Pure Madness

So today was presentation day. As I think about the pure madness that went on today, I find it very hard to even write about this with a straight face. Let's see, we were supposed to meet at 9am this morning but of course no one was anywhere to be found when we arrived. Rita ran into Shruti in the lobby, who was on the phone talking with Ashley and trying to figure out where we would meet. Apparently, when she found out she didn't think it was worth notifying us b/c 30 minutes later we were still sitting in a study room wondering where everyone else was. We checked all of our usual meeting spots and found no one. Finally, at 10am, I decide to go to Daniela's office to ask where the presentation will be since she booked the room (at least that's what Ale had told me - our tutors never told us anything about where the meeting would take place). Daniela tells me the presentation is in the building on the main campus. Great. So I send an email to the team asking where everyone was and notifying them that our meeting was being held in the other building. Sook responded after we had left saying that they were still in the MBA building. No location, just that they were there. I was fed up at this point, and the presentation hadn't even begun. First of all, I hadn't seen the final presentation. Second, as a team, we hadn't decided who was presenting. Third, I had to search for the location of the meeting - it wasn't communicated. And finally, I was annoyed that everyone else had found a meeting spot and didn't think it was important enough to notify me and Rita.
The team showed up for our 11am presentation at about 10:55am. That's when the madness really began. First of all, three of our team members showed up in jeans, completely ignoring the "business" part of business casual attire. And what was even more ridiculous, is that we had a discussion last night about what business casual meant, and we specifically said "no jeans!" Then, Shruti comes up to me with a printout of 1 page of the presentation - not the entire presentation, just a page - and asks me if I feel like presenting....I cut her off and told her I didn't feel like presenting anything b/c I hadn't seen the final presentation and was not about to be scrambling to come up with something to say 5 minutes before the presentation (yeah I can be kinda blunt when I want to). So then she asked me if I would present the two slides that I compiled. I said gladly. She asked Rita to present something and she flat out said no. Then we go into the conference room, and Carmen starts laying out individual pages of the presentation on the table right in front of the client - apparently they printed out copies but hadn't separated the pages or stapled them. Really? I was wondering - couldn't she find an empty room to do that? Must you put your incompetence on full display right in front of the client? Part of me wanted to laugh so bad - this team could be the poster-child for "how not to put together a presentation." However, since I had fully checked out myself, I guess I couldn't complain. Then, Ashley stands in the front of the room and loud as day says "so who wants to present what?" And the team proceeds to debate about what each person is presenting. At that point, I wanted to crawl under the table, b/c it occurred to me that I am associated with this mess of a presentation. As they debated amongst themselves, I stuck with my two slides that I had put together, which I felt comfortable presenting. Rita started having a debate with Shruti and Ale about why she didn't want to present (she ended up presenting the last few summary slides). The entire time I'm thinking, this client must think we are a bunch of idiots. If I were them, I would have been very nervous.
The good news is that the presentation itself was decent. I say decent b/c about half of us are good presenters...notice I said only half - but I am focusing on the good. The post-presentation discussion however, is where it got interesting. For some reason, Stefania felt the need to give slide by slide (constructive) criticism of the presentation (mind you, we had 30 slides) which took a good 45 minutes at least. The client and our market research partner had very little feedback in comparison. However, then certain team members felt the need to defend themselves (in my opinion, it was primarily those whose slides were most harshly criticized), rather than just take it in stride and incorporate the feedback into the next presentation. This led to a full out argument b/w our tutors (primarily Paola) and certain team members, with the clients eventually being dragged into it. It was almost as interesting as watching a Mayweather-DeLaHoya match. But it was also sad. I was very quiet throughout this, not wanting to be associated with the madness and praying for it all to end very soon.
When all was said and done, we ended the meeting, and our team decided to break for lunch. We agreed to meet at 2:30 in the study lounge to revise the interview questions based on the feedback we had received so we could send it out by our 5pm deadline. Cool. So, one of the few bright moments in my day came at lunch with Sook and Sabrina. Somehow we got into a conversation about men, and Sabrina and Sook were complaining about the men in Italy. According to them, the men here are immature, and don't know how to properly approach a female. We told them that's not just Italian men - that's men everywhere (sorry fellas...I couldn't help it). According to Sook, men in Italy ask your age and relationship status immediately, and this is considered impolite in Korean culture. Then Sabrina started telling us about her relationship drama and how she's caught between two men...that girl gave me a really good laugh, which was so needed.
We went back to the study room at 2:30, but of course the rest of the team didn't show up until 3pm. This was the final straw. I decided to start on the interview questions myself since I had taken pretty good notes. When everyone arrived, I kept control of the master and led the meeting myself so I could minimize the social talk and get the document completed quickly and efficiently. We finished it around 4:20, which is a record for this team. Afterward they were talking about going for apertivo tonight. I had told Ashley before that I would go but the way I was feeling today, I needed to get away and not see any of them for at least a good 24 hours. I decided to spend my free time doing something I'm very good at: shopping :-)
I hopped on the 47 bus and rode out to the boonies to find this store called RJ Moda. I thought the store no longer existed when I got there b/c from the street it looks like a warehouse and there are no signs. But inside it's pretty big, and they have one side that is entirely devoted to mens clothing and accessories and the other side has women and childrens apparel along with shoes. They had a good mix of designer and non-designer items, and almost everything (w/ exception off shoes and bags) was priced at 50 euros or less. I picked up this dress on one of the racks at the back of the store, and as I was admiring it, these two older Italian ladies walked by and said how beautiful the dress was and how it would look beautiful on me (well they said more, but that was all I could comprehend). Now see...after the day I was having, that was all the incentive I needed to try it on. I also tried on a skirt and a pair of jeans. The skirt was Missoni, and it was brown stretch. It was cute, but then I had to remind myself that I'm moving to the arctic cold and the chances of me wearing a skirt are....none. The jeans were D&G and barely made it over my hips. The dress, however, fit perfectly. And it really is beautiful. It's actually an evening gown. It's navy, has an off the shoulder top, and is somewhat sheer. It's also very long, and elegant. I decided to buy it. So now I need to find somewhere to wear it. I was supposed to be shopping for gifts. Oh well, better luck next time. Shopping did put me in a better mood though so it served its purpose. I spent the rest of the night hanging out and being a bum, enjoying my down time. We have italian class tomorrow but that's about it. Our client has a tentative interview scheduled with Etro on Friday, but its not confirmed and I highly doubt that I will be chosen to do the interview anyway, so I'm looking forward to enjoying my second to last weekend in Milan. Later! Ciao!