Why they play annoying, aggressive, repetitive music while you’re on hold to talk to a human at a large corporation, ten minutes into this latest wait, finally makes sense to me.  If annoying and aggressive enough, many of the callers will give up and go to the website where a human will not have to be paid to deal with a customer.  Logical, really, and good for the bottom line, if also frustrating for the customer.

In the old days the customer was always right– nowadays we are presumed to be powerless assholes, thanked for continuing to hold and told by cheerful robots that our business is very, very important to them.

As I continue to hold I am thinking about compiling a short employee handbook, perhaps an employee e-book.  This handbook would be illustrated by children’s drawings, cut-outs and claymation– if an e-book it could be animated.  Colors, flavors and sounds of creative play could be incorporated as we describe the philosophy of the organization: a place for children to make and share discoveries, creative and technical, supported by adults who listen carefully and encouragingly to their ideas.  It would outline and explain the three rules the adult must impart:  have fun, work together, be quiet and listen when asked to listen.

“Have fun” sounds simple for kids unleashed in a room full of art supplies, but it incorporates another key aspect: you can’t have fun if people are bothering or excluding you.  Which leads to rule two: work together, and its unspoken side rule– if you don’t want to work with someone, don’t bother them.   Without rule three it all falls apart– there are times when kids get out of control and have to simply be quiet and listen for a moment.  Sometimes a particularly out of control kid needs to be made an example of, given an immediate time out until the next time.

I will be asked: what are your credentials for writing an employee handbook?  Fortunately for me, that is not a question I will have to answer.

This world is a place of zooming competition where either we leverage, revamp, brand, rebrand and strategically partner or, my friends, we disappear, unable to compete with outfits who can do all these things, who never stop doing these things.  Outfits to whom a $20,000,000 federal grant is nothing more than a good start.  I spoke to a woman from an organization that got a $20,000,000 federal grant recently, and she was not snoozing as she generously gave me more than a half hour of her busy day.  Sympathetic sounding, and making a series of helpful-sounding suggestions, as well as a small promise she hasn’t yet kept a week later, I’m sure she wondered by the end how someone as ignorant of the language of marketing and sales could think total candor and frankness might be called for in a business conversation.  She’d thought she was getting a call from a man representing an innovative organization hers could partner with.

Turns out the guy was drowning, desperate, working alone from the Book Depository window, madly thinking, out of the blue, of an illustrated employee handbook he might one day write and finally turning dispiritedly away from a menu of distasteful and so far futile tasks he’d set himself for the day.  But not before he reminded callers that their business is very, very important to him and that he appreciated their patience as they continue to hold.

Impossible stops you in your tracks.  It is impossible, the end.   Cannot be done for a very good reason: it is impossible. Then someone perseveres, perseveres and does the impossible and we say: “OK, for them, it wasn’t impossible, then.”  And when other people do the same thing we are forced to agree– “it wasn’t really impossible, it was just very improbable.”   Until, of course, the first person proved that improbable is a huge improvement, in terms of facing a difficult challenge, over impossible.  

I raised the ire of several zombies not long ago by holding up two signs.  The first one read: there are a thousand reasons the thing won’t work.   The second:  All we need is the one reason it will.  From their reactions, I could just as well have held up first the severed ear of one of their children, then the other ear, still attached to the screaming head.

These images, of course, are disturbing, disgusting, gratuitous.  They do nothing to advance the point I’m trying to make except to underscore how easily disgusting, sick images pop into my mind.  Don’t worry, I’ve already had to apologize to these offended critics for the insult of telling them to try to keep their comments creative and helpful rather than reflexively critical of efforts already underway, moreover, efforts, in not even the tiniest part, their own.

Is it impossible that I will create a compelling ad for the program I need to pitch, with the smoothness of Ron Popeil selling a thousand Veg-O-Matics?  Not at all.   I can write copy with the most depraved of them, look:

In little over a year the innovative child-run animation workshop has taken root with children in five different settings. It has succeeded in turning room after room into a beehive of creativity resulting in dozens of short student-produced animations on youTube.  Kids as young as five, entering the room where seven and eight year-olds were creating animation, hopped right into the pond like excited ducklings.  The secret is a hands-on workshop where simplified technology is employed, by the children themselves, to quickly make their hand-made ideas come to life.  And the beautiful thing– when roasted on the Showtime rotisserie for a very short time at the proper heat, these ducklings are incredibly delicious.

Not only delicious, but amazingly nutritious.  And for a limited time you can take advantage of this internet special to receive a succulent portion of this health-restoring meat shipped directly to your dining room or Lazy-Boy.

And, if you marketize this program now, we will throw in the human head of your choice, severed, on the neck or including the bound and gagged person.   You won’t want to miss this special offer.   Did we say one head?  Ha, you know, since Christmas is coming, and Hanukkah is already here, we’ll throw in as many heads as you can carry (sorry, severed heads only).  

Is this a great country, or what?!!!