I'm like Dick Tracy.

Some days at work I feel like a detective

In my job interview, when asked what my biggest professional weakness is, I told my future boss the following:

“My biggest weakness is that I work too hard. No. That’s a joke. Don’t you hate when people say that? Barf.” (and they somehow still hired me) Seriously…

“My biggest weakness is that I want to control everything in my job. And there is nothing more impossible than this notion in any job. Sometimes when I find that I cannot control everything, I tend to get irrationally frustrated over something seemingly small. And then it’s like I’ve taken it personally that the printer is out of paper. It’s something I’m working on, but that’s it.”

And after I told him that, he informed me that there was a chance I was going to spend a good amount of time being irrationally frustrated working in Argentina. He explained that unlike the US, systems and process here are totally different. Everything hasn’t moved online like in the U.S. When he pays his taxes he doesn’t do it online. He goes to the tax place, stands in a line forever and a day, and eventually, assuming his paperwork is all correct, he pays in person in cash. How strange. Still, I told him I was interested in the challenge, and excited at the opportunity to get to learn that side of the culture.

First – let me tell you that working part-time is stupendous. Everyone should have to work only part-time so they have time to do other things important to them outside of work. Second – let me tell you how amazing it is to walk out of work every day and not think about it until I go back the next day. I haven’t had that feeling in a lot of years of working. In New York and particularly in the ad world, that was never the case. Someone was always calling or emailing or freaking out about something as if the strategy of our Delta ad could somehow make a huge difference in the world.

I’ve been asked to do an audit of all the financial records for the last year as one of my first tasks. I love the idea of this because A. I love math and numbers. B. I am really good at organizing stuff like this.

Holy frustration. I can’t find a lot of what I need. If I’m missing a bill I can’t just go online, download and print it, and move on. I have to call or email someone, explain the situation, then ask them to send me the records. And usually that means by mail. Or if they don’t have online service I have to actually go to the physical place of business to get the information.

At first I found this extremely frustrating. I mean I have a to-do list that I can’t cross anything off of because I can’t actually finish anything. But you know what? That’s kind of just working in Argentina. It’s like what can I do? I’ve done everything I can, and if it doesn’t move any faster, not really my problem. It’s such a different way of thinking. In advertising it was always, do it now, do it faster, faster, faster, work more, on and on and on. And here it’s like whatever I don’t finish today will still be there tomorrow. And everyone has that mentality. It’s beautiful.

The guys in the office laugh when I get frustrated and throw out Spanish curses in my oh-so-foreigner way. And they always tell me to calm down and take my time. No big deal. And guess what? They’re right. So now I’ve started looking at it as a challenge. That keeps me calmer.