A Giant Pile of Arse

That pretty much sums up yesterday, and the last week, and the last couple of months, come to think of it.

Yesterday I went down to London for a meeting with the interactive/advertising agency that my boss wants to do some viral marketing for us pre-Christmas. (Paying other people tons of money to do something means that you really get something special, even though it’s a project that your own team can handle and do a better job.) My boss meets me at Euston and drops a bombshell: he was fired and escorted from the building the night previously. WTF?!? But he wanted to go ahead with this meeting, anyway. It was surreal…I kept looking at him, wondering why the hell he was there, if he had been fired the night before, and also why the hell I was there, because no one has formally told me that I now have the authority to sign off on £20k or so of advertising. My phone kept beeping, as team members tried to reach me to find out what was happening, and I finally just turned it off.

So, the agency guys did their song and dance and bought us a very posh lunch, and then in the afternoon we hammered out a budget…and I have no idea what I will face on Monday. Quite bizarre.

All I know is, I need to be freelance or working for an agency, not stuck client-side anymore. They had one semi-cool idea that I could accomplish in a week, and then a couple of standard email campaigns that are no different from what we’re doing presently. I recognised some of the work they’d done for Honda and various beer and mobile phone companies, they do ok work…but I could do equally well, and probably better.

On the way home I sat near two small children with very piercing voices and stuffy noses that ate crisps with their mouths open all the way back North. I wanted to walk by their seats and give them both a quick thumping.