Why you should never Google your Customers

At work today, I was for­ward­ed an email sent to my com­pa­ny from one of our clients. In fact, it’s out biggest client in the US, the one that kept the com­pa­ny alive dur­ing the years of the dot-bomb, long before I joined up just three months ago. The email was about a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion that need­ed some updat­ing, because it was going to go all the way to a very key exec­u­tive in the com­pa­ny (who they men­tioned by name). Some­thing about the name rang a bell, so I did what I usu­al­ly do when I hear or read a name that I think I rec­og­nize: I googled them.

One of the top 5 hits was a list­ing for the per­son at a site I had actu­al­ly been to once or twice, Buyblue.org. I knew of it, because it was one of the sites that advo­cat­ed putting your mon­ey (as con­sumers) where your mouth was, polit­i­cal­ly. To buy blue was to buy from blue states, or at least, from blue com­pa­nies. My first thought was that this guy, who is in the mid­west (actu­al­ly in a key swing state), had signed up. “Wow!” I exclaimed. “Here’s a case of an enlight­ened fel­low, in ‘red Amer­i­ca’, stand­ing up for what he believes in, and with an unpop­u­lar cause, at that!”

Not so fast, I learned after a few min­utes of fur­ther explo­ration. Not only did the com­pa­ny that this exec­u­tive belong to give 100% of their cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to the Repub­li­can par­ty, but this Exec­u­tive’s father was the 15th high­est fundrais­er for George W. Bush. This fel­low was cit­ed in Buyblue.org for the same rea­son that Bill O’Reil­ly is cit­ed on Mediamatters,org — as some­one who is against every­thing they stand for. What’s more, the com­pa­ny which my boss proud­ly points out ben­e­fits from our lit­tle shop’s efforts that makes them a world leader, is main­ly for Bush because of his pol­i­cy on air and water pol­lu­tion con­trols (obvi­ous­ly, more favor­able to them than Clin­ton, who they had fought vocif­er­ous­ly for much of his term).

I wish I had­n’t learned this, as there’s not much I can do. I only hope that if I’m called down there to do work on-site that nobody will ask me what an Amer­i­can like myself is doing in Cana­da. Maybe if I don’t say any­thing they’ll just assume I’m anoth­er Cana­di­an. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

…All Kinds of Mus­lim Cra­zies Up in Canada
Speak­ing of Bill O’Reil­ly, he let loose with anoth­er one of his absurd out­bursts about Cana­da (which he has been known to do from time to time). On this past Wednes­day, react­ing to the acqui­si­tion of Pen­nin­su­lar and Ori­en­tal Steam Nav­i­ga­tion Co. of Great Britain, which man­ages US ports by Dubai Ports World (and result­ing clam­or) he said that the real dan­ger was the US’s neigh­bor to the North:

You know, we do a lot of busi­ness with Cana­da — this is what gets me — Cana­da has got the eas­i­est infil­tra­tion in the world. All you do is have to show up in Mon­tre­al. You don’t even have to have a pass­port, and they’ll let you in the coun­try as a refugee. You just show up and go, “Hey, I’m here.” “Oh, OK, come on in.” And we’re doing busi­ness with Cana­da all the time, and we don’t have any checks up there. We don’t have any Bor­der Patrol up in Cana­da. I mean we have a few, but, you know, any­body can come down. I don’t hear any big scream­ing about doing busi­ness with Cana­da. You know, if Al Qae­da want­ed to get here, it’s easy. They’ve got all kinds of Mus­lim cra­zies up in Cana­da run­ning around. You see? So peo­ple get emotional.

So I guess he’ll be call­ing for a big wall between us and the US soon. Good. I’m wor­ried about all of those Chris­t­ian Cra­zies run­ning around down there.