Reasons to leave advertising. Article One of, oh, six million?

Reason 1. No-one briefs any more. They send emails. You cannot stack emails in an in-tray. So you forget what you're supposed to do by the time six million other emails have arrived. And, no, don't tell me to print the fucking email. I don't have an in-tray six million emails deep.

Reason 2. No-one debriefs any more. They send emails. The other day, I received an email with the following message:

Good morning Writer.
The client has now read through the copy and has supplied feedback as follows:
Headlines to be more ‘eye catching’. Re-visit the copy contents as some of it is not factually correct. The client has supplied a couple of PPT presentations containing lots of info re the product.
Signed
Idiot account director.

Just like that. He just signed his death warrant.

How do you write an eye-catching headline? I wouldn't know. I'm just a writer.

As for the factually incorrect copy contents, the factuality or non-factuality all came out of the idiot account director's brief. How would I know if the spline of an end-bolt in the circulating ball of a universal-jointed rocket axle's cross-member is one-eighth of an inch thick or two-eights? (That's metaphor, by the way, I've never written about rockets in my life. But you get what I mean about arcane facts.)

To add insult to injury, the idiot account director attached NOT ONE but TWO powerpoint presentations for me to waste three days delving into, in order for me to DO HIS DIRTY WORK AND EXTRAPOLATE (is that a word?) SOME FACTS OF GUARANTEED FACTUALLY-CORRECT STATUS AS PROVEN IN LABORATORY TESTS.

Did I do it? Of course I didn't. I emailed him right back and said if your head was as loose as this debrief it would be rolling around on the ground and I would kick it from here to Venus.

He laughed. They always laugh.

He's meant to be getting back to me with the facts, but that was three days ago.

Maybe there are no facts at all associated with this particular product. What happens when there are no facts?

Now I'm getting frightened as well as angry, in a weird metaphysical or philosophic kind of way, like Kant or Descartes or Hegel thinking about something impossible and frowning wisely at the same time and getting paid to do it.

That's it. I'll become a philosopher. Philosophers never get sent emails from account service people.