Goat wrote:
Thrashtildeth wrote:
I am back from my business trip in Fiji.
It went monumentally, catastophically wrong.
If anyone remembers how posted that I was kind of terrified about what might go wrong, well, all that I thought might go wrong did, and then a whole bunch of shit I couldn't have imagined would go wrong also went wrong. I'm pretty sure the trip has utterly destroyed the relationship between the two companies.
Literally the only positive is that I'm not going to lose my job because the company I work for believes my version of events and is supporting me in the ensuing conflict.
EDIT: You can't imagine how stressful these last few days have been for me. I had to get some valium from my mum just to avoid a nervous breakdown.
Darn. Worth telling details? Glad your company is behind you.
Yeah, I don't mind telling the story. I'm more relaxed now that I'm back home.
Umm, ok. So I originally typed out a version of this that was quite literally 10 paragraphs before it even got to the story of what happened, because in order to get the full story with the proper details you need a lot of background for context. It got to the point where it was preposterously long. I've done away with all that and will give you an enormously, insanely, ridiculously simplified version of the events. It was kind of painful to delete after I spent 45 minutes writing it but reading back over it I realised it was a joke, no one would have read it. This one is still kind of long, but less ridiculously so.
We develop and sell EFTPOS technology. A bank which is our customer asked me to come to fiji to provide training for servicing the devices. My area of expertise is EXTREMELY limited to the basic mechanical hardware functions of the device. I manage manufacturing. I understand NOTHING about the extrememly complex software programming of the device. I tried to make this very clear to their management. Anyway, those issues cannot be fixed in the field. They said they understood. I didn't understand why the hell they would need me if they understood this, which is why i was originally nervous about the trip. I made several phone calls trying to ensure they did, in fact, understand. Unfortunately, even though they constantly assured me that they did, they either did not actually understand, or simply did not relate this information to the people I was meant to train. It was a monumental failure of communication amongst the levels of management at their company.
I arrived, with a box full of spare parts and a screwdriver, under the impression I was going to show a group of people who know nothing about nothing how to unscrew components and replace them. REALLY simple stuff. The people who I was there to train, in turned out, were EXPERTS in banking technology. After 15 minutes of being there (I got to Fiji at 8am and was at their office by 9am, no sleep except for a couple of hours in economy class) they were all looking at me like I was a fucking moron.
They told me they're not idiots and they know how to unscrew shit and replace it. They wanted to know about complex programming shit. They proceeded to ask me questions about complex programming shit for about 2 or 3 hours, and I literally could not answer ANY of those questions. It was 3 hours of "i don't know" and "I'll try to find out". This was enourmously embarrasing. Even more embarrassing was that after the 3 hours, the team leader asked, in front of everyone, if I even work for the company that I said I worked for, and if so, what do I do there as I clearly have no idea what im talking about. As I stuttered trying to answer the question, the team leader said something in Fijian and everyone laughed at me. Mortified doesn't even begin to describe how I felt.
So in amongst a few other things, this was the first day. I got back to my hotel and called my boss and explained the situation. I told him there was nothing there for me to do and I would like to come home. He was fucking pissed off because he knew that I had told their management SEVERAL times that I was not a software guy and would be teaching rudimentary mechanical bullshit. He called their boss and they got into a verbal fight.
The next morning, 8 am, I go back into their office. Their C.O.O. calls me into his office, and is FUCKING pissed off with me because of the phone call he received. I'm 26 right, so in front of his team, he accused me of being a homesick mommy's boy that was too young and unprofessional to do his job properly, claimed that it what I told my boss was a ridiculous lie, and DEMANDED that I go back downstairs to finish the training that they had paid for me to come and do. I tried to tell him his team already knew more than me, but he wasn't having it. He was very intimidating so I went back and did as told. I spent the next entire day teaching a group of highly trained, skilled bank tech professionals how to unscrew bits and bobs and the entire time they were chatting in fijian and laughing at me. I wish I was exaggerating.
After that day I called my boss again, explained the day to him, and he put me on the next flight home a day early. Now our two companies are kind of at war. Each side is claiming the other is highly unprofessional.
If all this seems a bit ridiculous, as I said, I typed a version that was 10 times longer with a lot more detail, but it was far too much. This is the basic jist of it.
Most stressful two days of my life.
