I am still adjusting to the Italian way of doing business, and more specifically how business is done at my office.

A few days ago, one of our account assistants came to me, worried about sending a vague email to the client since we didn’t have the final information yet (or a good answer). But of course, we had to give an answer.

“What should I say? Every time I send an email to this client, she calls me immediately after. I don’t know how to explain what happened.”

This is notorious here – our account managers spend the majority of their time on the phone explaining, confirming, reassuring, gratifying, clarifying, or congratulating the client about something.

Of course our reasons for not answering the phone aren’t because we don’t want to work. (Ma no!!) Email also provides another level of accountability, a record and an agreement between two parties which is really important in advertising because, hey, people (and especially clients) can be fickle.

It also gives you that needed time to actually to think of an answer to some of those tougher questions, which can be helpful in situations where you don’t have all the answers, or the answers you have may not be the ones they want to hear. I had some trouble with this, as you recall.

“So? Just don’t answer your phone when she calls.” Take off the kid gloves, my dear.

She looked at me like I was crazy. “What? How can I do that?”

“Ah, cara mia. No one ever told you how it works here?”

She shook her head, bewildered.

“This is critical information – in fact, it should be the second thing you learn, right after you apply for one of those special vending machine keys for the coffee machine that keeps your change.”

I brought her over to my desk.

“When it rings from the outside, you know it’s probably a client, so you can just not answer and instead try to conduct things via email. I recommend bringing a sweater or something to cover up the phone so it mutes the rings. You have to respect the Office Etiquette and a little courtesy for your co-workers, right?”

“Calls from the outside?” I had lost her a few sentences back.

“Yes, didn’t you know? One ring for outside calls, two short rings for internal calls.”

I picked up the phone and called my coworker a few desks away. Two rings.

“Really?? Oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!!” She jumped up and down. I had given her the Golden Ticket. The world had possibilities once again.

This was also difficult for me at the beginning, learning the office rules, what was expected of me, and what everyone else was already doing. I didn’t learn quick enough.

I was old-school, coming from the All-American Corporate World where we were out to “help everyone” and give “total access 24-7″ then smooth over any problems with suavely-worded emails or voicemails. I rarely used the phone – it was all email and instant messaging. Who else relished the fact they could always press # 1 to re-record a message they had flubbed?

When I started here, my signature defaulted to include my office phone number. Until clients started calling me. Which they did immediately. Being the technical contact, when something broke often they would pass up the account manager completely and come directly to me (big no-no!).

Then I started noticing that no one else is leaving their numbers in emails. In fact, the more power you have, the more elaborate your Position Details are, and the more elusive your Contact Details are.

In fact,

Sara Rosso
Systems Manager
Office: xxxxxxxx
Cell: xxxxxxxxxx
IM MSN/Yahoo/ICQ: xxx/xxxx/xxxx
Skype: xxxxxxxxx
Fax: xxxxxxxxx
Email: xxxxxxxxxx

could quickly turn into:

Sara Rosso
Director, Account Executive Manager
EAME Regional Director and Planner
Internal Strategy, Western Europe NCDE
Milan, Italy

(Find me now, suckas!)

I once spent 30 minutes looking through emails and emails and reading back in threads to see if this one person had ever messed up and left their contact number somewhere. They hadn’t.

Now I’m working on damage control with the clients that already have my number, and I keep a sweater in the office at all times. I won’t make that mistake again.

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This week is a bit more partying and general enjoyment which was lacking in the overworked last week. Or at least, I hope so. It’s only Monday.

This week I’ll be heading to MediaStars, which are the Technical Oscar Awards for Advertising in Italy (did you get all that?). I’m excited and interested to go – first because there is sure to be free food and I’m still a sucker for stuff like that (my teaching salary is not that far in my past), and also because a colleague of mine has been nominated for a website’s backend design.

I’m starting to prepare his speech now. In fact, I offered to give it for him, and I thought I could throw in a few “I love the Italian people!” or some really gratuitous grammar errors while hamming up my American accent.

But alas, there is no speech as part of the acceptance. So I’ll have to save my genius for another time (and for when they start giving out the Acceptance Speech Oscar Awards).

Though I have to say there has been a word thrown around several times when mentioning this event, that sounded like nails scratching on a chalkboard.

“Formal.”

It’s really unclear if we’re going to have to dress up or not, which of course brings images of me perched on my spray-painted black banana bike missing a basket and a back tire with the tube showing through and pedaling furiously in heels and a dress with cleavage to here and a slit up to there….

Maybe I’ll take the bus.

In other news, I have in my hot little hands free tickets to the Heineken Jammin’ Festival in Imola this Friday & Saturday.

DEPECHE MODE WILL BE THERE!!!

(Can you tell I’m excited?) There’s nothing I like better than seeing my favorite band in concert, unless that’s seeing them for FREE.

I have to be honest, I’m not a big concert-goer. Back in junior high when all my classmates were going to see New Kids on the Block, I wasn’t. I have actually been to so few “brand-name” concerts* (*not to be confused with regular ol’live music which I love) I could probably count them on two hands. Yes, including that Richard Marx concert at the Del Mar fair.

Some people live for it, but for me the concert experience holds two different possible outcomes: enjoying a band/singer on a whole other level or having the experience I cherished while listening to their recordings destroyed for any number of reasons. Many times I chose not to take the risk, and appreciate the singer’s filtered, over-polished performance as is.

Wish me luck for a calmer workweek, closer to 40 hours instead of 60, and that whole “formal” thing.

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Welcome to advertising.

This is the week that follows: I got sick, I worked the holiday, I went to Greve in Chianti for the Expats in Italy Get-Together (pics on the way!), then to Florence to meet some friends from Texas A&M, and then back to Milan. I got better, work, work, now I’m sick again from going in and out of a super-air-conditioned server room.

And a Ms. Adventures in Italy FNPC (Food-Nature Porn Chaser) for you…this time this is not Italy, it’s the view from my bedroom window in my parent’s home in California which I’ll be seeing again in a few weeks for a trip home in July. In high school I beat the sun by waking up at 5.30am for my early class at 7, and now I really enjoy the sunrises.

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• Have you ever wanted to destroy your office desk? You HAVE to go to this site. Addictive.
• This music video changes depending on local time and weather. Nice song, relaxing and hypnotic.

What a day, or as my husband says, “Giornataccio!”

My boss is on a one-week holiday at Isola d’Elba. He never takes vacation, and it is much-deserved. Unfortunately, when the cat’s away, the mice will play. And also the mice will create complete and utter havoc.

In my case, I am his back-up, so I help out on a few of his projects and do things like answer, “he’s on vacation” 7 billion times. Most people look at me strangely, because he really doesn’t ever take vacation. They usually give a glance at his desk anyway.

We have a big project that of course, is way behind schedule. We only got the final go from the client last week. It involves a lot of servers and equipment which is where I come in. The problem is, the project has to be ready for when the World Cup starts. As in, next week.

The long and short of it is, one supplier gave us a quote and time estimate, which was accepted by the client. Then that supplier told us it would take a month, putting us in July. No go. We had to call a second supplier but we already had an approved budget by the client.

The second supplier could get us the equipment not in time, but by the skin of our teeth to make the project timing still acceptable to the client. But of course, with more cost.

The project manager is leaving the company within a week or so due to maternity needs, and is working from home every day. My boss is on vacation and had made the agreement with the supplier.

Spotlight on Sara, stage left. She’s waiting for the President of the company to receive her in his office and to get signatures on these supplier contracts. For the over-budget project. As in, we are definitely not making any money on this project. We’re losing.

Her hands are already sweating. She discovers she has a stutter that has never appeared in any form of English speaking. If you remember, she doesn’t have very good luck when it comes to being in the President’s office.

Apparently he’s never heard of project before Sara walks into office. “We have a viral that’s going to last a year?”

“No, but in order to get the equipment in the times they wanted, we had to order -”

“So we’re just going to foot the bill? Why the hell do I care about (x project)?” He’s getting angry but I really appreciate his candor. It would be difficult to get the same reaction in an American office.

“Um, I believe it’s within the budget of the project?” Surely my boss wouldn’t agree to an over-budget project if he didn’t have a plan, right? Right?? Please be right. I have no data or paperwork to back this up. Where is the project manager?

I sit patiently while President makes 700 phone calls to our client director, my boss on vacation, and others and with each, his voice gets louder.

He signs the papers, with a few choice words, and I hightail it out of the office, back upstairs. He’s hot on my heels, though. He has a few things to say in person to the directors in my office. I am officially 2 for 2 in the Prez’s office.

When I come back to my desk, there’s an email from the project manager.

Don’t send the contracts to the supplier yet. We’re still waiting for the final go from the client.

No other information. Crap crap crap. I just caused all this strife for a project that we might not do? Not including the supplier that is starting to get angry on the order he started already based on a verbal agreement and no signed contract.

And in fact, as I think about him, he calls me on the phone.

This would be a good time to point out that since he is a new supplier, we are still using the Lei form, which is formal. And very hard for me. Especially on the phone.

Oh yea, and have I mentioned that I haven’t learned to lie yet in Italian? Wait, I mean, omit, embellish, skip around….

“So, there is a possibility the project will not go forward?”

No, no, no. Of course not. Absolutely not.

“Well, yes, there is a possibility, but not much.”

Doh. Now I’m in trouble.

“Oh? Well, we’ve been working for almost a week now on this, because of our verbal agreement.”

You might be really upset if the client bails on us. I, of course, will have to tell you because the room seems to have emptied in the meantime.

“Yes, I totally understand, we will notify you as soon as we have information from the client….yes, of course I understand work is already being done. Thank you for being patient.” (Stutters were removed for your reading ease)

Stay tuned for Part 2: The Client’s Answer
Can Sara save the day or will she spend Thursday, the day before a national holiday, doing Damage Control. You’ll know when she does!

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