So back story, I’m an analyst who does meetings every month with what we call our internal clients. There’s a particular client who her and everyone in her team treats me like a slave and asks of me beyond of what I have time for or even should be doing in the first place. Even then, I still provide for them what they need.
There’s a lot of industry jargon that might not be understood, so I am going to simplify this story as much as possible. We are in a meeting that basically mentions she’s not doing so well financially this or possibly next year. You can hear the panic in her voice because her boss, VP, and a few others are also on this call. So while riled up, she then asks me something along the lines of how are we billing our external clients, A or B? I got really confused because what she actually asked wasn’t as clear as I’m typing it out to be. At first I said, A but then quickly said no B (because B is the usual outcome for all of her clients.) but even while saying this I still wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking of me.
She then gets angry and raises her voice at me and says, “Well why was external client X being billed as A if you’re telling me B.” I quickly go to the notes I had that explained the situation that she ALSO has access to and is the reason why I put it there. While I’m doing this though I’m panicking, my anxiety is through the roof, and I feel stupid like I don’t know how to do my job thinking I misspoke because of the way she was talking to me. I read my notes out loud but am not completely grasping what I’m reading because I’m panicking inside. She then repeats the question but even in a more condescending way. Then my boss finally speaks up and is like a client can be billed both A and B. She gets angry like I misled her or something and is like well I’d rather have X Y and Z happen to this client because you guys didn’t do it right. Her boss then verbally agrees with her. I could tell they thought lowly of me because if this convo. Great now I look like I don’t know how to do my job.
A day later, I’m like wait a damn minute. Everything becomes clear to me. First of all this client was wrongly billed at A instead of B which is why her billing looked off as I wrote in my notes. This is something another department deals with and is not my fault. But I was right, all of her clients are billed by B. Secondly, I realized I’ve explained this situation three times previously in our other calls. Her solution at the time was to basically leave it alone (the opposite of what she raised her voice at me to be done in the meeting). I then realize she put on this show in front of her boss to cause ruckus and make it seem like she’s losing money because of me not doing things right. When in reality, it has nothing to do with me and the amount she lost because of the situation doesn’t help her financial situation anyway. It was a way to point blame in a slick way.
So now I’m angry because I felt stupid during our call but then realized what I should’ve said outside of it. I’m one of those people who get into heated arguments and think of the right thing to say a week later.
My question is how do I mitigate conversations like these and think on my feet quickly. This is my third year in this profession and I feel like I’m slacking on communication. All of my higher ups keep telling me it comes with time as I’m “young,” but that isn’t going to fly with me. I need to improve asap in my eyes. I refuse to look stupid in front of people that help me keep my job.