Dookies™ in the Pool

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 by admin
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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 by admin
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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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