Strange Twists

About four years ago, as a brand-new account manager for ye olde evil internet marketing company in Corpus, I was assigned one of the lower-budget clients, which was always given to the newest account manager to cut her teeth on.

The client's representative had certainly noticed that she had a different account manager practically every time she called, and that each one seemed less knowledgeable than the last. Was she happy about this?

No.

I had a bit of a tricky time with this client for a couple of months, until, mercifully, a still newer account manager was hired, and the client became her problem. And of course what was difficult about this client was not that she was angry, exasperated, and becoming more snippy with each successive phone call. It was that she was completely in the right, and I knew it, and it was my job to pretend that she wasn't. Yuck!

These are much happier times. But in one of those bizarre twists that will occasionally whip back on you if you move around to different positions within the same industry, today I found myself seated at a business lunch with this woman. As her client, in fact; and her organization picked up the tab.

It's been years, we had never before met face-to-face, and I had been one of so many account managers, there's no particular reason she would remember me. I didn't volunteer the information. We had a very pleasant lunch, I learned a lot about the destination (we are holding a meeting there this winter), and we got along just great.

What a funny, small world it is sometimes.