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innerspaceboy · 03-27-2017, 03:37 PM

Entry 3: Running a Business by The Good Book

I’ve come to understand that those in positions of authority are seldom popular with their workforce and that capitalism generally promotes the most egotistical, uninformed, and conservative persons to the highest ranks in business. Still, the CEO of my company is an impressively special someone who I feel compelled to relate to you if only to prevent an aneurysm from keeping the tale captive inside my tormented mind.

I work for a Christian fundamentalist white nationalist Bible literalist who is convinced that Revelations will occur in the next 5-10 years. He’s the CEO of a print company which consists of myself, his wife, and two other persons… and three of the four of us are grandparents who lack even the most fundamental knowledge of how to operate a computer. So consequently, our only print work comes from his fellow church buddies. (The last book I produced for him was a pastor’s guide to banishing demons from your home or who might have taken possession of your loved ones.) This CEO enters the office fist-pumping and shouting “TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!”, and (as you might expect), is fantastically ill-suited to lead his sister enterprise - an app publishing company.

So I’ve spent the last two weeks from 8:30 to 5 training our staff on how to left and right click, how to copy and paste files, how to use folders, and how to send emails. Some advanced tasks have proven difficult for them to master, such as operating a mouse. (I am not kidding - they wield the thing like it’s fighting them to get free.)

I proactively, (but futilely) labored to create a business strategy for our stagnant app company. I called attention to glaring errors on our company website which makes us look wholly inept, (such as the large missing form object reporting an error on our 1990s Geocities-syle home page). Sadly, despite my efforts, the site has remained unchanged for nearly a year following my communication. I also expressed that we needed to hire an industry professional to write articles for our blog about the latest trends in the app industry, to which our CEO responded, “start writing.” Not to be deterred, I composed several in-depth and well-researched articles - one on the subjects of App Stagnation, Effective Monetization, Mobile Retention and Growth Strategies and another on Using The Mobile Maturity Cycle to Drive User Acquisition. These each describe processes critical to the success of a mobile developer. Unfortunately, after nearly half of a year, our CEO still has yet to even read them.

A few months ago, he suddenly decided that we now sell social media management services as well, (sure… why the f*ck not?), I prepared a Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing to introduce him to the responsibilities this market will require of us. That was in October and I’ve yet to receive a reply. (This makes me feel like the most valued m*therf*cker in the world.) Instead, our CEO informed me that the entirety of social media management simply means logging into a Facebook account once a week to see whether there are any notifications.

“But [ISB]!” you might exclaim. “What the hell have you been doing all day without any clients for an entire YEAR?!” I spend most days being demoted to bindery work - hand folding thousands of sheets of paper, stuffing and sealing thousands of envelopes, and manually applying postage stamps to print mailing jobs as we do not have enough design business to keep me occupied. And when that work dries up, (and trust me, it does), I'm handed a dustpan and broom and told to sweep the grounds.

It really makes all those years of college seem worth it.