Logistically speaking..

I had recently written a post on my personal blog about how it was to be on this side of IndiBlogger. However, it did not include anything about what I did here. (Sometimes I wonder about exactly what I do here and invariably it leads me to watching cute baby videos on Youtube so I could take my mind off it!)

When I joined this company as a PR freelancer, I was fresh out of college with zero experience. The very generous team at IndiBlogger let me work for them, travel with them, be part of team discussions; even allowed me to make mistakes and believe it or not, paid me to simply learn on the job. I got away with a lot of PR goof-ups in the early days and it was merely because the team, at that time, didn’t understand what PR is (Nihal still doesn’t). The bad thing was, at that point, I didn’t understand PR either. Working for IndiBlogger gave me the hands-on experience in the field and for that, I will always be grateful!

Then one day, Renie called me. It was a casual chat when he mentioned to me that he thought I could handle some more work (other than goofing off in the name of PR) in the company. His exact words were, “Just help us a little with responding to a few support tickets that we get sometimes.”

It obviously seemed easy!

And hence, (I would like to believe because of my ‘public relation skills’), I was also made responsible for attending to logistical issues with regards to prizes, vouchers, hampers, coupons, t shirts, pen drives, toothpaste, toothbrush, and whathaveyou.

Let me be honest. When I was growing up, I never once thought or imagined or dreamed to work as that girl who would respond to issues pertaining to a courier lost on its way to a village in Kerala, problems with redeeming a prize by a blogger who is currently in Kenya or a blogger in a little town outside Banaras who did not receive a shopping voucher!

When it dawned on me what I had gotten myself into, all I could think was, “Holy mother of god!”

In the last two years, I have had to respond to so many queries regarding loss (of couriers) that sometimes it’s hard to go to bed with a calm mind. I often imagine myself as Amy Adams’ character, Julie, in the film Julie and Julia; the part where Julie is in a job which entails that she respond to phone calls from people complaining about the government and its public development schemes.

A distraught Amy Adams in the film Julie & Julia

At first it was confusing and frustrating and annoying and endless. I had no idea why WeSuck courier service would not deliver to a certain location or why WeAreThieves courier service tends to lose couriers without a trace!

With time I got better at managing these issues and then it wasn’t that ba… err someone just received a damaged shampoo bottle and I am now wondering what I can possibly do to make up for spilled shampoo!

So it doesn’t quite end. The problems are sometimes funny, sometimes manageable, sometimes out of control and mostly not-my-fault.

But bloggers have been really cooperative through all of this. And sometimes, when one of them says thank you or a word of appreciation, I am not sure how, but it all seems worth the entire ordeal.

And then there are times when I have upset some bloggers by my inability to provide a satisfactory solution to a logistical issue. Frustrated with my response, they write to Renie! I take this opportunity to clarify that those mails get forwarded to me again; and eventually it’s me who will still be your point of contact for all things logistics (Bwahahah).

Look forward to talking to you soon (hopefully not through a support ticket!)