When a “Fadicha” Becomes a Turning Point
When I was a young Account Manager in PR, I had a client who was incredibly particular about how he liked our status call agendas structured.
His organization was a large, global software company, so he wanted us to treat each business unit as a separate scope of work in all reporting.
We had just brought on a new assistant account executive, and I asked her to put the agenda together. She returned it to me, and I marked it up.
In the comments section, I left very detailed internal notes — going into specifics, and even humor, about how particular this client was, exactly how he liked things structured, what edits were needed to satisfy his whims, and how to avoid his (sometimes scary) dissatisfaction.
These comments were of course all HIGHLY internal.
My team member made the edits, and sent the agenda to the client…
As I opened her email, to my horror — I noticed that she accidentally forgot to delete the comments section from the Word doc. 😰
Cue running to the conference room and breaking out into full-on tears. This was the agency’s highest-paying client of 15 years, and at just 25-years old myself, I was trusted to lead the account.
Even worse was that I was known for being extremely detail-oriented. I felt like I had let my agency down, the client down, and myself down — not to mention how embarrassing it must have been for the client to see candid internal comments calling out his idiosyncrasies.
“Bar, in all my years of working with PR people, I don’t think anyone has picked up on the nuances of my needs as much as you have — these comments show just how much you understand me.”
The client immediately called my office line. I picked up, and to my shock — he was laughing! He wasn’t angry at all. This blunder reflected just how much I cared about his business.
From that moment on, he trusted me and collaborated with me more closely than ever.
In Hebrew slang, there’s a word that doesn’t quite exist in the English language. It’s “fadicha” Hebrew slang fadi-cha • “פדיחה” roughly: embarrassing faux-pas , which roughly translates to an embarrassing faux-pas.
Throughout my communications career, I’ve had quite a few workplace “fadichas.” And each of them has taught me an invaluable lesson. Sometimes, your workplace mess-up isn’t as destructive as you think it is. It can even be more of a stepping stone to growth than a clean win can be.
And although all worked out for the best, you can bet that I never, ever, forget to delete the comments section 😏