Surveys (again): Allan Jenkins - he got “the bug letter”
November 1, 2005 by Robert
Oh, this one is soooo funny if a cow read these posts milk would come out of its nose. Sorry, Allan. I had to put my own colloquial regional phrase in there, too. 
Please read, in order, the following three posts from Allan Jenkins at Desirable Roasted Coffee. And cue the theme music Who Let The Dogs Out.
Is Bacon’s Information, Inc utterly clueless? I’d say it’s possible
Cluelessness & Bacon’s: to finish the story
Bacon’s Information & Cluelessness (”it was an error in judgement…” says Bacon’s Senior VP)
Then read this Snopes Urban Legend history lesson.
Allan got “the bug letter”.
Thanks to Jeremy Pepper for the links. Very funny stuff. And, yet another ’survey research’ lesson learned - the hard way.
I like that expression! I don’t think we have it in South Carolina, but I was somewhat a child of the burbs.
Does “comedy of errors” come to anyone’s mind? I mean “comedy” in the classic sense: comedy can be very painful. “Comedy of errors” implies, to me, a cascade of little, silly mistakes that add up to one terrible one with great consequences.
Bacon’s Information could have stepped off the train at any time. That is, they had many opportunities to say “Whoops! Mistake!” and move on.
But they didn’t. They spammed, stonewalled, ripped off, got snooty and — as the forwarded email showed — considered ways to cover their butt.
As I said on my blog, what’s silly about all of this is a) it’s a nothing case and b) I’m not all that offended. And, yet, Bacon’s (and at least one of their employees) will for a long time be unable to “Google” themselves without being reminded of this case.
It was as if everytime they opened their mouth to take one foot out, they put two more in.
Why people that get into that type of situation just don’t do the smart thing and transparently / honestly fess up to the errors - in public - I will never understand.
You’d think they’d have learned from watching others.
But, they’ve earned the Google rank now.
It is deserved - and could have been avoided.