a little bit of humility

It’s funny how life is. One can be so myopic until events, circumstances and experiences humble you. I have been in this business for over three decades (yeah, I’m old, but only numerically) and thought I’ve seen everything. But as I grow older and technology gets newer, the world around us flatter (a.k.a. Thomas Friedman), nothing surprises me anymore. Look, I’m an old school art director who years ago needed a dark room and a stat camera (for those under 30, check out your local museum or wikipedia) just to start my firm!

Back then and even up to several years ago, WYSIWYG!! With all this new stuff, gadgets, pads, pods, twits, tweets, posts, blogs and whatever, hasn’t something been lost? Doesn’t anyone talk anymore? Are we really here when we’re here? And to make things even more interesting or absurd, now I’ve even become the client! And you know something? I don’t like it one bit. Now I know how WE make THEM feel. Even if they’re right, their made to FEEL like their WRONG!

So we’re redoing our website (only taken a decade) and there’s no discussion with the web developer (client fault right?), things are so completely wrong and we are terribly behind schedule. After it’s all said and done, I’m told I have to wait another month before they (the web developer) can even touch it, because their so busy! Well who the heck am I? What happened to good old fashioned customer service when we bent over backwards to make the CLIENT feel important or valued or even happy? Is this the new world? Is this technology at it’s finest?

For God’s sake, when was the last time a kid came out of art school who actually knew what they were doing, was taught relevant skills and learned how to think? And when 5 PM comes around, poof!, you thought their was a rush to get to Filene’s Basement for their wedding gown sale, or at the very least a bomb scare! What in the world are we coming too? Well anyway, I’m still waiting for our website to be finished and thank God I had the sense to request a conference call to finally go over the details of what WE wanted in the hopes there will be no more confusion or delays. So perhaps by the time the pumpkins are ripe, the little ones are full of candy or before the first frost, we will be launching our new site. Please stay tuned.

Does anyone have a good book to read?

Advertisement