who comes highly recommended by former bosses and colleagues alike, and a highly intelligent human being, is told that he’s not qualified for a position.

This is a problem that runs rampant throughout advertising. “If you haven’t done it, you can’t do it” is the attitude of many hiring-decision-makers (HDMs, for our purposes) in our biz, which is incredibly stupid. Eminently qualified creatives with years of experience and high IQs can’t “learn” a new industry?

Here’s a quick lesson on some of the “niche” industries that these decision-makers are so picky about:

• Pharma = Don’t say it if you can’t back it up or have Legal back it up. Have disclaimers ready for everything.
• B2B = Give up now. Mediocrity reigns supreme. Pick up any trade magazine and you’ll see 90% crap. Just ask the client’s company president’s wife to throw something together. Either that, or use a big-ass product shot. They love that. “Ooh, show ‘em our new flibbertygibbet valve!”
• High-tech = Buzzwords, buzzwords, buzzwords. Robust. Synergistic. Leverage. Platform.

Final message to HDMs: Don’t eliminate candidates who don’t have the exact specifications you’re looking for, because frankly you’re eliminating new, fresh perspectives on the industry/market. If they can write or art direct or run an account or buy/plan media for other types of accounts, they can handle yours too.

Mini-Rant: Fashion criticism

Gigantic sunglasses = gigantic b!tch

(In general.)

I don’t know her, so I won’t say she is one. But Posh’s look is what I’m talking about:

Rant: Jackass advertising clients

Actual, word-for-word comments on a series of direct mail pieces from a client (not mine, luckily – but I’m helping out this week while my colleague is on vacation):

“I think we need to work on the first paragraph as well because I think we are forgetting they most likely have [service with a competitor so they most likely have [service] already.”

“The whole first paragraph I believe is really soft.”

“2nd heading has terrible English.”

“I think it is cute but [Boss] doesn’t like cute.”

“What if they just stop right there rather than opening.”

“Something like that. Not copywriting but just an idea.”

“Remove the Cali fornication image.”  [Californication, starring David Duchovny on Showtime]

“Again not copywriting but it just isn’t clear on what we are saying right now.”

“Maybe we say something like again just throwing it out there”

I wish I could tell you I made these up. But I didn’t.

Mini-rant: I dread this drive

About to leave work, now I will sit in slow-moving traffic on back roads.

This stinks.

Rant: Snow in Texas, part 2

This is ridiculous.

They’re calling for up to FIVE INCHES OF SNOW for much of the DFW area.

We moved here to get AWAY from the White Devil, as I like to call it.

And on Shannon’s birthday, no less.

They don’t even use salt down here to help with the roads (something about being unable to store it, because it’s rarely used).  So what do they spread?  SAND.  Which makes for a nice crackling sound as you drive over it, and puts a nice brown sheen across the bottom of your car.  But it doesn’t help much with traction.

Even if it did, the vast majority of bad drivers here–who can barely handle rain or ice–will undoubtedly careen into each other during this evening’s commute and tomorrow morning as well.

Ugh.  This sucks.  At least it’ll be back up to 70 degrees on Sunday.

Rant: Laptops at meetings

I don’t know if this is a trend, or if this now happens at most companies.  I do know that it’s annoying as h-e-double-hockey-sticks.  (We run a clean blog here at The BBB.)

I’m not sure I’ve even experienced it anyplace else, so maybe it’s exclusive to my agency.

Basically, people show up to a meeting and bring their laptop.  So while you sit there listening to somebody drone on, reading from the agenda or brief that’s sitting right there in front of you, while these laptop people get to answer e-mail or get work done or blog or just surf the Web.

To be fair, some of them are account executives who are taking notes on the meeting.  That is probably the only acceptable use.

For the others–it’s not fair, it’s not cool, and it’s not right.  Especially since I don’t know if I have “permission” to bring my work laptop with me.

Rant: Snow in Texas

Geez, I moved here to get away from snow.  And when you enjoy several 65-degree days in February, you think you’ve escaped.

And yet, once in a while, we get dusted down here.  And my fellow Texans, whose driving skills I have spoken of in a derogatory manner quite often, are no good on snow and/or ice.

But it’s “nice” to see that one of my favorite pet peeves is a universal one: people who don’t clean off their cars after a snowfall.  Of course, down here you don’t get the six-inch layers on the roof of your car–which people don’t clean off, then it slides off their car on the highway and comes flying at YOU.

Down here, we get like an inch-and-a-half, which is mostly ice.  And like clockwork, I’m moving down the Tollway and watching at least a dozen still-iced cars send chunks flying towards other drivers.

Oh well, at least it’ll be 58 degrees this afternoon and all of it will melt.