Dookies™ in the Pool

“I will be out sick on Wednesday 05/21/2008″. 

This was an actual automated response we received from our latest SKAE Learning email blast from one recipient.

The fact that it’s written in the future tense is what really makes this a great email.  Is this person psychic?  Their ability to foretell illness is simply astounding!  (Okay, I’ll admit that I’ve done it myself. I’ve known months ahead of time that I’d be ’sick’ on a particular day although I’ve never actually put it in writing for the anyone with my email address to see.)

Obviously this person may have gone home feeling ill on 05/20/2008.  Perhaps they were able to log in remotely and change the message on their auto attendant.  The Mets are in Atlanta and the Yankees have a night game today so we know that they weren’t at a game.  In truth, this really could be a legitimate illness.

The Dookie™ lies in that perception is everything.  A superior or irate customer on the receiving end of this automated response may not see the humor.  If they fail to give it much thought other than obviously (we hope) realizing that an error was made, our sick friend has a problem on their hands and some explaining to do when they return to work.

At the very least, what is most likely an honest error shows a lack of attention to detail on the part of the ’sender’.   This is a prime example of someone dropping a Dookie™ into their own Pool.  It’s somewhat embarrassing and most definitely preventable.  After having a chuckle, we can all learn from the misstakes mistakes of others.  My Advice: A little extra attention to detail if you’re really sick or learn to cover your tracks better if you’re really goofing off.

By the way **** *********, I hope you’re feeling much better tomorrow. 

Tags: Dookie People // 1 Comment »

Back in 1996, Nabisco reviewed their product portfolio and decided to eliminate approximately 400 products. One of the products that met its demise was the Crown Pilot cracker.

Most people might not care about a cracker being discontinued especially since it is a regional product. Mainers strongly disagreed. A woman named Donna Damon rallied the Crown Pilot faithful and launched a protest that made its way to The New York Times, Boston Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The St. Petersburg Times, Yankee Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Charles Osgood on CBS radio and many more media outlets.

Nabisco relented and with great fanfare shipped the crackers from Boston to Portland on a ferry, gave out boxes of the crackers and served chowda (chowder to everyone outside New England) to those in attendance.

Apparently Nabisco’s parent Kraft may be ready to take on the New Englanders once again. Sandra Oliver recently wrote an article in the Working Waterfront/Inter-Island News that has the locals ready to take action once again.

A food writer spoke with Ms. Oliver about how to make chowder. (I’d love the recipe if available) The food writer then called Nabisco. The person at Nabisco apparently asked the food writer not to mention the Crown Pilot Cracker because the company had no interest in promoting said cracker.

Of course the food writer relayed this news to Ms. Oliver and the alarm was sounded, rightly so I might ad.

What could possibly be going on here? Perhaps Kraft is once again reviewing their product portfolio and determining what to keep and what should go. One can only assume that at some point someone at Kraft/Nabisco would yell “Dookie in the Pool™” and remind the powers that be of the Great Cracker Controversy of 1996.  If they really want to kill this product, New Englanders will I’m sure, once again fight the battle. Could this possibly be another attempt at free publicity?

Quite frankly, if Kraft/Nabisco were to come out and publicly announced that there was no intention to pull this regional favorite, the company would garner publicity from those consumers who matter most–their New England customers and would also generate a great deal of goodwill amongst Pilot Cracker lovers. 

I’m quite interested to see how this plays out.  I’d expect to see an all out brawl from the folks in New England.  Kraft/Nabisco certainly has a tremendous amount of financial and PR clout but should they decide to kill the cracker, I’d put my money on our neighbors in New England.

Tags: Dookie Companies // 1 Comment »

I’ve worked at a number of companies where it seemed as if the IT department ran the entire show.  The tail wags the dog at these companies and nobody seems to know why nor does anyone ever stand up and yell “Dookie in the Pool™”.  Judging from the emails I get, this must be a recurring theme at a lot of companies.  One writer tells of working at a company with an N-O department.  Any and all IT requests however trivial, were initially met with an N-O.

In January of this year a certain company had moved locations.  All new furniture, computers, telephones etc.  Some of the software systems were upgraded as well.   In mid-March, one of the sales managers could no longer access the telephone accounting system software; the system responsible for logging inbound and outbound telephone calls, talk time etc. 

One would assume that a simple call to IT would fix the problem as the error message indicated a server connection issue.  The “IT guy” who works out of a different location (quite possibly for personal safety reasons), blamed the issue on the software vendor and refused to even log in remotely to see first hand what the issue was. 

What’s a sales manager to do?  Call the software vendor about an internal server connectivity problem of course!  The software vendor was very supportive (pun intended).  More than a week later after a great deal of troubleshooting, the issue was still not resolved. 

Fortunately the “IT guy” shows up in the office and gets conned into stopping by the sales managers’ office.  Guess what?  He can’t log into the application either and gets the exact same error message a full two weeks later!

The software vendor is called yet again.  This time they get software engineers involved on conference calls, they provide what I’m quite sure was great advice given the unknown nature of the problem; try this, try that and try everything under the sun.  Still, nobody could access the application.

 In early April, in the midst of one of these support phone calls, someone at the software company (probably an underpaid smart person that most people don’t normally listen too) yells “Dookie in the Pool™” (not exactly but close enough)  ”Wait a minute, your CFO cancelled the service with us on March 14th”.

A copy of the letter was faxed over and sure enough the CFO had indeed cancelled the service on March 14th, agreeing to pay the current invoice as well as the final invoice.

Of course nobody at this company bothered to check to see if the new software application had been installed and was up and running before they cancelled the contract on the old application and set into motion hours upon hours of wasted time and effort.

I hope that the final invoice is a real doozie in order to compensate for a real Dookie™. 

Tags: Dookie Companies // Add Comment »

Sometimes people tend to take themselves just a wee bit too seriously. For example, lets take a look at an actual letter that was received at a very well respected New York based company from an irate gentleman located somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line:

Gentlemen,

I have received my last insult from your organization.

The next letter will come from my attorney.  This may be amusing to you but it is very embarrassing and quite disturbing to continue to receive mail addressed to #### F*ck.  My secretary has called on several occasions and asked you to re-address this letter.  (The mailer in question not a letter it was actually a catalog which was returned with this nastygram attached. The address on the nastygram was misspelled as well but somehow made it to the correct address.  Perhaps someone at his company F**ked this up–Ed)

The irony is that ##### ######## Corp. promotes itself as a ########## ####### with expertise in ######### Communication and ##### #########.  How can you send mail out like this and promote yourselves as ######## in ######### and Tact?  What a joke!

Let me put it very bluntly.  Keep sending this profanity and be prepared to defend yourself legally. (People would pay good money to see this case in a courtroom.  Could Judge Judy Pay-Per-View be on the horizon?–Ed)

Seriously and Sincerely,

#### *. F**k (Anonymity protected–Ed)

Not 

#### *. F*ck! 

It turns out that this well-respected company had purchased a mailing list based on stringent demographic criteria.  I have been assured that profanity as a part of the last name was not one of the criteria.  When informed of this irate letter, the company in question took the following actions:

1. The Director of Sales called immediately to apologize.  Mr. F**k Not F*ck refused to take the call so the Director of Sales left a message with his secretary stating that the matter was being looked into and that a follow up call would be made later that day.

2. The Marketing Manager discovered from the source code on the returned catalog that the name & address had indeed come from a rented mailing list.  The name and address were immediately removed from the list and the list broker notified. 

3. The Director of Sales followed up later that morning.  Once again Mr. F**k Not F*ck refused to take the call.  The Director of Sales explained the situation to Mr. F**k Not F*ck’s secretary, stated that the issue had been rectified, the list broker notified, apologized once again and made a very generous offer to Mr. F**k Not F*ck.  To date, Mr. F**k Not F*ck has not called back to take advantage of the company’s offer.

Does this qualify as a Dookie™ in the Pool? Sure it does–a small manageable Dookie™ for the company in question and a much larger Dookie™ for Mr. F**k Not F*ck.

Had Mr. F**k Not F*ck understood that people make honest mistakes and had the gumption to call himself, he could have had a very good time with the people answering the phone at the company in question and a come away with a very good story to tell.  Imagine the possibilities:  Hello this is Mr. F**k Not F*ck.  I’d like to speak to the CEO/VP of Marketing/VP of Sales etc. immediately!  I’m sure you can take it from there.  Instead, this guy gets the business twice; Once with his name incorrectly spelled on the catalog and again here on the Internet.

What more could the company have done?  Not much really.  We can’t plan for every possible scenario.   Sometimes a Dookie™ slips into the Pool unnoticed and all you can do is shrug your shoulders, make sure that it doesn’t happen again and admit that you F*cked Not F**ked up.

Tags: Dookie People // Add Comment »

Dookies in the Pool takes a look at the lighter side of some of the really dumb things that go on and the dumb people who contribute to the corporate cesspool in corporate America. 

A Dookie, quite simply is a turd, a.k.a. excrement, poop, crap, doo-doo etc.

A Dookie in the Pool is a toxic dookie (see definition above) that is fouling up a business, company, organization, team, department, division etc. etc.

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Tags: Uncategorized // Add Comment »