Here’s a guest blog post from Thaddeus Van Haltren, who founded The Hired Pens in 1931 and now serves as our senior copywriter emeritus. His current accounts include Richardson & Robbins Plum Pudding and Heinz Mince Meat.

I hear plenty of whining from recent college graduates these days. Seems many of them are having a hard time finding a job. Well, try finding a job in the early stages of the Great Depression with nothing more than an eighth-grade education!

Well, that was the hand I was dealt back in 1930. At the time, my nine older brothers were toiling at the local bouillon cube factory. We didn’t have fancy machinery back then, so my brothers’ job was to individually wrap hundreds of tiny bouillon cubes every day.

It was a tedious responsibility – and later drove three of them clinically insane – but it was work, damnit! And it put food on the table. (Though never bouillon cubes, ironically enough. They were too expensive.)

Anyhow, soon after dropping out of ninth grade, I headed over to the factory to inquire about employment. The manager took one look at my plump fingers and laughed in my face. “You’ll never make it in the bouillon cube industry, my boy. Now go find something else to do with those fat digits of yours.”

How I cried that night! But the next morning, I regrouped and trudged over to the headquarters of Jelke’s Good Luck Vegetable Oleomargarine. They were looking for a customer service representative and agreed to hire me for $3 a week (under the table, of course).

One of my main tasks was surveying our customers to gauge their satisfaction with our vegetable oleomargarine. This involved going door to door for hours on end, asking people if they liked the Jelke product. If they answered in the affirmative, I’d hand them a coupon good toward their next purchase. If they did not like our vegetable oleomargarine, I’d slap them in the face with a chilled salmon I carried in a cooler. Life made a little more sense back then, I suppose.

These days, I feel like I’m inundated with customer surveys. I call Microsoft for technical support; two days later, they email me a request to fill out a survey about my experience. I spend a night in a hotel; soon enough, another survey arrives in my inbox. An oil change on my car … a meal at my local Arby’s … the monthly visit to my proctologist … Well, you get the idea. Too many damn surveys.

What’s the point of this missive? Email technology has made it too easy to conduct customer surveys, and Corporate America is abusing the privilege. I suggest the Microsofts of the world instead hire a few hungry ninth-grade dropouts with a penchant for pounding the pavement and a willingness to fish-slap the occasional dissatisfied customer.

Here’s a guest blog post from Thaddeus Van Haltren, who founded The Hired Pens in 1931 and now serves as our senior copywriter emeritus. His current accounts include Lux Detergent and Aunt Mildred’s Clam Juice Cocktail.

Back in my pre-copywriting days, I played the wash-board in a musical outfit known as Peanut McGee & the Pale Haberdashers. We toured extensively throughout southwest Indiana, sometimes taking home no more than a loaf of bread and pint of moonshine for our efforts. Not much to split among 16 band members.

We had several regional hits (you may remember “Ring Me Up, Soda Jerk,” “So’s Your Old Man!” and “Golly, That’s a Nifty Bonnet”). But after an angry crowd at a Terra Haute speakeasy booed us off the stage in 1928, we lost our confidence and decided to call it quits.

Why do I regale you with tales of my misspent youth? Because I recently received a Facebook invitation from Barnaby Finswipe, who played second kazoo in the Pale Haberdashers. Apparently, he wants to be my “Friend.”

Well, Barnaby and I haven’t spoken in 78 years on account of a dispute over ownership of a raccoon coat. Now he expects me to act like nothing ever happened? That makes me madder than a wet hen!

My point is this, dear reader: Be selective when using Facebook or similar social net-working sites to contact people. If you lost touch after your sophomore year in college or your World War I infantry went home, they’re probably not too anxious to hear from you now.

We’ll be honest: With Anna out on maternity leave, we’ve decided to dig into our newsletter archive to keep our blog fresh. Here’s a piece from a good friend of ours, the Grumpy Old Copywriter. Enjoy.

Since its inception in 1993, the “got milk?” ad campaign has helped reinvigorate milk sales and indirectly led to millions of cases of excessive bloating.

While I’ve been a victim of the latter, I’d prefer to focus on my first point. In particular, the success of this landmark campaign has sparked countless imitations. And that really burns my britches.

Just today, I saw a dump truck that had “got junk?” pasted on the side. I also spied a bumper sticker that read “got veggies?” and another that asked if I “got lift?” (My great-great grandson explained this was a reference to a sport known as “snow-boarding.” I’m not familiar with that activity.)

Back when I was working on the first Ford Model T marketing campaign in 1908, this kind of blatant mimicry would have gotten me permanently barred from the National Copy-writers Association. And you know what? I would have deserved it.

Yes, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery. But if the best your copywriter can do is come up with “got milk?” rip-offs, I suggest you fire him post-haste.

Thaddeus Van Haltren founded The Hired Pens in 1931 and now serves as our senior copywriter emeritus. His current accounts include Moxie soda and Burma Shave.