Work!

So Friday was everyone's last day of work and I realized I hadn't really put anything up about what I've been doing, working for Christian Gatard. The company is Gatard et Associes, (Gatard and Associates) and is an international marketing company which contracts itself to anyone interested. The key word there was international, meaning that a lot of their customers are native english speakers. They have one man, a french-american named Alexi, working for a good chunk of every work day, translating all sorts of things for them. What shocked me was that his English was completely flawless, not even the slightest accent. One of the things that a marketing company has to do in order to properly assess a product or store is to get customer input. They do this by hiring people, known to be customers and selected as such so that there is no bias, and have them sit in a closed room for focus sessions. The closed room sessions are coordinated by one of the Gatard employees who asks them a series of questions, trying to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a product. Now you might ask, "well that's only a few people, not necessarily a general consensus. How do they know their information is accurate?" and there is a simple solution. Mass interogations take place, in the case of an unnamed (I am under a strict confidentiality agreement) restaurant, Gatard associate members stood outside, interviewing both customers and non-customers, trying to figure out a company's flaws. In this particular case, over 180 people were questioned. The information was then turned into an incredible comprehensible powerpoint, which myself, Christian and one of his aides then proceeded to present to the company in their Paris office. It was absolutely thrilling for me. I was in the real thing for the first time. People were actually providing for themselves here, and I had a hand in it. In this particular case, after about an hour long presentation, the company was very pleased with the report and assumedly went on to use that information to better their profits. Again, I appolgize on the vagueness of the report, but I have to stay very Tom Clancy on this one. (Plus it makes me feel sooooo cool)
In my case, I did mostly a lot of translations and translation checking for Gatard. At one point, I was translating 98 page powerpoints from French to English, mostly with terms I had never heard of. While it was slightly repetetive, it was also very rewarding. I could really know that what I was doing was useful to someone. It wasn't just taking a quiz, or turning in some homework, it mattered and I really liked that.

Work was great, even if there was a wee strike (See previous post) to interrupt the fun.
-Mack Feldman