Dateline: 2003-04. After my 7-year stint (yet to write that one) I burned out on building & managing my team of misfits. Tired of explaining the promise of the internet. Wanted to go to a purist market research type firm that had good tech and found one nearby. Applied, interviewed a couple of times, got hired. As a utility player, doing everything from survey programming to writing proposals to onsite training for our custom software to emptying the dishwasher. 10 employees.
The firm offered online paid surveys via a 'panel' of opt-in people. They agreed to take the surveys for fabulous cash & prizes (actually next to no incentive but actually (actually: bots) still take the surveys, to this day. The decisions these F500 companies make re commercials, branding, pricing? The data comes from bots, or people willing to take 20-minute surveys for $1, all day long. For real. They exist. Try to imagine the calliope of darkness of sorrow their lives are. Actually, I don't have to imagine because I talked to some of them. Let's focus.
I ended up working these clients, & often travelling to conduct the training sesh's: Gateway Computers (remember them?) in San Diego, T. Rowe Price in Baltimore, J & J in Princeton, NJ & Mpls, & Coty Cosmetics in Arkansas (jelly?) near the Walmart HQ. Various other onsite pitches, Rayovac (I think) battery in Madison, WI for some reason. Stop me when this gets too exciting.
I got all the non-Best Buy accounts. BBY was the biggest client, the anchor client, as it were. I went there a few times, a big team there was using the software. In fact, one memorable visit was my arranging for live online focus groups, being projected on a big screen in a big room. I was on point. They trusted me to do that solo, just me & at least 10 of them. Fortunately, there were no glitches & they ran smoothly. That was a good day. Lotsa prep work to pull off. Recruiting participants, hiring the moderator, ensure everyone had stable connections, reminders, incentives, payouts, etc. My handler there was a rather striking Nigerian woman I became chummy with, platonically. She & I saw some fancy play at the fancy Guthrie theater, she invited me. A Christmas Carol it was. That was nice of her. Mayhap she liked me? Let's focus.
Several years earlier I taught software classes for 6 or so months. Ergo, was tip top when leading training sesh there & throughout my career. That came in handy as I was all over the place. West coast, east coast, & a memorable couple days in Arkansas where Walmart HQ is. Small airport, arrived at night, got a rental, drove through farmland in pitch black, thinking for sure I was lost. But no, that's the route to Bentonville, where all the lucky(?) agencies nurshing that big money trough have to go. Lotsa fancy hotels & restaurants in middle of nowhere. Seriously, a 'Walmart town.' Gotta have good stuff to lure execs & doctors there, non? I was there for our client Coty Cosmetics. Nice folks; went smooth. Gave me visibility into their sales spreadsheets. 'Moving the needle' re sales at Walmart led to big bucks. Even a couple of percentage points. Like, major big bucks. Nice gig if you can get it. Let's focus.
Went to Baltimore several times for T. Rowe Price. These were pre smartphones times. Ergo printing out instructions at the rental place and hoping like heck you don't miss a turn. Same as Princeton, NJ. Or Poway, CA (san diego burbs). You tech kids today can't imagine the anxiety that went into those drives. One eye on road one eye on piece of paper. Better than pulling over to read an actual map though, like further back in the day. Don't know how them sales folks navigated. Like animals I reckon.
My Baltimore client was the groovy guy Eric. Got along splendid as he dug my sense of humor. Years later he would still quote me & say he quoted me to others at his next gig. We went to a ballgame at Camden Yards. Also, the dreariest strip club ever (his idea I can't stand them). Imagine sitting at a bar & naked women on hands & knees are slowly circling around it. Give them a few bucks and they stop their crawling, sit & spread their legs right in front of you. It was horrifying. And unsanitary. Germs! Yuk. Wish I could unsee that. Sorry Baltimore.
Meanwhile, back at the office, I generally dug the collection of misfits. Mainly I dug the impressive homemade software platform we licensed out. It was years ahead of its time. Allowed users to diy their own survey project launches with control ability way ahead of its time, I'm talking 10 years ahead of its time. One day buncha suits visited the office, found out they wanted to buy us / it. What's really funny strange not ha ha about that visit is that 3 years later I was interviewing in Wash DC with the fat bastard CEO of a survey software firm I ended up joining. He was one of the suits. He brought that up when reviewing my resume, dug that I was the sole utility player there & hired me. That place sucked donkey dick btw. Let's focus.
Every morning 4 of us had a staff meeting with the boss to plan the day. When I had a question or comment I would silently raise my hand and wait til the boss said, 'go ahead.' They all rolled their eyes, but I never stopped doing it. I'm fun like that. The boss was a sharp guy, could be quite intense. Def had a temper. We got along well though. Saw a college football game even with his then teen son and my then teen 'little brother.'
So the business model we had was mainly charging clients for our database of people to take their online surveys. They would give us the survey in a document & we would program it with all the various skip logic & whatnot, then send to our 'panel' of alleged humanoids. Back then the bots hadn't taken over the industry, which for 10 years now has been a multi multi million dollar industry of fraud & scams. But, hey, it's a nice living for many. Why rock the boat when it's paying the mortgage, non? A handful of absurd events for my loyal readers who made it this far:
- We paid out a buck or two so per survey. Well, we paid points later redeemable at various minimum limits for payment. There was one lady who called the office at least daily, for weeks, to badger the office manager to issue a W2. That way she could claim employment for whatever scam she was trying to pull, welfare or whatever. Ergo, claim she had worked at a 'job.' We're talking about $20 bucks or so, but she wouldn't let up. One day we all heard the boss yelling super loud on his phone he was going to call the cops if she called again. He was screaming at her. Fucking loser trying to scam us so she could then scam somewhere else.
- For every 'refer a friend' who created a new account we paid out $1 in points. We found a user who was tweaking an email address to create dozens of new accounts. We shut them all down of course, boo hoo, all that effort. That's just someone so dumb we caught it. Who knows how many other duplicates we had. Not really losing sleep over it.
- The Best Buy survey team had an informal contest amongst themselves who could punish our panelists with 'the longest survey.' The 'winner' was 80 questions. Try to imagine taking an 80-question survey for a couple bucks (in points no less). Moreover, for those that would, who are these people? They're just clicking on their screen, racing to get through the torture. Masochists, mayhap. Or running macros. But that panel team didn't give a shit. They actually encouraged each other to cram in the most random shit into a survey, then called it 'data.' All big companies do this btw, not just them. It's pervasive all over F500s. It's like washing your rental car. You gonna do that? Nobody gives a flying fuck about bots or macros. Do you? Please.
- We (actually me) would recruit these humanoids to online focus groups. Part of that recruitment meant me phone calling them, at insistence of the boss, to get their verbal commitment. Ergo, rang them up on the blower & talked to them. Sweet jebus. These were not America's best & brightest. We were offering spiff of $50 in Amazon point credit. I had an Amazon credit card. I bought the points as digital gift card & manually emailed to every person, dozens of them. Dealt with numerous bullshit claims of 'it's not working send another' yadda. Didn't occur to me at the time but I was also earning points by buying these credits on my own card. There was no company card; I expensed it. It was over $10k in points for all of them, of which I 'earned' or got back 5%. I earned $hundreds in Amazon credits on my own card. Fuck it I thought when it occured. This company wasn't paying me fuck all (around $75k). I considered it my tips for working 60-hour weeks.
