Mini Crisis!!

Hi All,

It will only be a quick blog today but I wanted to let you know I had my first mini crisis working at PTC this week. Crisis may be an over exaggeration but since I’m new to all of this and still have that ‘I need to make a great impression’ feeling, to me it was a mini crisis.

I have spent quite a bit of time since beginning my placement 11 days ago organising interviews with radio stations and newspapers. Everything was going really well, I had orchestrated five radio interviews and about the same in newspaper features.

However this Thursday one of my pre-arranged interviews took place. In the lead up to this interview I had called to confirm with both the interviewer and interviewee three times (one just a day before the interview took place) and faxed the interviewer (who will remain nameless) a copy of the play’s press release four times, even though in past conversations she had informed me that the fax had arrived to her successfully. The week before the same person had conducted an interview but became a little confused as to who they were interviewing (even though as stated above I had sent the information a number of times and confirmed thrice). So when they came on air for this weeks interview they had a spiel (while our actor was waiting ON AIR) about how inappropriate they thought PR departments were, how they always only ever seemed to mess them around and how PR departments are self serving.

Now to me, even though the radio audience could not have known it was PTC who organised the interview, seems to be a huge disaster. My supervisor sat me down when I arrived to work to tell me what had happened and I was shocked at the un-professionalism of the interviewer but also mortified at the thought that PTC might blame me. Thankfully I had cc’d my supervisor into all emails I had sent and shown her a copy of the fax. She was well aware of how many times I had been made to fax it through and how many times I had made confirmations.

I guess the whole situation just proves that although you check and re-check, send and re-send sometimes it all just comes down to the feelings of another person beyond your control. I will always remember this as an important lesson as to why you should never only organise one interview or one feature because if you do it could all turn sour. It also shows the benefits of having open communication with your supervisor and letting them know exactly what you are doing because if mine hadn’t been ‘full bottle’ things could have turned out very differently.
Other than this though, I am still having a blast at PTC.

Chat soon,
Chelle xx