This is fairly self-explanatory. It's about a business trip I took to Atlanta a few years ago, to meet with some remarkably dopey clients. I've changed names & a few details since we do still have contracts with these people. Also, this was a rather complicated project and the details are too boring to explain. You should know that it involved performing interviews & filling out questionnaires. And one other thing you should know is that my company was essentially a mediator between our client and a number of subcontractors.

I'm sure everyone's been waiting in breathless anticipation for the story of my journey to Atlanta. Well, you can breathe again, here it is. (Yes, it's long. Cope.) Just for the background: This was a conference lasting all of April 15th and half of the 16th. However, the clients had decided that I wouldn't need to be there for all of it, and so I was just going to be there for the first day & leave Thursday night.

So, I arrived in Atlanta around 9 PM, Wednesday night, found a cab, and made my way to the Holiday Inn of Doom. Oh, the cab driver was nice, if a bit chattier than I like, and I was really amused because when I asked for a receipt he handed me a blank one.

"Um, I think you're supposed to fill this out," I said.

"Oh, yes. I'll just put the date & sign it," and he handed it back. I wanted to say, "Thanks, but I'm not looking to pad my expense account, honest" but it seemed easier to just take it & fill it out correctly myself.

Anyway, the hotel was the same place my boss & I stayed at last time we visited, a fairly nice business-class place, but with amazingly useless desk clerks. Trying to check in & out took a good 20 minutes each, and half of that was waiting for someone to someone to notice I was standing there. But I persevered, and went up to my room. Jane (one of our clients) was hosting a party at her house with the subcontractors & client representatives that night and I was glad to see that it was almost 10 and so I had a perfectly legitimate excuse to not go to it. I figured spending a day with these people was plenty without trying to make cocktail party chit-chat.

Woke up at 6 the next morning for no readily apparent reason, since I'd set the alarm for 7. But that gave me a chance to watch about half of "Batman Returns" on HBO before going to check out, which I think put me in the right frame of mind for the meeting. While waiting patiently for another hopeless desk clerk (to check out, since I was leaving in the evening), I saw Sally & Howard & Jane (the clients) wandering in. They came over to say hi to me, and then said they were trying to figure out where the conference room was. I don't know for sure, but I think they'd used this hotel for conferences before, which should have given them a hint where to look, but whatever. I pointed toward the HUGE doorway near where they had entered the hotel, the doorway with the big sign above it saying "Conference Center," and said that I thought it just might be back there. They seemed to think that my theory had merit, and wandered off. I joined them a few minutes later, and finally got to meet the subcontractors (who I'd worked with for several years, but never met in person). Which was nice.

The clients handed out the revised agenda. I must explain a few things here. The clients had not explained very clearly what the point of this conference was, I think because they weren't sure themselves, but thought they should have one since the project was almost over. They had asked me if I could supply numbers on outstanding paperwork I needed from the subcontractors, and also said they might talk about ways to resolve some common problems/questions my company had with information from the subcontractors supplied to us. Now, the numbers they'd asked me for would take all of 5 minutes to talk about; the other stuff about resolving problems could take more time, but I wouldn't have much to contribute myself since it was basically between the the clients & contractors. So going into this, I suspected it was going to be a big waste of my time. In the revised agenda, they'd blocked out 3:30 to 5 for the items that I was there to talk about. Everything else there was stuff I, and my company, had no involvement with or opinion on. This was not the first time I thought "And I couldn't just join you in a conference call for an hour because...?" Oh well.

The first thing they did was "one last observation," which meant Sally would simulate an interview and the subcontractors were supposed to watch for mistakes by the interviewer and fill out this huge form to grade her on it. Presumably this was to refresh their memories about mistakes & problems or something, I don't know. There was definitely some tension among the subcontractors about this because they hadn't had to do anything like this in months (the last real interview was in December) and so it felt like a pop quiz to them. Then the person to be interviewed showed up, and it was Bob. Bob had worked for the clients, but got a better offer and left the project about a year ago. So apparently they'd worked out this little reunion with him. Or, perhaps they'd just all finally lost their minds. Bob was wearing a wig & skirt & shawl and was pretending to be a very confused woman for the interview, and basically they were just extremely silly and I can only assume that was intentional. Harry & Nora (other CDC bigwigs) interrupted the interview a few times as Bob's boyfriend & neighbor, respectively. It was a nice way to start off, I admit, since it kept us entertained. The part that concerns me is that I suspect they spent more time planning this than the rest of the conference put together.

That went on a bit longer than necessary. Then Harry chatted about things that didn't involve me at all, and then it was 11:30 so they decided we should go to lunch. Then there was a 10 minute discussion among the clients about where to go for lunch, because it's not like they'd KNOWN that they'd have a dozen people showing up, and that they could have decided on a restaurant BEFOREHAND, or maybe even actually thought of making a RESERVATION, no, no; they had to do all that work on their community theater project, after all. Ahem, sorry, was I ranting? They eventually decided we would just wander up the street and see what looked good (there are a bunch of little storefront restaurants near the hotel).

So that's what we did. We ended up at a place called -- honest -- the Raging Burrito. Naturally, we had to sit spread out over 4 tables, so I sat with some of the subcontractors. I had a covert plan to try and suggest to them that all of the paperwork and contradictory instructions and insanity was not my company's fault; we just did what our client said to do. Normally I don't like finger-pointing, but there are times when it's just called for. Of course, I had to find an opportunity to do this when one of the clients wouldn't be there to hear that, which was the tricky part. Didn't get a chance at lunch, but we had a good time, and at least I felt less concerned that one of the subcontractors would suddenly attack me.

Oh, and then it started raining. Did I mention we'd decided to sit outside? We finished our lunch sitting at the bar, and every time we looked outside it was raining harder, which was pretty impressive. We finally gave up waiting for it to stop and made a mad dash for it, using shared umbrellas or plastic bags. Whee!

Back at the hotel, someone complained about how her shoes were all wet. Harry was in his standard business outfit of a button-down shirt, black jeans, & dirty white sneakers -- even I dressed up for the meeting, for goodness sake. Anyway, so he looks at his shoes, and as I'm thinking "Oh no, no, he wouldn't, he must have SOME sense," he proved me wrong and went ahead and took off his sneakers and wandered around in his stocking feet for the rest of the afternoon. They all worry me so much. I understand that his feet were wet, but can you say "inappropriate?" I knew you could.

Anyway, the afternoon was every bit as exciting as the morning, which is to say not at all exciting. Jane talked about some theories about problems we'd encountered, which was interesting but not "I should fly to Atlanta to hear this!" interesting. However, that led the subcontractors to start talking about problems with the questionnaire or things that they would do differently, all sorts of constructive criticism, and apparently that was what the clients really wanted to hear because they were very interested in it. (No, they didn't ask for any advice from me, which was probably wise.) Around 3:30, Jane said that if it was okay with me, she really didn't want to interrupt this conversation, and did I think I really was going to need an hour and a half to talk? I said definitely not (particularly since I'd never claimed I needed that long; they never asked how much time I thought it would take). Jane said great, and that if we hadn't moved on before then, at 4:45 we'd discuss my items.

Yup. They figured I could squeeze it into 15 minutes. Which I could, no question. That wouldn't be enough time to talk about resolving specific problems, but I could tell them the basic numbers in less than 15 minutes, certainly. So that part was fine. The part where I flew to Atlanta & missed a day and a half of work in order to talk for 15 minutes was less fine (again, I thought: wouldn't a conference call have been cheaper?) but as the saying goes: What. Ever.

So at 4:45 I gave my little talk and then it was time to leave. Sigh. The clients wandered off, and some of the subcontractors invited me to join them for dinner. I said my flight was at 8, so I'd need to leave soon, so then they suggested having a drink in the hotel bar before I left, which sounded good to me. I went to change my clothes and also stopped at the front desk of doom; I asked if they thought I would have enough time to get to the airport for a flight at 8 if I took a cab at 6. Oh sure, they said. Even though it's rush hour? I asked. Oh definitely, no problem, they confirmed.

Error #1: I did not immediately tell them to call and ask for a cab to pick me up at 6.

Error #2: I believed anything said by one of the desk clerks at this hotel.

So we had all had a drink & I think I succeeded in clarifying that I didn't like sending them tons of paperwork any more than they liked getting them, and that was all very nice. Then it was getting close to 6, so I said my goodbyes and went out to the desk. (Oh, I'd like to mention that every time I went to the front desk there were different people behind it. I never once even saw the same person there. I think that's a bit suspicious. My working theory now is that behind the desk there is a door open to the street, and basically if you feel like wandering in and being a desk clerk for a while, you can. This is the problem with volunteerism.) I said I'd like to get a cab to take me to the airport.

The guy said, "Well, if you want my opinion it makes more sense to take the train," (i.e. subway).

Before I could point out that, actually, I didn't want his opinion, he continued: "It'll take 15 minutes for a cab to get here, and it's rush hour so getting to the airport will take an hour & a half. If you take the train you'll be there in half an hour." I looked around for the "no problem with rush hour at all" guy so I could beat him to death, but of course he was gone. Or maybe hiding in the back giggling at me.

Now, at this point I don't know who to believe, so I ask the guy to call for a cab anyway, planning to ask the driver how long it will take and from there decide if I want a ride to the airport or the subway station. So the guy calls and tells me it'll be 20 minutes before the cab shows up, so I go to the bathroom, and say goodbye to the subcontractors, and walk outside at most 10 minutes later and see a taxi driving away.

Once again I'd made the fatal error of believing a desk clerk. They're tricky folk. So I waited a few minutes, since I wasn't really sure that had been my cab; someone else might have gotten one, right? Probably not, but it was possible. Just then the Holiday Inn Airport Shuttle van drove up, and I asked the driver if he was going back to the airport, and he said "no" (which I should have guessed, with a name like Airport Shuttle) but I told him my tale of woe and he said that it was getting close to 7 and so he'd give me a lift to the subway station which was just a few blocks away. And he actually did! So I'm sure he's been fired for being too helpful.

Anyway he dropped me off and told me which trains to take, and I actually got to the airport at about 7:40. Luckily my flight was in Terminal B, which is relatively close to the entrance, and it all worked out wonderfully. And then I got on the plane and had to wait half an hour while they tried to sort out exactly how they'd managed to overbook a flight by FORTY people. But that wasn't my problem. And then I came home.

Postscript: A few days later I found out that on Friday, the day I wasn't there, the day they had specifically said I shouldn't bother staying for, you know, that day, they had actually talked about resolving questions & other things that do actually involve my company a wee bit. Sally said it was a shame I hadn't been there for that conversation. Like it was an act of god or something; no human intervention could have changed the results.

In conclusion, they're a bunch of idiots.

All you need to know is that we've got a contractor who is scanning a lot of documents onto CD-ROM. This is all supposedly Stan's problem. Our staff will be helping with the clerical part, but my involvement is supposed to be minimal. Ha.

1) About 2 weeks ago Stan comes over with a REAL programmer. We discuss how he wants to have a tracking system in Access to check IDs in & out to the contractor. Naturally, he thinks it would be nifty to just integrate this into the existing system we use. I'm hesitant, maybe because there are only a few months left in this project and now we're going to mess with a system that is insanely complicated, took quite a bit of debugging and, oh yes, the programmer who created most of it isn't here any more. Other than that, though, it's a great idea.

His plan is, we'll enter an ID # and then indicate a box #, because we'll be putting the IDs in boxes of 50 when we give them to the scanning people. And we'll enter an ID# & box# over and over 50 times. I question whether this is really an efficient way to handle things, and Stan points out the clever part, which is that when the IDs come back to us after being scanned, all we have to do is enter the box# and we can mark 50 IDs returned at once, which will save ever so much time. Which almost makes sense, and I agree that if we do this to receipt the IDs out, we could receipt them back in much faster, but he hasn't really clarified why we're using Access at all. He points out that with Access he can generate reports showing how many IDs are out, how many are returned, & how long IDs have been out. I say, if we had a spreadsheet with cells for ID #, box #, date out, and date returned, he could get exactly the same information. At this point the programmer, who hasn't said a word up to this point, says, "I was going to ask why we couldn't use Excel for this..." Hee hee.

Of course, Stan still gets the programmer to whip up a little Access application that generates, among other things, a box cover sheet listing all the IDs in the box, but it gets all of the information from the Excel spreadsheet and isn't connected to our existing system at all, so that's more or less fine.

2) A few days later, we're starting to box up IDs. Stan has ordered boxes for us. Since we will be shipping the IDs to the field centers when we're all done, we will leave the IDs in the boxes when they come back from the scanner. Except I notice that the boxes are of course just slightly too tall to fit on most of our shelves. I am amused. So I mention this little problem. Jumping into problem-solving mode, Stan starts doing math. He tells me that 9400 folders, in boxes of 50, is 188 boxes. I guess he thought I might respond, "Oh, just 188 boxes, I was thinking there'd be a lot; we can fit that many on the couple of higher shelves we have, never mind." But, oddly enough, I did not say that. So then he takes a ruler to establish that the shelves are really, honestly 2 inches too short for the boxes. Various really amusing plans are discussed. I realize that he thinks that ALL of our shelves are too small, so I finally point out that the 6 sets of shelves which we store boxes of supplies on are, oddly enough, big enough for boxes. Stan looks at them as if he doesn't believe me. I point out that they have only 5 shelves in the amount of space others have 6, which suggests to me the shelves are further apart. Stan measures with the ruler again, and finally agrees that they are not the same size as the other shelves, and they are tall enough for the boxes. I suggest we can arrange to have the supplies moved since we no longer need immediate access to them. By the time we've filled them, other shelves will be empty and we can have them adjusted all at once.

Notice who caused the problem there? Notice who solved it? Sigh.

3) Stan dropped by today and asked if I had few minutes. Now, I was in the middle of finishing up our delivery, but I could spare a few minutes. Then he said, "oh, you don't have a CD-ROM." At which point I understood that he wanted to take some of my time to show me how lovely the scanning was. Because I care so much about that. Really. So I say no, no CD-ROM, but I do already know what the questionnaires look like, so seeing the scanned version wouldn't be that thrilling anyway. I consider mentioning that I'm in the middle of delivery, and I thought he actually wanted to discuss something important, not just show off how nice the scanning is as if he had something to do with it. But I restrain myself. Then Stan brings up a couple of problems.

As part of budgeting all this, Stan had asked how long it would take to double-check that all documents for an ID were present. When the scanner was doing tests we put together two or three batches of 10, and it took less than a minute per ID to simply look & see that all of the documents for an ID were there. I pointed out that someone could not really do it for 8 hours straight at 1 minute per ID, but that was a fair starting point. So Stan used 2.5 minutes per ID in his budget.

Of course, then he gave us new ID cover sheets, which list all the documents, so that we suddenly had another step to do. And he added in the wonders of the Excel/Access system, which means after checking 50 IDs someone writes up a list of the ID #s so that I can assign them a box number in Excel & then go into the Access system and generate a box cover sheet with all the IDs listed. And then he asked if I could add the box # to yet another hardcopy list that the contractor signs to confirm he's picked them up. So, for some unknown reason, as of the end of last week we were averaging close to 3.5 minutes per ID. (By today it was 3.0 minutes.) Naturally, Stan is concerned because this is messing up his carefully worked out budget. I don't really care because, y'know, it's Stan.

He also mentions another problem. Most IDs have a final blank page in the questionnaire, but the contractor doing the scanning has found a few that don't, and since their system is somewhat automated this is screwing things up. So when they find these IDs, they tape a blank page into the back. And they would like it if, as we check the documents, we could also make sure that the questionnaire has that final blank page, and if it doesn't, we should put a post-it note sticking out of the quex so that they will know they need to tape an extra page in there. Stan, amazingly enough, did not suggest that we should tape the blank page in ourselves when needed. Sure, I said, we'll do that, and I'll remind the staff to be careful about how much time they charge to this scanning task. I wonder if he's even aware that in the same conversation he complained that we were going too slowly, and then gave us yet another step to slow us down.

Later this afternoon, after I had sent off the delivery, I looked at the current totals & got the 3 min/ID figure. While in the middle of writing an email to Stan, I get an email from him. It has a copy of his fabulous spreadsheet, proving to me that as of last Friday we were averaging 3.5 minutes per ID, as if I'd disputed that. Or as if he has information about hours & #s that I don't, when in fact I'm the one giving him those figures. It is, naturally, cc'd to a vice president & my immediate supervisor, and he emphasizes that I had said it would take 1 minute per ID, but it's taking much longer, and that (I quote) "We need to ensure that the clerks are only charging actual folder checking time to this task." The "we" in there is my favorite part, because, you know, he's so involved in what's happening over here. I am also amused that he's "telling on me" to two people who dislike him almost as much as I do.

So I wrote back, with updated numbers, and suggested that we were probably slower at first because A) it takes a little while to get a rhythm going with any new task; B) we started with the IDs which have more paperwork associated with them and which are just yuckier in every way; and C) he keeps adding new steps to the process. I did not, much as I wanted to, tell him to bite me.