Get Over Yourself Rant, Part II

On the flip side of things...

Being an AC or intern is not a fun job. As one quotable Vice President of an agency said to me, "No one goes into PR to be an account coordinator."

Truer words were never spoken!

I bitched about the new breed of hires in my earlier entries but before everyone jumps down my throat (or gives me a standing ovation, which seems to be the case), I want everyone to take a moment and think back to their entry level days. Yeah, remember those times? Early mornings, ridiculously late nights and oftentimes, weekends spent slaving away on a coverage report or media list? Remember the blood, sweat and tears shed on action item grids?

Remember all the power-crazed people you had to work under?

Everyone has their horror stories, right? Allow me to share a few of mine:

• One manager had me send out 300 personalized "Save the Date" emails in one night because she thought it was a good relationship building exercise. No, not three. Not 30. But 300. I was in the office until 10:00pm personalizing each note according to her specifications, even though a general (shorter) blast would have sufficed.
• When I was an AC, an AAE came to my desk and yelled at me for a good 10 minutes because I had spelled someone's last name wrong in an action item list. This was an internal email and the person whose name I spelled wrong, who worked within the agency, didn't care. Did I mention that it was my third week on the job?
• I was asked to send an action item via instant message to someone else within the office. Guess what medium they used to ask me to perform this action? You guessed it- instant message. Ding ding ding!

These are the more harmless events. You can ask 'San Francisco' about the time someone asked her to write a paragraph on each of the network drives purely for their own personal pleasure. I've known people, fresh from a promotion, who were so heady with newfound power set out to make life a living hell for other people.

But notice something here- the agencies that have people who treat other people badly usually lose their talent. On the one hand, you have lazy new hires that just don't want to put in the time to learn the ropes (and no, you don't actually know everything so hush). On the other, you have agencies that have trouble retaining talent because they treat new hires like scum.

In the end, can't we just treat each other with respect? Like in any business or industry, people coming in should appreciate the experience and knowledge that *legacy* folks have and understand that they probably don't know jack about anything and the *legacy* folks should remember how they started out and act accordingly.

Didn't mean for this to sound preachy but there you have it from someone who's been on both sides of the fence, so to speak.

-Signing off from Seattle