Monday, November 14, 2005

Work, people and everything else in between

My job entails dealing with people (way too many sometimes). Somehow, everyone seems to think I'm supposed to have all the answers regardless of whether I am directly responsible for something or not. The other day, I had a meeting with the Marketing Director of one my clients, at one of their customer's office. I was supposed to be there as a backup, to kind of walk the customer through any technical issues or glitches but mostly to iron out outstanding problems. For some reason, everytime her customer would as a question, the marketer would just turn directly towards me, and give me that look like "yeah how is this done?" At first it didn't strike me as to why this kept bothering me, then I realized that the marketer is supposed to work with me as a team, and if I don't have the answer immediately, she's not supposed to drill me too in front of her customer. So in the big marketing meeting I had with the customer's entire marketing group, where I had 15 women bitching, complaining and haranguing me practically, I decided it was time to resolve this particular issue. Well first I had to make sure that all the marketers' were sufficiently calmed down (I bs pretty good sometimes, even I make myself proud at those time!). Anyway, I just laid it on the line that in the future if we're at a customer site, and if there is an issue that the marketer doesn't know how to resolve and obviously if I know the answer I will give it to them immediately. However, if I don't they're not to dog me in front of the customer, and moreover they cannot start questioning me publicly with things like ETA etc. I'm not sure this went over all too well with a couple of the marketers', they're those people who always want to look good and take CYA to the extreme! But I got the point across regardless.
A side note though, one of the marketers (the hottest one of the lot at that!) did call me later on and she said she liked the way I stood up for myself. Too bad she's married. :(

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