When I moved to New York I expected long work days, but the reality of a long work day in NYC is nothing like I imagined. The typical 9-5 job is rare in the city, I know that much, but I wasn’t expecting 8pm to be the earliest I would leave the office. Usually it’s closer to 11pm and often 2am. Since I’ve moved to the city I’ve literally spent more time at the office than anywhere else, often clocking in 15 hour days. 

What are we doing until the wee hours you might ask? Proposal writing galore. Here’s a little lesson about the event planning industry that I recently learned myself: companies send out RFPs (Request for Proposals) and then multiple event planning agencies craft event proposals and send them to the client, who makes the decision of which event producer to hire. So until 2am my team and I slave away venue scouting, rendering floorplans, photoshopping branded images, all for the hope of winning the event. Often when a proposal is due we won’t send it to clients until 2am and my boss always says “we were burning the midnight oil for you” and that’s what we do. At times I really don’t get it and it feels like a waste of time, but I do understand that if we don’t give our all to all the proposals we will never produce any events. And actually, I’m starting to enjoy proposals because in a way you get to create an entire event from start to finish in the span of a few days. As a team we make all the decisions and watch all the moving parts of the event come alive before our eyes on InDesign. 

The biggest perk of burning the midnight oil is the late night food delivery. And for a company that specializes in catering, it’s always a midnight feast of gourmet treats.

-Miraya

1. melrosegirl likes this
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3. oxfordcmma said: This is my experience exactly! Except in the advertising/social media industry. Just got home from work a half hr ago. I thought I would get to experience NYC but all I’ve seen is the Subway and my office haha.
4. uprootedandrelentless posted this