Adieu Jupiterimages

Jupitermedia finalizes sale of Jupiterimages to Getty Images and changes name to WebMediaBrands

Adieu Jupiterimages, Adieu. The nightmare is finally over. We are free, free at last. It’s a depressing exercise in futility to reflect on the time wasted in our endeavors in this company. All those lost souls dialing fax numbers, dead phone numbers, public museums and prerecorded messages like the Movie Line; all of those useless client profiles consisting of cut-n-paste content from old notes, client websites and Adbase; all the superfluous data generated, transmitted, saved and deleted through spreadsheets, PDF’s, Word Docs and PowerPoint (more useless information than J. Edgar Hoover accumulated during the cold war); all of those afternoons on speaker phone enduring monotonous conference calls and brainless questions from morons who cannot read two points forward in a canned presentation or those who enjoy hearing themselves ask questions; all of those wasted hours repeating the same information over and over, day in day out, month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year; all the time spent strategizing over lost market share in a dying customer base complaining about the same competitor; all of those poor clients who received thousands of worthless and ill planned sales calls, time wasting web demos rife with technical difficulty and landfill volumes of irrelevant, dated marketing materials and swag; all of the false enthusiasm about yet another collection of non stellar lifestyle imagery that sat on the shelf like a can of expired sardines in an orange marmalade compote; all of those hours spent parked outside of a clients office, a lobby, a bagel shop or at the airport renegotiating an appointment that was set before Christmas and took a week to plan that got suddenly cancelled due to a sick cat; all of the unexpected drop offs/drop bys/stop bys/ stop overs/ swing bys/ drive bys/ pop ins/ hellos/ goodbyes; all the weeks spent planning, rescheduling, pulling resources, shipping supplies, trips back and forth across parking lots and corporate campuses lugging heavy sacks filled with notepads, pens, squishes and brochures, business cards, folders, food and sending invites, E-vites, follow ups and reminders for a 2 minute meeting that ends up taking place in a lobby or on the way to the elevator; all of those conference rooms booked half empty on a hope and a prayer that two accounts receivable personnel and a receptionist might come by to fill up on overpriced pastries, cookies, doughnuts, muffins, bagels, breakfast tacos, candy, brownies and bland deli sandwiches; all of those mind-numbing campus tours of corporate clients as you feign interest at yet another sea of cubicals, conference rooms and quasi post modernistic corporate architecture making such ridiculous statements like “Wow!” and “when was this annex built?” and “where did you say you keep the fax machine?”; all of those plane trips, bad road meals at some cliché restaurant by the mall/interstate/airport, continental breakfasts, embarrassingly modest corporate hotel accommodations with slow internet connections, soft water and late wake up calls, cost conscience rental cars with as much leg room as tricycle with a flat tire and concealed airport bar tabs; all of those empty happy hours, unattended breakfast web demos and awkward client lunches with prospects that carry as much decision making authority as a summer intern that result in as much business activity that hardly covers the tip; all of those ill advised training sessions, consultations, proposals, best practice assessments and contracts; all of the half concocted tales of grand business opportunities, future alliances with Fortune 500’s, potential cash windfalls and client success stories that would bear as much fruit as a pot hole in a Home Depot parking lot only to claim a last minute catastrophe to justify sandbagging an entire quarter so you can take a vacation. All of this for pretty background pictures that you can now buy for 99 cents. Adieu Jupiterimages. You are gone but not forgotten.

How NOT to start a cold sales call

1. “Hello, how are you today? (allow dead silence for a minimum of 12 seconds)”
2. “…oh, you ARE there. I didn’t think you guys were still in business”
3. “Hello MR. OR MRS. OR MS. PROSPECT, I would like to spend the next 20 minutes going over my list of 35 features and benefits and then asking which one applies to you.”
4. “Hello, is the man of the house there? Oh this is the man of the house.”
5. “Hello Brain. I would like to tell you Brain about some exciting…do what? I’m sorry, BRIAN.”
6. “Hello, may I speak to someone with some real decision making or purchasing power over there? You gotta a department like that over there?”
7. “Hello, do you mind if I put you on speakerphone? We’re training our new telemarketers”
8. “Please do not hang up until you have heard the complete 28 minute recorded message of this special offer. After the recording I will rejoin the call.”
9. “Before we begin, may I have a credit card number, name on the card and the expiration date please?”
10. “Hello lead source=web…oops, wrong field”
11. “I looked at your website and I think I’m qualified to consult with your president now about where to take your business”
12. “Is Bill there? In a meeting? Can you barge in there and hand him the phone? I’ve got my goal to meet.”
13. “Hello, is this the ACME company? I’m with the ACME company…Janet?”
14. “Are you ready to have you’re FREAKING MIND BLOWN?”
15. “Hey there sweetie. You sound sexy. Why don’t you run along and get your boss for me.”
16. “There’s a bomb in your building. I am the only one who can diffuse it. Let’s make a deal”
17. “I have a PowerPoint that coincides with this cold call. Would you mind registering with Web Ex and then following along?”
18. “My god you talk loud…you wanna turn your phone down a little bit for me?... anyway…”
19. “If you are in need of new laminate siding/copier/cell phone/recruiting services/tree trimming…PRESS 1”
20. “Oh my god, that has to be the most obnoxious Midwest accent I have ever heard. So what’s your job over there?”
21. “Do you currently own your own home? Are you 18 or older and carry a valid driver’s license? If so I have some exciting news for you.”
22. “Wait, don’t hang up like the last guy…”
23. “I have been sending you hundreds and hundreds of emails and you never respond. I finally just had to call”
24. “I can see you from a window across the street”
25. “Do you mind if our attorney jumps on the line. We wanna make sure and get all of your responses recorded correctly”
26. “Hey, I’m in the elevator headed your way. Can you get everyone in the conference room in 10 seconds for a presentation?”
27. “A priest and a rabbi walk into a gay bar…”
28. “Tom told me to give you a call. What do you mean you don't know Tom. T-O-M, Tom..."
29. “Knock, knock…who’s there…orange…orange who?…Orange you gonna ask me how I can save you some money?”
30. "Wait, before I get started here, can I get your email address and home phone in case we get disconnected"

Bored at Work?

Have you found yourself stifled in work and in life? Have you reached a dead end on the org chart of your career? Do you find it a challenge to contemplate the monotony of your job day in and day out? Are you starting to think there really could be a Matrix and your life forces are being harvested in a purposeless existence? Do you just need a giggle? Here are some things you can do at work to divert your attention away from the mundane. These are several entrepreneurial ventures that you can make from work without sacrificing any of those precious mental health days.
1. Use your time in the office on the phone to make random death threats to residential numbers.
2. Grow weed in your desk drawer.
3. Call Apple Computer and initiate a merger under your authority.
4. Start a grass roots political campaign to reelect Elliot Spitzer, Governor of New York.
5. In-source tech support calls from India.
6. Run an escort service for Russian amputees.
7. Collect Sweet-n-Low from every kitchenette on your corporate campus.
8. Read peoples fortunes over the phone (use Sweet-N-Low packets for material).
9. Become a bookie for cock fighting.
10. Raise a cricket farm in your cubicle.
11. Bring a bunch of old movies to work and run a video rental out of your cube and charge outrageous late fees.
12. Call every extension in the company and tell them there’s cake in the conference room.
13. Bring doughnuts to work and sell them with a 5% markup.
14. Monitor webcams across the world and report crimes when they happen.
15. Write funny lists.
16. Call two separate adult chat lines; place one on hold and tell the other one that you have your girlfriend on the line who wants to join in and repeat for the other line and then conference them in together.
17. Sell Mary Kay cosmetics.
18. Build a deck in your cube.
19. Call a very large hotel and initiate reservations for a major corporate convention including catering, production staff, and limousine rentals and then cancel at the last minute.
20. Start pirating as many office supplies and furniture as you can get your hands on and sell them on eBay.
21. Reserve every conference room in your building for 4:30 on a Friday and then ask everyone to come and bring their key cards and id badges.
22. Swap out sinks in all the bathrooms and educate yourself on rudimentary plumbing.
23. Hit CTRL+ALT+DOWN ARROW on your keyboard and Feature 86 on your phone, tell HR you think your cube is haunted and then try to get workers comp for mental exhaustion.
24. Make a fake badge that says “Hall Monitor” and stand in the hallway writing fake tickets to anyone that doesn’t have a hall pass.
25. Start a valet service in the parking lot.
26. Start a paper route on your floor and ride a bike down the hallways.
27. Rent out empty office space for rehearsal space to struggling bands and convert common areas to a nightclub after 6 p.m.
28. Advertise a starving artist sale and sell all the cheesy, abstract corporate art hanging on the walls.
29. Sell coupon books for the vending machines and cafeteria.
30. Bring an espresso maker, green apron and alternative accoustic soundtrack and open a drive through coffee stand outside your cube.

Response to want ad for Reference Number:HCS284

"Job Description:A Textile Carpet manufacturer has an opening for a Sales Representative with High-end Carpet sales experience. Must have sales experience with Hospitality, Contract, Residential, Commercial, or Retail Carpet companies with strong programs in both Woven and Print. The Sales Representative will be responsible for building relationships with buyers, manage daily sales responsibilities, and develop programs for specific customer accounts."

I read that and came to what can only be described as a Jack Nicholson "As Good as it Gets" moment. Gone are the days of First Class jet setting to sunny So-Cal for a quick back nine before a colossal time waste of a meeting at noon about cutting the bottom line. Gone are the restless nights spent with the beer sweats in a king size bed between sheets that cost more than my best suit in a quasi-post modern personality hotel with a complimentary happy hour, substandard nautilus gym, and as much Lodgenet™ porn that a liberal arts college major with deficient math skills can proficiently bury in an expense report. Gone are the herb encrusted filets and the 18 year-old scotch calls from Smith & Wollenski at 4:00 in the afternoon. These are all the things I reminisce about as my fat, middle-aged, cynical ass sits on 635 trying to manipulate my $240 a month gas guzzler across three lanes to get home to my 3 lovely line item dependents, my cat shit eating dog, my mortgage, my hopeless attempt at a lawn and my ever growing laundry list of yet-to-do-to-the-house-but-I'll-get-to-it-on-Sunday-'s. All my options have surmounted to my current position or this miserable piece of shit so called "opportunity" trying to foot cram one more "value-added resource" into the already over bloated, oversold, undifferentiated market of business to business commodities. One more Ford Taurus or Dodge Intrepid parked in the back of a business park in Grand Prairie idling while listening to the Ticket and reading the paper. One more day spent handing out business cards and collateral with invaluable information that ends up topping off the trash cans inside every office in the DFW Metroplex. One more 30 minute, technically challenged powerpoint presentation to a daft 19 year old receptionist that has all the decision making authority of an oompla loompa in Willy Wonka's Choclate Factory. All of this only to come back to the office and fill out a 3 page excel spreadsheet flagging it as a "Class 3 Potential Opportunity" that only needs about 8 more months of qualifying and filling out a prospect analysis of said receptionist as the key relationship that will bank roll your entire 4th quarter.
Ah, life.