I recently posted a sketch about a simple $11 return turning into a full-blown forensic investigation, and it clearly hit a nerve.

The script was simple: a customer just wants their money back, but the store can't process it until they figure out which of the seven different vendors gets "credit" for the initial sale. It ends with a walkie-talkie call for backup because we have a "negative ROAS situation" at the register.

It’s a literal representation of how absurd last-touch attribution looks when you take it out of a spreadsheet and put it into the real world. We spend so much time debating these metrics in boardrooms that we forget how ridiculous they sound to a normal person just trying to buy (or return) a product.

Once the "attribution binder" comes out, you know it’s all over. If we treated customers like this in person, we’d have no customers left—yet we do it behind the scenes every day.

Stay tuned for the next "crisis" in the checkout aisle: