I am in the “People Industry,” or so I have been told. While the new-agey nomenclature, “People Industry,” is cornball at best, motivational-speakeresque at worst, there is some merit to it. About 70% of my job is building, establishing and using relationships to push marketing recommendations and ideas into fruition for clients.
Naturally, we spend a lot of time with these relationships. In the “Business World” (more new-age goodness), this means we schmooze. We schmooze a lot.
I do not like schmoozing.
I am not a schmoozer.
Like electric nipple clamps, it is extremely uncomfortable and just a bit awkward. The corresponding cocktails that typically accompany the schmooze help, but not as much as they should.
For me, the issue is that by-and-by I don’t have anything to say to these people. Don’t get me wrong, they are all incredibly nice, but I cannot relate with anything they talk about. I bring nothing to the table. I am a schmoozing moocher, and this is not good. If you take the word ‘schmoozing’ and rearrange some of the letters, and change some of them to different letters, you get ‘sharing’ and that is what it takes. It is a giving and taking. I take.
See, compared to most of the clients I interact with on a regular basis, I am relatively young. Despite repeated reminders from friends that I am “the coolest 31-year-old” they know, I am but a frisky 23. This makes it difficult when you are talking to Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents and Presidents of companies. There is a bit of a disparity in life experiences.
They have traveled the world, stayed in huts on the hills in Bali for weeks at a time. I have been to Manitoba, Canada, once, for three days, for a marketing competition, which, surprisingly, does not carry as much weight as I thought I would.
They frequently talk about dropping their kids off at the pool. I frequently refer to pooping as dropping the kids off at pool.
Typically, I am relegated to standing there, smiling when appropriate, and shooting the Pavlovian “approving head-nod” response upon eye contact with the current speaker.
I suppose it is my fault for this. In college, they used to offer “practice mixers” so that we could develop our schmoozing skillz. I rarely attended them, and when I did it was only for the free alcohol. I would end up drinking beers in the corner talking to friends I already knew, who were also there for the free alcohol. Not much gained from that.
In the end, it provides motivation to gain some life experience and do something interesting. (Getting wasted and not remembering the weekend apparently does not fall into this category. Again, a story that did not carry as much weight as I thought it would.) Until then, though, I am just standing there, thinking really hard about how to get the nipple clamps off without being too obvious.