Monday, September 25, 2006
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
SLIGHTLY REDUCED AND MILDLY AGITATED
I have two recent vivid memories of when I felt I was in a real fix. One was when we were finishing our first ever group project in grad school. We had been holed up in a classmate's house for nearly a week, and on the very last day, the day of submission, Murphy's Law struck and all hell broke loose. The computers weren't cooperating, the printers ran out of ink, the sun was setting. All I could think of was the deadline and how we could possibly beat it - or extend it. It didn't help that I had a groupmate who insisted on doing what I thought at the time was really petty and stupid, like cropping each image just so, and placing a blue border exactly right there. It was painstakingly slow and I wanted to bash him in the head with a vase. Couldn't he understand that the document just HAD TO GO? RIGHT NOW?? To top it off, Enya was blaring from the laptop's speakers. Enya with her slow, trance-like melodies. It was so ridiculous and surreal I had to fight the urge to laugh.
Another time I was doing another project, with almost the same set of people, about a topic I knew nothing about. As most of our time was spent trying to understand the subject matter, we were left with only a few precious hours to actually get the presentation and the document together. This time around we decided not to leave anything to chance. We had to get our numbers right, had to cross the t's and dot the i's. The entire class waited for about an hour until we finally arrived with our powerpoint presentation and identical petrified looks on our faces. Of course we sucked. And it was the worst feeling in the entire world to know that you should have done better. But oddly enough, I also felt comforted by the fact that I had done absolutely everything in my limited capacity so that our output could be granted some level of respectability. Yes, it wasn't good enough. But I know I did my best.
***
This morning, I was slightly (and so very politely) chastised by my big boss. Short story: we had a proposal due 5pm yesterday, and at 425 we were still binding the damned thing. The long version is that that moment was preceded by a long series of events, which included delays in technical inputs, costing and team selection, erratic coordination with the India office (the time difference is a killer), very bad English grammar by people who supposedly invented the fucking language, and every little thing that delayed the processing of the document.
Yes, of course there are no excuses. But I had just come out of an experience where one minute, seemingly insignificant detail i.e. not stamping "certified true copy" on a single page (within a document of a thousand pages) could spell the sordid death of a bid -- and the chance to get an $8.5 million-dollar contract. That's 425 million pesos. Taste the guilt.
So no, I don't like to take chances anymore, and you can't tell me to hurry up when I know the client won't be able to understand that paragraph in Section 4.9 because it does not make sense. I will sit there until it does.
Then again I'm not the boss.
The question is: quality or punctuality? There is no clear cut answer, except that you have to know your priorities. And they should be able to tell us those priorities right at the very start, not when they're all huffing and puffing one hour to the deadline. And it's really insulting when, in the aftermath, you're told that they weren't really batting for the win, that they just wanted to get out there and show something, and that we were too pricey for the client anyway. So what the hell was I developing zits for? I should have sent out the first draft with the word "effects" spelled as "affects". Shet.
***
No, I'm not sourgraping. Just realizing that we cannot have it all. Half the time we come out with such crap, half the time it ain't half as bad. I should know that by now. I'd really rather have it all, but I guess when push comes to shove you have to choose what's more important. I just thought I had it all figured out. Who knew a crossed t was just a blue border after all?
***
an aside: For some reason I have this bitter taste in my mouth and a sick feeling in my stomach. I'm now thinking of things I could've spent my time on. But that time's over. And now I have tons of pending work, non-job related work that means a lot to me personally but does not pay my phone bill. Ah, life.
Another time I was doing another project, with almost the same set of people, about a topic I knew nothing about. As most of our time was spent trying to understand the subject matter, we were left with only a few precious hours to actually get the presentation and the document together. This time around we decided not to leave anything to chance. We had to get our numbers right, had to cross the t's and dot the i's. The entire class waited for about an hour until we finally arrived with our powerpoint presentation and identical petrified looks on our faces. Of course we sucked. And it was the worst feeling in the entire world to know that you should have done better. But oddly enough, I also felt comforted by the fact that I had done absolutely everything in my limited capacity so that our output could be granted some level of respectability. Yes, it wasn't good enough. But I know I did my best.
***
This morning, I was slightly (and so very politely) chastised by my big boss. Short story: we had a proposal due 5pm yesterday, and at 425 we were still binding the damned thing. The long version is that that moment was preceded by a long series of events, which included delays in technical inputs, costing and team selection, erratic coordination with the India office (the time difference is a killer), very bad English grammar by people who supposedly invented the fucking language, and every little thing that delayed the processing of the document.
Yes, of course there are no excuses. But I had just come out of an experience where one minute, seemingly insignificant detail i.e. not stamping "certified true copy" on a single page (within a document of a thousand pages) could spell the sordid death of a bid -- and the chance to get an $8.5 million-dollar contract. That's 425 million pesos. Taste the guilt.
So no, I don't like to take chances anymore, and you can't tell me to hurry up when I know the client won't be able to understand that paragraph in Section 4.9 because it does not make sense. I will sit there until it does.
Then again I'm not the boss.
The question is: quality or punctuality? There is no clear cut answer, except that you have to know your priorities. And they should be able to tell us those priorities right at the very start, not when they're all huffing and puffing one hour to the deadline. And it's really insulting when, in the aftermath, you're told that they weren't really batting for the win, that they just wanted to get out there and show something, and that we were too pricey for the client anyway. So what the hell was I developing zits for? I should have sent out the first draft with the word "effects" spelled as "affects". Shet.
***
No, I'm not sourgraping. Just realizing that we cannot have it all. Half the time we come out with such crap, half the time it ain't half as bad. I should know that by now. I'd really rather have it all, but I guess when push comes to shove you have to choose what's more important. I just thought I had it all figured out. Who knew a crossed t was just a blue border after all?
***
an aside: For some reason I have this bitter taste in my mouth and a sick feeling in my stomach. I'm now thinking of things I could've spent my time on. But that time's over. And now I have tons of pending work, non-job related work that means a lot to me personally but does not pay my phone bill. Ah, life.
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