face time

so there’s this guy at xxxxxx who i used to hate hearing from. i’ve only been dealing with him for a few months, and he’s just worked on this one project, but it’s something that has gone around at xxxxxx in various iterations for the past couple of years. and he’s just the latest face in the queue. but what was irritating was just his timing and persistance and repeated requests for unreasonable things. he just kept asking vague questions, and then i’d provide information to him and run tests to get him the information, and then he’d ask it again. so i’d reply that i already gave him the info and i’m not sure what else he’s really requesting, so he’d ask it again.

finally i went out and had a face to face meeting with him and some other people, and we ended up going out to lunch afterwards. and it turns out he’s really not a bad guy at all. and talking face to face cleared up a lot and now we’re set on the clear next steps, which are both reasonable and attainable.

sometimes you forget that there are people behind what you see as problems, and you get overly aggravated at whomever you perceive that person to be, while it might be the case that if you actually understood them better you wouldn’t have to get so upset.

on the other hand, there are people who are incredible assholes, and simple reasonable requests are outrageous just because of the way that person acts.

or is that the same thing?

Posted at May 12, 2004 12:57 PM