As Opposed To Microsoft!!

Hello Everyone...
As opposed to Meshref's post of his great experience in Microsoft, I thought I might
share with you my summer-internship experience in "Promoters" which I think it also
has something to do with the fact that Microsoft is great (if you know what I mean :))



Last year, the university offered limited summer-internship offers for students in some companies. And since the offers were limited, the university itself had to do an interview for interested students to pick and choose who fits best (apparently, they didn't think of who fits "where" as well)...

Anyways, I got accepted and the university sent me as well as 2 of my collegues to "Promoters"...I didn't know anything about the company at first but I knew I had to sit for another interview conducted by the company itself...so, I searched a lot on the internet to find out about the company, its site and all.

I got to know from their site that Promoters is supposedly one of the top marketing firms in Egypt whose deals with big companies and institutions in Egypt like: AUC, Timberland, Adidas, Bahgat Group, Orascom, IBM, Henkel, Pepsi, McDonald's, C&Co., The Island (Sharm El Sheikh) and more...

I got excited at first and I thought it's an excellent company and all...So, I went for an interview, the interviewer was very friendly and nice and as soon as she finished her questions and I finished mine, she asked me to come the following monday at 9 a.m...

So I was there 8:50 a.m (I always like to be there 10 mins early in case of anything), I stayed at the reception till it was 9:15 and then I told the receptionist that I am supposed to meet Ms.Dina (my interviewer and supervisor) at 9, where is she?...she told me that she hasn't come yet!
I thought she might have issues so I waited a little longer...a lot longer...until it was 10:30 and I rose off to leave when I saw Ms.Dina comming.
She was like: "Where are you going?"...I said "I am here from 8:50 and you did not show up so I thought you are not comming!!!"...She said no and she asked me to have a seat until she comes back to me...

She went there for like 45 minutes...I thought she might be taking a shower or something..she seemed to stay quite long!!!
Anyways...after all this time, she came back with the biggest smile on her face to tell me: "I'm sorry, we can not begin today...unfortunately, we do not have rooms or computers for you to work on!" (like they discovered that today!!..what a surprise!)
So I said ok, so I guess I'll leave...she said I'm sorry and I will contact you as soon as we fix this...maybe within one or two weeks...I said ok, no problem and I left...

As soon as I got back home, I found my cell phone ringing...I picked up...
It was Promoters' receptionist..she was phoning to tell me to come the next day for they have came up with a solution...So, I said well...okay!

I went the next day where I met a couple of my university collegues...again at 9 and she showed up at 10...anyways...the good solution they actually came up with was that they let us sit in their meeting room having a HUUUGE stack of airplanes' magazines, pens and papers and making tables of contacts of airline companies, airplanes' manufacturers, airplane accessories' manufacturers, and engines' manufacturers..etc for we were supposed to be working on a great project named "AVEX 2006"..the 2nd International Airshow in Egypt held in Sharm (supposedly running now)...it's a very important event supervised by governmental institutions and all...So we were doing excel sheets of potential exhibitors in this event "manually"...when we asked for computers to enter the data right into an excel sheet instead of this mess...she said "You are going to enter it later in an excel sheet"...
So I asked "Why not from the beginning?"...
Her answer was the following: "Because when office boys find printed papers on desks or in shelves, they usually throw it...but they never throw hand-written stuff"
I was like WOW...that's the dumbest answer I could ever expect!!! (Like they can't tell their office boys "please don't throw stuff WHATEVER it is :s)

Anyways..it was my first day...I didn't want to be complaining too much about stuff..so I just did the work I'm asked for.

They usually let us leave late and take work with us at home...it was sooo tiring and not at ally benefitial (atleast, that's how I saw it...I didn't find any experience with doing excel sheets of contacts!)...

After a week from work, they discovered that they haven't done an orientation for us!!
So they called in Amr (a project manager)...and apparently, everyone there is a project manager since they don't have a hierarchy..they work as a "team" (hehe)...whatever..
First, let me give you brief information about Amr...he's the model guy who walks in at 12 p.m checking on everyone in the company, where they've spent their night the other day...or what parties did any of them go to and what are their plans for tonight..as a start for the day!
Then, he goes to check on the girls...he sells watches and stuff...so he "promotes" those watches to his female collegues and ofcourse since Amr is the handsome guy of promoters, a girl working in promoters had to change a watch everyday!!!

So, he began introducing us to promoters, the floors they have...which floor is which branch of promoters..like there is promo-sport which is concerned with the promotion of sports-related stuff and there is promo-sign who builds and makes stuff...and he gave me this example "If Amr Diab wants to make a concert in Marina, he contacts promo-sign to tell us the lighting he wants..the stage..everything and we do it...if he wants a girl to come to his hotel room everyday and put chocolate on the bed..we must provide that"
I thought "What's your job again?!!!!"
He told us that we're not going to be working in the "entertainment" stuff...but we're more of the governmental-concerned stuff...so I was a bit relieved.

All through the month I stayed there, we've experienced a lot of "inefficiency" problems...like no one to supervise us most of the time, no available laptops or computers to work on so mostly, we had to wait for one or two of the employees to finish their msn chatting time and let us work on their computer for sometime...
we were working in the 10th floor with no air-conditions because it was down for the entire month of June!!
For the last week, we got really fed-up...so me and my collegues asked Ms.Dina if we can actually do any other task...she then told us..we must complete this first or we can work in parallel with something else which is the "Pricing Strategy" they should use.

I was like okay, we were taught that in the previous marketing course...the 4 Ps and all...this can be interesting...actually the so-called "pricing strategy" was doing another excel-sheets of prices of challets, show-space..etc. NOTHING was new!
We were doing all the dirty work that apparently none of the employees wanted to do because it was very much time-consuming and unbelievably boring!

And while we were doing all this...Amr and the gang were doing nothing but ordering food 24/7, chatting on the msn, NEVER being on their desks, checking magazines and commenting on different Ads...I remember Amr once giving an excellent marketing analysis of an Ad...he looked unhappy and he said "La..el bent dih regleeha msh 7elwa"....NOW, THAT'S MARKETING!

This was one hell of a place for real...I wish for a better chance at a much more "respectable" company this summer inshaa Allah
(P.S: This was an unpaid internship...yalla 3shan tekmal :))
So an advice for anyone who was interested in this company in particular, you may want to reconsider your decision :D...especially for a summer-internship offer!