OK, lets get this out into the open … I can be a right vindictive little fucker sometimes. [Sorry Mum, but I can!]
Don’t worry, I don’t just go after people willy-nilly … they must have been unjustifiably bad towards me, my family or one of my friends … but when it happens, I swear revenge, even if it means having to wait years to make it happen.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I’m in Bangkok at a Media Training conference and I finally managed to get my own back on some bitch who tried to screw me over TEN YEARS AGO!
Basically, when I first moved to Australia I needed a job and found myself in the media department of JWT.You have to understand I’d just moved from HHCL where I was a strat planner with a team doing some amazing through-the-line work … only to end up infront of a computer, buying TARPS for fucking Sunsilk Shampoo!!! In Australia!!!
As you can expect, I found this rather frustrating – especially as I felt it was not actually doing the client any good interms of their business goals – so typically I started to speak up and say how short-sighted this all was.
Naturally this pissed off my ego-maniac, conservative Media Director – especially as I was introducing things like insights and consumer connection points into our clients comms plans – so everyday I was called into her room and bollocked to within an inch of my life.
In the end [about 2 months later] I couldn’t take it and resigned having met the World’s greatest and nicest planner [Mark Sareff] who said he’d get me back to what I was good at doing. {I mean planning, not just pissing about! Ha!]
I found out how much I was hated when the Media Department whip-around didn’t even generate enough cash for them to buy me a leaving card – but I didn’t care – I was out of there with some valuable lessons in how not to run/manage a department.
Before I started my new job, I went to visit my ill Dad in England … all happy that when I got back, it would be a fresh start … only to return and find my bitch of an ex-boss had spent the time I was away trying to get my new job offer rescinded.
I couldn’t believe it … hell, I wasn’t that important to have someone go to all that effort – but that’s what the petty, small-minded bitch had been doing and I am just grateful Mark stuck to his guns and took me on a journey that was integral in my achievements to date.
So what’s all this got to do with revenge?
Well because TEN YEARS LATER, I find we’re both speakers at the same conference and I took great pleasure in making her squirm both privately [telling her how wrong she was to treat me that way and that she was a case history in how I wasn’t going to treat the people in my company/care] and then publically [where I told the conference delegates that the lady at the back had called me stupid for believing in the things all media companies are trying to get a grip on today]
Cheap shot? Yes.
Pretty low thing to do? Yes.
Unprofessional? Yes.
Rewarding and vindicating? Abso-fucking-lutely.
The thing is, she’s actually become much nicer now … and she even apologised to me … but I told her that had I not had such great support from people both inside and outside the industry – she could have literally destroyed my career because in just 8 little weeks, she nearly destroyed my confidence.
If you believe in something … give it a go … if it’s wrong you’ve learnt something but it’s better than to live a life of not knowing.
I know that’s all very deep – but it’s the values my parents bestowed on me and that’s probably the greatest gift I could ever of had.