It was only my first job, more than a decade ago, that I had something like a client.
As a marketing assistant in the academic books division at Oxford University Press, I fielded emails and calls from several dozen authors. The requests were simple—a sales flyer or an update on the number of book copies in the warehouse.
But authors weren’t really like clients, because they weren’t paying me. They were more like colleagues on expensive contract.
Since leaving publishing, I’ve been in the world of professional services marketing for more than seven years. In all that time—perhaps amazingly—I’ve had almost no client contact. Aside from PR discussions and pre-bid meetings, my career is “back-of-house” as far as the client has been concerned. I’ve been invisible, but I’ve also never been beholden to them.
I’ve never been “billable”—never been accountable to a client in the way my colleagues always are as they work on projects.
That is, until this past week.
With relatively little warning, I found myself thrust into the center of a complex project that involved some extensive InDesign layout. (It happens that I spend more time doing layout than any of my colleagues.)
I found myself—this past Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—at the focus of hours-long development meetings, doing live InDesign layout in front of the client, often at their direction.
Stressful, huh?
Stress aside, what I found strange about the experience was the instinctive deference, the inability to say “no” (in so many words), the respectful envelope I had to stuff criticism inside.
Such, I suppose, is life with a client!
Taylor Coe 