It has been a bumpy ride, to say the least.

Previously

Before coming to Dublin, I was in Adidas global HQ in Germany (yes, Adidas is a German brand) working for the marketing division in Basketball and Heartbeats Sports.

I was basically working with the team who was executing the Adidas’ marketing stunts across Europe for their Basketball products, but also for Swim, Tennis, Rugby, Handball, Volleyball… aka, it was awesome.

Why the change?

After leading a successful digital marketing project, which was reported to the Senior VP of Brand (EU level), I quickly realized that if I wanted to learn more about Digital Marketing, I needed to leave the company and dive into the heart of it: I needed to work for a company who specialized in Digital Marketing, in order to either grow further or come back to Adidas with more knowledge.

This said, I loved Adidas so much that I was not putting any effort in looking for that opportunity. Until someone on LinkedIn spotted me and messaged me: she was a recruiter and wanted to have a chat about opportunities in Dublin.

The Lies

I decided to have a phone call with her as I thought it was pretty good timing for this kind of opportunity. She told me in the messages that it was a Digital Marketing opportunity for a huge client of their company therefore I was very intrigued.

It seemed like a dream come true: the recruiter told me that I would learn about Google Ads, that I would work in the Google offices and that I would be paid while in training. She promised me loads of bonuses and assured me that I would optimize accounts of businesses using Google Ads and this was a huge step for anyone interested in Marketing.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a Googler. I simply am working in offices owned by Google so please do not mistaken me for a Google employee.

Naive & Impulsive

If there is something you all need to know about me: I am extremely impulsive and spontaneous, but at the same time I am quite naive. When people promise me something, especially a professional, I take their word for it.

I decided to go for it. I passed all of the interviews and quickly prepared myself to move countries for the 5ft time in 5 years. It was exciting. If you know me from my Youtube Channel, you know that I love fresh starts and this is precisely what was going to happen: I didn’t know anyone in Ireland, let alone Dublin, and I was going on a full on adventure.

The Wake Up Call

I have always been someone who believes that the Universe had my back. If I was invited into the Google offices without directly applying, it was really meant to be and a blessing from above.

Well, this experience, for the first time ever in my life, made me doubt about this hard core belief I had always cherished: after the first week at work, I came back home, looked up at the sky and asked “why“. Why did the Universe had to do this to me. To be fair, I am quite a dramatic person but this time I had my reasons: the first week at work was Hell on Earth.

First of all, I will not call it “work”. The place I landed was one of the most dehumanizing places I have ever encountered in my life. It trains you to strip off any kind of sympathy for people in need and teaches you to just look at the numbers. I will go into more details in a full on video because there is too much to say.

For now, I will just add that I am only allowed 30 min of lunch break and you can’t take that break when you want to. You need to ask permission for your every move and you are completely alone from the rest of your “team” as they all eat and pee at different times… It’s like you know them but you don’t: they are there but you can’t spend time with them as each individual needs to focus on their mundane tasks and, I must say, this has been one of the roughest months of my life.

I tried to contact the recruiter to tell her about my thoughts but she ignored me the whole time by not answering any of my calls or messages. That was when I realized that I got trapped into a very uncomfortable situation and, for some odd reason, that lit such a fire in me that Madonna Santa you will see the full results of it in 6 months time.

The Plan

For obvious reasons, I am not going to tell you all of the details at this moment in time. By the end of this year I will write another blog post with all the undisclosed information I wanted to keep for myself while I was working for Hell.

All I will say is that I can find opportunities around every corner and I am definitely planning on pushing my luck a bit further and stay in Hell for another 6 months as I did the hardest part already and am now capable to not let my spirit be broken or dehumanized by this unfriendly, cold and soulless place.

Everyone in my promotion has left already: we were 7 newbies to begin with and 14 in total for my team; we were 4 newbies after a month, bringing us down to 10 in total; and I am now the only one left from my promotion after five months, everyone else left, and we are now 3 in total. The horror stories are many, and I will discuss them in a video soon as I get out of this nightmare which I am still living in to this day.

Will I survive and tick all of the boxes I promised myself to tick? Only time will tell.

In Hindsight

I see the Universe plan. I see the strength in me, and after a few months of self-hatred, pure negativity and blame, I can confidently say that I am back stronger than ever to fight everything this BS situation is trying to do to me.

I will not become a heartless robot, I will not lie to people and I will not let this experience kill my Joie de Vivre. I have been incredibly lucky to have an extremely supportive family and, although I have not been the best human being recently, I plan to forgive myself, make amends with everybody and start from scratch.

Wish me luck!