Wild Goose Chase

I believe that I have previously shared with my 4 readers that I work in technology. To be specific, I am an account executive representing Northeastern Ohio mainly in the educational market. The products that I work with are LAN/WAN, wireless, IP Telephony, Security, Video Streaming, Videoconferencing and IP Surveillance plus a few more.

Now the largest vendor that I partner with is a little company that goes by the name of Cisco Systems. Some of you may have heard of it. If not, please don't get it confused with SYSCO the food services supplier, the tech Cisco DOES NOT think that is funny. Fortunately, I do and when I used to be chief cook and bottle washer of another company and had to deal with service calls, I took every opportunity to spell Cisco like the other SYSCO just to screw with the weirdo tech guys that I had to deal with from Uzbekistan or wherever the fuck tech support is located these days. Those guys are crazy literal and would repeatedly try to relay to me in e-mails that I was spelling Cisco incorrectly which of course I found hysterical.

So my new company (I have been there about seven months now) is tits. Seriously. I only do one thing at this company and I love it. The only serious downside is that Cisco had given us some marketing dollars to use and someone with more power than I decided to use those dollar for a Cisco leads program. Let's rap about that shit for a minute. To break it down, some drone is making cold calls to a bunch of different places in Ohio, sending out postcards IN MY NAME and then prequalifying the leads. Umm, how about no!! Since I am low bitch on the totem pole for now, I am the one who has to follow up on all of this hogshit. Cisco is obviously overpaying their postcard sender outers as I have had over a dozen "return to sender" back to me. They (Cisco) have also conspired with my sales administrator to drive me completely insane by scheduling appointments for me. Again, NO!! And are these meetings with educational or government customers? Why no they are not. These meetings are scheduled with SMB (small/medium businesses) customers whose "IT" person doesn't know a router from a server.

That leads me to the subject of today's post: Wild Goose Chase. That is what I was sent on today. The call that had been set for me was with some filter producing company out west. And by out west I mean a two hour drive through the hillbilly backwoods of Ohio. And by hillbilly backwoods I mean a Deliverance-like setting without all of the fun pig squealing. Normally I love map quest, but today's little excursion has made me rethink that GPS purchase. What was supposed to take me two hours took me closer to three and I NEVER GET LOST!!! The directions that I got from map quest had roads mislabeled and didn't take into account the fixin' up of some of the country roads - with, I think, a mixture of crystal meth and cow shit that was heated up and used to fill the glacial sized potholes littering the countryside.

By the time I got to my meeting, I was already cranky and frazzled. I had to stop at a garage in Arcadia, Ohio to ask for assistance (those guys were really nice - holler!), turn around 12 1/2 times, stop at a gas station, or a please walk in barefoot carrying a screaming baby with a ciggy hanging from your lip to buy a deuce depot, before I could get to where I needed to go. Once there, it took me all of 30 seconds of conversation with the point person to come to the following confusions (No not conclusions - I meant confusions):
1. If you ever want to get a quick high, walk into any part of a filter factory
2. The person who is in charge of IT at this place could only have been put in that position as a stereotype - she is Asian but knew dick about most of the protocols we were discussing
3. All of the lead developers hired by Cisco need to be shit canned.
4. No opportunity here
5. I hate dealing with SMB customers - they are a way different breed than gov/ed. Give me politics and backbiting and drama any day over this shit.

Getting home was a little easier as I had already made all of the mistakes I could possibly make on the way there. First thing tomorrow, me and some upper management need to have a little talk on what the best use of my time is and what the meaning of waste of time is. It's time to flip the Bitch Switch and show these folks my true colors. After all, I made it past the ninety-day and six month marks with flying colors and it's my turn to have an opinion damn it.

Love,
ADW