Venting

I need to complain a bit, those not up for listening to me whine will have to skip this entry :-P

Next week I’m traveling to a mining show as a representative of not 1 but 4 companies. I have never worked with these clients before, nor have I worked much in the industry. However I have to suck it up and represent these 4 very different mining companies to at least 4 potential Chilean counterparts, per company (i.e. 16 meetings in total) in one day.

That’s not the bad part. It makes me nervous, but it is part of my job, will be a good learning experience and talking point in the future, not to mention that it will help me make contacts for the next time I have to do something like this.

Now, we would have liked to bring companies down to represent themselves, but 6 months ago when we looked for hotels there simply were none. The show is in a small town and the hotels book up about a year in advance. So the second-best-thing was that Danny and I go as their representatives (each with 4 clients). We were to leave on the first flight in the morning, work the show all day, and come back on the last flight in the evening. That kind of stuff actually appeals to me in some ways, believe it or not. You run on adrenaline all day, get an amazing amount accomplished, then get a day to relax and reap your rewards.

However Danny decided that the first flight was too early, as he would have to get out of bed by 5, and wanted to take the next one. Arnold, (the boss-man) is smart enough to check the flights before approving this, and realized that the second flight would cause us to miss half the day in the show once you factored in taxi times. So Arnold wants us to fly up the night before and stay... Remember that I told you that there were no hotels available 6 months ago? There still aren’t. Luckily our parent company has an apartment there for their workers that have to travel there often…but it’s occupied. Long story made slightly shorter: we’ll be staying in that apartment with the guy currently living there, plus Danny and I, and perhaps the other guy’s family!

Again, this is back-story, not even the reason I need to complain ;-)

ANYWAY, so here I am, nervous about the show, trying to find companies whose booths I need to visit on behalf of companies a, b, c and d, already with too little time to do it because we leave on Tuesday, when the second-in-charge calls an emergency meeting. (The office boss is in London for a few weeks, so her backup is in charge). One of the missions that Office Boss contracted comes in 2 weeks and we are apparently in danger of breaching the contract because we don’t have enough meetings. Now, before these companies signed up our office did market overviews for them and told a few of them that they had very little potential in chile. I guess they decided to come anyway though, and our office is supposed to schedule 20 meetings, over 3 days, on behalf of each company. If we get any less than 10 for any company we are in breach of contract and thus the office doesn’t get paid.

In all honesty, this happens fairly often. Office Boss has the habit of offering and guaranteeing too much and we often barely scrape out enough meetings (and they are so-so meetings, not good quality) to get by. So, as usual we all sat down and brainstormed about what other types of companies we could contact, and to see if any of us had contacts within those companies. I, of course, didn’t have any contacts. Soooo… instead of making 1 or 2 useful phone calls to established contacts, I have spent my ENTIRE day calling companies for this mission, updating information etc. I HATE COLD CALLING!

I’m not very good at it either. And you know what? That’s ok because I’m not supposed to be cold calling companies. I’m an International Market Analyst, not an administrative assistant. I already hated having to cold call the companies to make my own agenda for the show next week, now I haven’t even been able to do that because I’m cold calling for the lasñkdfjñalsfjk mission!



On the upside, I have gotten up early every day this week to study. Go me. But I have discovered the flaw in my plan: I now get up 2 hours earlier that Flaco, which means I go to bed at least a half an hour before him. Which means that by the time he gets home we get just a couple of hours to visit and take care of all the bills and other annoying stuff (like cleaning). And on most weeks at least one of us has a few after-office things to do, and the other is asleep before we get home. Since he is my only social release here, not having him to talk to in the evenings is a big drawback.

Oh, and that makes it only too easy to reason as to why I don’t need to go to the gym tonight :-P. Because it would mean: I got up at 6am this morning and left while he was still sleeping. Long day. I get home, change and go to the gym until 9:30. Once I’m done at the gym I’ll see flaco while we make dinner, eat and clean up. And then I’m going to sleep asap.

Ah well, that’s a problem to solve another day. At least I’ve studied for 4 hours this week, that’s probably equal to the entire past 4 months!

Thanks for letting me vent ;-)

*sigh