We didn’t need to know that much about your anatomy or your sex life, buddy.
I used to work for the regional, then national headquarters of a franshise. I would bring all the owners in an area together and say," I just negotiated a great deal with Reach Magazine (or Advo, or whatever). If you all chip in it will only cost XXX dollars and cover all your stores. What do you think?" Chorus of, “Sounds great! What a deal! Let’s do it!”
Then owner A: “Perfect timing too! If we get it in right now, we can have it in place for the holiday rush.”
Then owner B: “What do you mean put it in now? Are you insane? This is our busiest time of year, we don’t need to advertise now, all our regulars will come in anyway, why should we discount the price now when they will be in anyway paying full price?”
Owner A: Got to fish while the fish are biting, we need to discount now to make sure we get the majority of the business, if we don’t discount out now, they might go somewhere else. Don’t you know anything about marketing, jeez, what an idiot."
Owner B: “You are the idiot, if you ran your stores right, you would have all your regulars coming in for the holidays anyway. We need to place the ad for January, during our slowest month, that is when we need the new people in. A really low price will get enough people in to get us through the slow time without having to lay anyone off.”
Owner C: “Now just wait one God damn minute, just how low of a price are we talking. Last time you wanted to practically give the stuff away. We’ve got to think about our bottom lines. Some of us here are trying to make a living running these things, unlike you who has Big Daddy to bail you out when you can’t meet payroll. Are you trying to ruin the rest of us?”
And on and on it would go. I would call the Reach Magazine sales person back and tell her she would have to work with each one individually. And then I would set up a class for the rest of the regional staff on how to handle the irate customers that were sure to call and cuss us out because they had a coupon but were turned away when tried to use it. And then I would tell our franchise salesman he was buying my drinks that night, since he was the one who sold the franchises to these nuts in the first place, and they were sure to be the premature death of me.