Taiwanese and marketing I

Josh had set up a marketing company because he thought it was clear the Taiwanese needed it. Clear to him and me that is, but not to them....

The first interview he would speak to the marketing manager who would invite me back for what he assumed was project kick-off.

Unfortunately, it didn't work like that.

"Excuse me, excuse me," would say the over-apologetic marketing manager, who interviewed him the week before. "The operations director can't make it today. Can we reschedule for next week?"

He wanted to ask what the fuck this had to do with the operations director, but a pattern was emerging: he would have to meet with 4 or 5 different guys ranging from project management to senior power engineer because the highest position of the person in marketing was manager, and he needed all his budgets approved by everyone else. Marketing was regarded as unimportant – writing a few press releases, manuals – so it had no effective budget, and was usually affiliated to another department.

On this occasion, the 3rd time they had rescheduled - he had cancelled other opportunities and had arrived at the office once before, only to sit in the reception for half an hour. Invariably hot, frustrated, and sneezing black sooty snot, after having driven an hour to find the place in an industrial park. He desperately wanted to tell them to go fuck themselves, but that was the way it was done here.

Then once he had met everyone in the company it still wouldn't go through because a project with an outlay of about 4,000 US dollars had to be authorized by the President of the company.

The marketing company wasn't as glamorous as he thought.