It's not who's right but who's left

For the last few hours, my mind has been completely consumed by something that happened at work today. Not with anyone in my office, rather, one of our media partners that we work with on occasion. Technically, I am/we are the client. And the client is always right, right?

Until I moved to LA, I spent my career on the agency side, diligently practicing that motto with clients of my own, working with the creed that it's not as important to be right as it is to be left still working on the account. Now that I am in-house, I don't really have "clients," but I do work with enough media outlets, community partners, and Fortune 500 companies that I think I still remember how to treat them.

Since I have partnered with this media company, I have been given the run-around about a number of things, given conflicting answers to singular questions while other queries go entirely unanswered. Often, I've had to follow up to ensure that things get done, and more times than not I have felt that my requests are treated as an afterthought, reacted to rather than having been acted on in the first place. A few times, I've suspected I've been lied to, not because they hiding something, exactly, other than the fact that they don't know the answer. They are, at best, disorganized.

To be fair, though, the work has gotten done, and my company has benefited hugely from this partnership. So much so that I have tried to be patient, tried to overlook the discrepancies that, while driving me crazy personally, won't really affect the big picture. A few months ago, I brought my concerns to this company as calmly and rationally as I could, wearing my "I'm ready to listen to and understand you" hat, eager to be a good partner and team player. Never mind that very few clients had ever done the same for me in my former life. Never mind that if I had ever treated my clients the way this company treated me, I would be moved off the account, if not fired from the firm. But we were partners, and I needed to make this work. End of story.

Today I found myself getting fed what seemed like another series of lies. I emailed separately with my two contacts, and, as I've come to expect, they each gave me different, conflicting stories. So I called them out on it. Unfortunately, though, in the heat of the moment (I know, I know, never email mad!) my tone was more passive aggressive than professional, and I quickly received an email back calling me out on my tone, and calling me disrespectful to them - how dare I question their integrity?

And that's when I started to question myself.

Did I have a right to be bitchy? Yes, I was paying them for a service but they were granting us some favors in return. (Or were they favors? Honestly, I'm not really getting anything that wasn't outlined in our contract.) Was I expecting too much from our spread-too-thin 26 year old account executive who sent emails to me with smiley faces? Have things changed that much since I was on the other side that smiley faces are now acceptable in client correspondence? Or is that an LA thing?

Since I moved here, I have both struggled with and embraced how laid back businesses can be. I'm still used to working for companies that are run by perfectionists and expect the same. But out here, so many people seem to take an "eh, good enough" approach to their work. And while it's extremely gratifying not waking up every morning with a pit in my stomach, worried about misspelling a client's name on a memo or arriving five minutes late to a meeting, the downside is that I often feel like I'm conversing with college students.

Part of me feels like in New York, this behavior would never be tolerated. But then, I'm not in New York, and, as with men, if I want to be successful in LA, I drastically need to lower my expectations. Or, at the very least, take a chill pill.

Overall, the "LA laid-back" thing has benefited me - my quality of life is the best it's ever been. But today it affected my work, as I let myself act unprofessional, unbecoming of my own high standards. While I may have harped about the way I've been treated as a client, I've realized it's not about being the client at all, but about being a professional. I don't think this company is very professional, but by my passive-aggressive email today, I lowered myself to their level. And that makes me not nearly as good at my job as I remember.