Let’s hear your public relation jobs horror stories

As I view ALL the companies wanting interns, rather than hiring communications professionals, it dawned on me why. It took years for the light to go on. Employers don’t want people who can contribute to their bottom line.

They’re more satisfied hiring yes men. They pay public relations agencies that come in and say, yes, press releases are what you need. So what if it won’t produce results? The employer has had their ego massaged. They’d be upset with an M.B.A. who would come in and suggest effective strategies. See my stories on when I pitched YouTube and MySpace.

Now that they are seeing all the other companies getting NBC, ABC, CBS exposure with YouTube, they are telling their interns to develop them. An idea they could have utilized to make real profits more than two years ago.

It took years, but it finally dawned on me. Employers aren’t concerned with making outstanding profits via marketing. They are more concerned with having a certain part of their anatomy kissed many times daily than helping their company grow.

Interns are the perfect yes men. They will do what you tell them because they need the experience, and most don’t know any better.

It came to light at the funeral services of one of Arizona’s largest companies’ leader. The audience was comprised mostly of yes men, and when I say yes men, I mean men more than women.

That lead me to think of all the bad public relations jobs I’ve held. I’d like to hear your work horror stories. I’ll give you two of mine.

A government agency that wanted me to file all its printed matter supplied by HMOs. They were paying me an M.B.A. salary to fill files and binders with literature supplied by health agencies. That was it. Oh, I also had to put water on the purifier since I was the only man among 50 women in the department.

A Native American tribe that decided after half-a-day Native Americans could not report to a “white guy.” They literally said it that way. Did you know EEOC laws do not cover Native American sovereign nations?