Man, so I talked about something that's going my way, then BAM! I jinx myself.

I said the traffic in St. Louis wasn't bad. Then this morning, it takes me twice as long to drive to my client site. What starts roadwork construction on a Wednesday?

Then I said that they weren't hanging over my shoulder while I worked, and today, they were over all the time, asking questions, watching, offering me food...But they're still a nice bunch, and they were really excited to have someone in the office who has some idea of what's going on and who can answer their questions, I guess they just got excited.

But today wasn't a bad day. It definitely had potential for it, but it was OK.

I worked pretty hard today, because I got distracted a lot when the clients came over to ask questions or for help. Since this whole trip was made last minute, I didn't have a written statement of work of the things I was contracted to do out there. It was more assumed what work I was giong to do there, which I HATE doing, because there's always a discrepancy.

Anyway, I was a bit behind all day, since I was also doing little extra things for the client. I'm a sucker that way. If I like a client, I do little things to make things a little easier for them, but then I get behind.

I was talking to my client and he asked me if I was going to set up online evaluations for them, and I said it wasn't in the scope of what I was supposed to do there, but I'd try to fit it in at the end (knowing full well that I was behind already). He also wanted another customization done, and I said that I would talk to our developers about it. I did, and the developer had talked to our pres and he said it couldn't be done in the near future. So I relayed that to our customer in nicer words. He said he'd call his main contact at the office to see if he could expedite it, and I said sure.

So then our salesperson calls me, and she tells me she talked to the pres and he's really upset with me because I told the client I wasn't going to do the evaluations. He wanted me to call him ASAP. So I call him, and he's grumpy and he says, 'Why can't you do the evals? Didn't we discuss this?' I have no idea...I've been so busy with work things that maybe we had, but I didn't think I had to do them during this trip. So he tells me I have to manage my time. He tells me I have to do the evals and he can't believe that I forgot about them. Then he starts drilling me with questions about the evals. I told them that I KNOW I was contracted to do one project, and I didn't want to start the evals til the other project was done. He asked what was so hard about it...I'd done them many other times. Then I explained to him that I'd have to do a lot more work since this client was so customized. The more questions he asked, the better my answers were, til he finally said, 'You know what? Now that we're talking about this, I realize that I never talked it over with you. I guess you WEREN'T supposed to do the evals. That's my fault.'

Wow.

I wish I had a tape recorder to get that one. An apology? From the pres? Amazing!!!

Maybe my day wasn't so jinxed after all...

(just watch, tomorrow I get chewed out by the pres for real!)

Posted by Yano at February 18, 2004 10:45 PM

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