It was alright, then it wasn't again....

Work has been very confusing lately, there are times when I just want to give up and quit the job, and then there are times when I become very motivated to do well in this job.





Yesterday, I was very close to telling my trainer how I felt about the job, it wasn't the good kind of feeling, I was waiting for the right timing to just let it all out and let her know, but that moment didn't come because she started talking to me about what she will be teaching me over the next few days....





"Today you follow me to site, you can have a look at what happens there, then tomorrow we will go through the presentation because I'm in a bit of a rush today, next week we will touch on how to do quotation, so you can get the sample from one of your senior designer and look through."





.... and I just felt a bit bad to tell her I wasn't feeling the job after listening to all the things she's intending to teach me. She's making an effort to train me and there I was, thinking of leaving and putting her efforts to waste, so I said nothing and followed her to site. It's the expectation that she has of me that's causing me to not want to tell her how I really feel about the job.






Once I was at the site, all that thought of quitting suddenly just went away and I got interested in learning again, just being there and experiencing everything first hand made all my initial worries about the renovation work less crippling, so I started asking questions and absorbing a lot of what she was telling me. After the site visit was done, I felt very motivated again, she drops me off at the nearest MRT and I made my way back to the office from there.





Fast forward to today, the presentation finally happened, she did a mock presentation to me first and then we switched, she talked about her past projects and I listened intently on how she was presenting her proposal, there was definitely a stark difference in the way she presented compared to me because she knew what she was presenting, she believed in what she was selling, when it came to my turn though, things kinda took a turn for the worst.





I didn't know how bad I was until the presentation ended. I knew I wasn't good, but I didn't know I actually sucked.



I was actually presenting my proposal the same way the designer at my old design firm presented, the one I worked at 3 years ago, I wasn't necessarily emulating her but I was following her style of presentation, which is very straightforward and non-interactive, just getting the information across as quickly as possible.

"This is a full height closet, I will propose to do it in this style, this is the half height closet, I will put this little detail in here to make it pop, here is the master bedroom, it's where you guys have sex and babies are made."

... she doesn't make any small talk or share her experience of how she feels, she doesn't ask the customer how they feel until the customers actually speak up, so that was what I did, I just kept talking and talking and talking, and then when it ended, my trainer had this to say about me...

"Just from looking at your body language, I will say that the way you are presenting the proposal is wrong. The way you seat, how you keep covering your mouth when you speak and the way you lean your head on against your hand. You are getting too detailed with the way you talk about the furniture as well, you don't have to do that."





Okay, I understood what she was saying and I thought that would be my main issue, my presentation because I haven't presented to a client before, this was my first try, I was expecting to receive criticism from this.





"And your space planning is all wrong, there are a lot of mistakes."




.....but I was not expecting that, I know my space planning isn't perfect, but I never knew it was that bad until she pointed it out and boy were there a lot of careless mistakes, it was so demoralizing, those were my mistakes so I was pretty upset with myself for making them, and then she said two things that really just made me feel like crap...

"The other designers that I trained, they have never made this mistake when they started, they were very meticulous."

Comparing me to the other designers, it's the same feeling when parents compare their kids to their neighbors kid, it's annoying to hear and be reminded that someone else is better than you, and then she tries to soften the blow by telling me...

"It's because they are girls, so they are more careful with this things."

Thanks for making this a gender issue and not a personal issue, it makes me feel better knowing that the mistakes I have made are forgivable because I'm a guy. I really don't know how to feel about that honestly when she said it, it feels like I've brought shame to men everywhere, feels a bit sexist.




And then the next thing she tells me...



"I thought I can just leave you alone for your space planning, but after looking through what you've done and seeing all the mistakes you have made, I think I need to check on your all your work in the future."



Her standard of me dropped like a hundred folds probably, after hearing her tell me that. I mean that has got to be extremely demoralizing for anyone, to know that the initial impression your trainer had of you has dropped so drastically in such a short period of time.



She was by no way scolding me when she told me those things, her tone wasn't harsh. There is a very harsh senior designer in the company as well and had I been trained under her, I'm sure she would have ripped me a new hole, I have heard the way she talks to her trainee and it's really not in a pleasant tone, she does this thing that gangsters like to do, asking rhetorical questions and expecting to get an answer, so I've never really spoken to her before but she has spoken to me once and that was just to acknowledge my existence. I mean the way she talks to the contractors and her customers are really quite blunt, especially to the contractors, half the time it sounds like she's scolding them and when she talks to her clients, it's just comes across as uncouth...

"Eh, you want to put the door here? You sure or not Mister? You put the door here then what happens when you open it? You tell me? You tell me what will happen?"

... and the client will quietly back away and accept his stupidity. It's impressive and intimidating at the same time.




I digress...



So after the presentation, I just felt extremely demoralized for probably the next 2 to 3 hours, staring at my computer screen and trying to rectify all the mistakes I have made, it was depressing. Decided to return to the showroom office afterwards and defrost myself, had my dinner, talked a little with one of the designers in there and then made my way home.




I am excited at the idea of being able to handle a project and manage it from start to end, I am interested in learning the process, but after hearing what I heard from my trainer about how I am not a very good talker and how bad my space planning was, it just feels like I'm never ever going to clinch a deal. Rather than quitting, I feel like this company will actually fire me for being unable to close any deals.




I mean to hear her tell me my space planning was bad and to reject some of my space planning ideas which I thought were pretty great, it's the same as me taking a math test feeling really confident about getting an A, only to receive the marks 2 days later and realize I have failed because of all the careless mistakes I have made, this is the perfect moment for someone to scream at my face...

"WAKE UP YOUR FUCKING IDEA!"

After working there for a few days, I can honestly say that this company is extremely different from the company I joined 3 years ago, from the way they take client's requirement to the way they present. I was doing what I learned from the 2.5 weeks I had worked at the design firm and apparently, the methods I am applying from that company to this one were all wrong.



In the old design firm...

1. We ask the client what their budget is from the start.

2. We ask them if they have any style or concept preference.

3.We ask them where they live in and what kind of housing is it when they present their floor plan to us, if it's a HDB, Condo, BTO etc.



In the new design firm, everything is opposite...

1. I'm told not to ask about the budget from the start, it should be asked at the end.

2. Don't ask if they have any style preferences, assume they are going for modern contemporary unless stated otherwise because apparently a lot of customers don't know what they want.

3. Don't ask what kind of housing they live in, as a designer, we should know from looking at the floor plan.




One thing I will say about that design firm I hated so much 3 years ago is that they have amazing designs, I really cannot find any other interior design firm who is able to create the custom furniture they have created and what they create are all really impressive. It's probably a huge pain in the ass for the carpenters though and it definitely cost a bomb.