Amanda.T's Scoop - Politics, 'Gorilla', Mentor and Supervisor

Hello everyone!

It has been approximately a month into my internship and I am already feeling the heat amongst my team mates. I do not know about the other teams, but I sure do know that I dislike the fact that my team mates are constantly taunting the client, poking fun at her and calling her names behind her back, such as 'Gorilla' due to her physique.

Image from: http://www.photosntravels.com

In my honest opinion, this is really unprofessional. Sure, clients can get really demanding at times, but they paid good money in exchange for the Public Relations agents’ time. As taught by my PR lecturers in previous modules, PR agents are expected to be contactable and always ready 25/7, for one will not know when a crisis will happen.

My mentor, C, came into office today and the first sentence that came from her was ‘oh my god, *inserts client’s name aka 'Gorilla'* is crazy! She called me at 4am!’.

I heard her loud and clear, but kept mum and continued with my media monitoring. I do not want to get involved in negative situations like this. My objective of this internship is clear – to get real-life PR experience, obtain my grades and learn as much as possible. I understand that no one likes his or her sleep to get disrupted by work calls in the middle of the night, but complaining in front of an intern is entirely unprofessional. What if the intern is a potential employee? Wouldn’t such remark turns him or her off from PR industry?

Till now, I am still struggling with media monitoring as there are so many things to be searched on within an hour. Not only that, we have to select the relevant news, include those articles (with the publication name, headline, date and journalist name) in a word document, type out a synopsis for each selected news and ensure that there is uniformity in the email. My mentor commented that I am getting faster, so I guess that is an encouragement for me. =) As for office politics, I am not interested at all.

Additionally, many things had happened in the past one month, and I felt really unhappy how some employees can just vent their frustration on interns.

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Just the other day, C (my mentor) came into the office feeling very grouchy, and when I submitted my media monitoring to her in the morning, she scanned through the articles and turned to me and said rudely, 'Don't you even know WHERE NEW YORK IS?'

I was taken aback by her curt response but I just explained to her that the article was supposed to be included as it was filed from our allocated region. Later in the day when the consultants had to email me their weekly market updates so I could compile them and then email the list to the client coordinator (N), I emailed the team a list comprising of the missing markets. C, once again, turned to me and snapped,'Amanda, you know you are supposed to get India market updates from me right?! So why did you include what N sent you?!' I assumed that what N had emailed me was right, because after all, I had to email her the compiled list eventually.

I felt quite offended that I was being questioned so rudely for the second time on that exact same day, but I just calmly replied,'Alright, you can send me the updated one and I can just edit the updates if there are any changes.'

Instead of letting it go, C went on and on and on and on about the same issue. Sitting there, I couldn't take it anymore and retorted,'What is so difficult about comparing the updates I already had and the new ones you are going to send me? If there is any difference, I can just add those in!'.

So, it ended up with C, V (another team member who was close to C) and I bantering about this silly issue in the office. T, my supervisor, came up to me and asked rudely, 'Amanda, what is the problem?!' I sat there horrified, because it was not my fault. I was just doing my job, and I did not want things to end up so badly. Before I knew it, I was crying when I tried to explain the situation to my supervisor because I could see that he was going to push the fault to me. T asked me to go into our department head's office (she was not around) and spoke to me sternly.

I sat on the chair sobbing and feeling indignant, and T raised his voice at me, saying, 'Amanda, DO NOT CRY ON FRONT OF ME. If you do not stop, I am sending you back home now and make sure you never come back again. I am not your babysitter!'

Right there and then, I felt extremely insulted. He then added in a whole chunk of unpleasant things about me, which I felt was really personal instead of work-related. He was making judgement on my personal life, saying that I must be an 'overly-sensitive' person, just because I told him that I do not like the fact that some of the team mates, especially the mentor, speak curtly to me. This is totally crossing the line and testing my patience!

Who likes to be spoken rudely to? No one!
And who is he to make assumptions about my personality and personal life when he does not even hang out with me after work?? We are colleagues, not friends.

Yes, I am an intern, but I need basic respect too! And all along, I was NEVER rude to them at all.

Seriously, I felt this was really unfair. I had already explained that I would rectify any discrepancies, yet my mentor still continued to harp on it until I broke down. It was nothing but pure mental torture.

I could not wait to finish my internship and leave ASAP. I thought this internship was what I really wanted, what I hoped for, but it turned out really unpleasant.

Normally when I was in the office, I am always seated at my desk and working on the tasks I was given. My team mates are always gossiping about the clients but I wasn't interested to partake in any of these, as it was just a waste of time. I want to get my things done and go home on the dot. But maybe, my silent presence made them feel as if I am a doormat who can be easily bullied.