Desperate Freelancer

All clients are stupid. It's a well known fact in the corporate world. A fact that you can verify almost every day when you deal with clients. And if you don't (you lucky one), please go ask the people in your company that have to handle them.

If you doubt what I am saying just remember these few situations :

- Someone asking a price for a service or product your company sells without giving any information about what he really wants, how he wants it and for when.

- Someone having a huge problem to solve on Friday 6 pm, and leaving for a nice week end in an unreachable place in Marbella just after having had explained you his misfortune by email.

- Someone changing his mind ten times on the project and when all is done and validated, asking to start again from the beginning because his boss didn't appreciate the result.

- Someone not willing to pay his bill because he finally disagrees 3 months after signing the quotation with the perimeter of the task he hired you for.

- Someone asking hundred times the same silly question about a technical problem which has nothing to do with the project.

- Someone demanding you to cope with an intolerable planning and who can't give you the information you need in time (whereas you asked for them since the start)

- Someone pretending to perfectly understand a technical point you are talking about for months, and you had been working on for days and nights and who finally dares to ask the meaning, just to realize it he doesn't need it at all.

Yes. All the "someone" are clients. I bet you can put names on some of them.

So, do you see what I mean now ? Aren't they just stupid ? Can you find any excuse to them ? No, you can't. They are just what they are and always will be : stupid clients. You have to get use to it.

But the real question is why ?

Yes. There must be a reason to this common law of the universe. Something beneath. Why are all clients stupid ?

Why a guy working in a consulting cabinet and being recruited by one of his clients suddenly becomes stupid ? And why on the contratry a former client who decides to join one of his suppliers immediatly ceases being an total idiot ?

Why can't they learn from their mistakes or misunderstandings ?

Let me advance an explanation.

I believe the stupidness of clients lays in their status itself. Being a client means having the power. If you are the client, you are the one who rules the relationship. You pay, he obeys. That's the fondation of the commercial relationship (especially seen from the client's point of view)

The thing is most people don't know what to do if you give them any sort of power on their kind. Still they firmly believe that this power has to be used. Otherwise they could loose it or waste it. So they'd rather do something stupid than do nothing. Moreover, as a provider you have to understand who has got the power (it's not unimaginable that clients could think that providers are stupids). So the more they use this power, the more you can feel it. Undeniable isn't it ?

Can you propose other explanations on your side ?

As every french man, I have a reputation to keep up. I am supposed to be a good cook, or at least a good food connoisseur (It's true, at my age It would be harder to defend any longer my reputation of being a good lover. But I won't go on this field if I were you).

France is one of the best country for food, maybe the only one. I mean : can't you really eat those fat and greasy porc pieces cooked out of fritter that they serve you in chinese restaurants ? Me neither. Yes, it could be funny and exotic some time. But be serious it's no food. There is no competition.

I did not travel much in my life and each time I did, I had been very disappointed with the food. That's why I didn't pursue my investigation much longer. Ok, Italy could be acceptable, but they only have pasta there !!!

How can people cook so bad all over the world ? When you visit a place as a tourist, you always want to taste local food. The best one if possible. So why do they keep serving you things so filthy that you immediatly check you still have your return ticket in your pocket ? I wonder if it's a way to prevent people intruding their countries.

But its the same disgusting food in restaurants for autochtons. I can't imagine they just force themselves to eat so bad all along the year just to avoid a few tourists to pollute their beaches and destroy their landscape. It would be to hard a punishement for something their own industry will do anyway.

Well it does not matter. I won't leave my country anymore now. But I can help you wherever you may be to drastically improve your lunches by giving you some nice recipes that would make your working days much more enjoyable. You could cook them at home and bring them for lunch.

Quit sandwhiches and burgers, forget about pizzas and donuts and let's penetrate into the territory of taste and flavour.

So here is my first recipe. . It's called "Daube Provençale"

Ingredients for 8 people (you won't let your colleagues die without tasting it, will you ?) - 2 kilos of beef cut into big pieces - 200 g bacon cut into strips - 3 glove of garlic - 2 tablespoons olive oil - 1 big onion sliced - 1 carot cut into thick rounds - a couple of parsley leaves - 1 orange skin strip - 1 thyme sprig - 2 bay leaves - salt & pepper - 200 g black olives - cloves - one bottle of your best "Côtes du Rhône" - maybe some other stuffs but nevermind

1. Cut everything that has to be cut.

2. Go to the bathroom to take a plaster for you finger.

3. Taste the wine. Is it good enough to go into your "daube" ?

4. Taste it again. Are you sure ? If not, please be nice to take a better one.

5. Take a salad bowl to make a marinade. Put onion, garlic, parsley, orange skin strip, thyme, bay leaves, salt&pepper, cloves and stir well. Add the beef.

6. You can verify the wine is still good.

7. Pour the wine. Mix and let it rest in the fridge at least 12 hours.

8. Wait. Open another bottle of wine to make time pass.

9. Finish it. Now you should be sure the wine fits. If it doesn't start everything from the beginning.

10. Fetch your marinade out of the fridge. Remove the beef from the marinade to paper towels. Strain the marinade, reserving the herbs and the liquid. Open another bottle of wine to celebrate you didn't mess everything up on the table.

11. In a pan, brown the pork and the beef in the heated oil. Keep drinking until every slides are colored.

12. Remove the meat. Put it in a big cooker. Go to the bathroom again to find your cream against burns. Note for next time to use some ustensil to take the meat out of the pan.

13. In the same pan you cooked the meat, add the reserved marinade and make it boil. You can taste another "Côte du Rhône" during the operation to make sure it wouldn't have been better.

14. Poor the marinade on the meat. Add carrots and stuffs. Try not to pour everything on the floor. Pick it up.

15. Put a cover on the cooker. Reduce the heat. Don't reduce your drinking.

16. Watch the process and add more wine if it seems too dry. Add more wine in your mouth too, if it seems to dry of course. Wait until you can't see the kitchen clock clearly.

17. Try to get up from the floor. Add the olives and let it cook for another 3 glasses.

18. It's 7 o' clock in the morning. It's time to got to work. You are drunk as hell. But don't worry you will have a wonderful lunch.

And don't bother if you did well or not. In your state, you would eat anything.

Before I got this job at Delconsulting, I was desperate about computers. It could take hours before I would succeed into doing any task. Even turning the damn box on.

I was the kind of grumbling elder who

- print his mails to read them, write the answers on paper, rewrite the texts in a word processor, print the typed answers to be sure it feats with the paper, go back to the computer to discover I had not saved the texts...
- phone twice before sending a mail to someone, and at least three times after
- print all the pages of a website if I wanted to read carefully a paragraph
- save all my documents directly in the temp directory
- search how to rewind the CD to the beginning after using it
- install and uninstall softwares each time I started or finished using it
- as a precaution phone to the technical support before I switched on the computer

Most people of an advanced age don't like to learn anything about technology. They don't want to cope with their time. They want to be assisted, have someone doing the work for them. They fear to jump into it and learn by themselves. Technology is a kind of ugly devil that could rip their brains and kick their bottoms off their armchairs. They just don't want to deal with it.

Me neither. But I had no choice. It was a matter of survival. Having no retirement pension and no other lead to get money for a living, I had to computerize myself as quickly as I can.

And at Delconsulting, they knew it very well. And they had no choice either than to put me into the big thing.

So they retained me in my own flat with 3 PC and 2 computer engineers and they forced me to domesticate the beast.

It was an awful and painful time. I was teached how to use a computer, how to go on Internet, how to run a blog and so on... The morning they bugged me with the theorical approach, all the blablabla about the chipsets, the hard drive, the arpanet system, the web communities.. On the afternoon, we went on exercises. I was given missions to accomplish : post a note, order something on the web, copy a CD, download a tune, erase a trackback... Most of them, I failed.

After 3 months of the treatment, I finally managed to do something on my own. One night, I got up, turn the beast on and wrote an email to Amnesty International in order to demand my release according to the Geneva convention.

As they settled a proxy (yes I did learn as well what a proxy was), the email didn't go far. But for them, it was the sign I was ready to be launched !!

I had changed in my attitude. All what I would have done offline before, I would now prefer to find a solution to do it online. Would I like to express a feeling about something, I'd rather blog it than go in the next café to discuss with my drinking friends. Would I like to read a good old book, I'd rather download a pdf version than dig my bookcase. Would I like to play cards, I'd rather connect to an online gamers community than to invite friends. Would I like to go see a place, I'd rather not go and watch the landscape on Flick'r.

I can't say thank you to them. But I have to recognize they did their job pretty well. They managed to get me interested in that stuff named computer. They even turned me into an addict..

Well, now I think it's time for me to go for a walk in Second Life.

Guys, do you remember this ?

It's a brillant method indeed to manage recruitment interviews. I think I will advocate for this kind of HR management since now on.

Maybe your first name is not Joe. Maybe you are a Brian or some kind of a Steve. Maybe you call yourself Linda, whereas everyone knows your real name is George.

Whatever may your first name be, if someone ends a tough conversation about a problem to be solved with a sentence like this one "Can you handle this Joe? ", consider yourself doomed.

It's a well-known trick used in the everyday life of office guerilla. The guy who let you hear that kind of cunning sentence, is trying to push you into something you won't ever go through. It sounds pretty much like the settlement of a biased relationship based on "slave and master", "daddy and son", or of "I trust you peasant" and "I won't disappoint you my lord" roles.

Maybe he is your boss. Then he believes he can legitimately give you work to do (between us : what a nonsense !!) and he is training for this new management technique he has just learnt in his last seminar.

Maybe he isn't. Maybe he's a colleague trying to have his job done with no pain.

Be he legitimate or not is not the point. This "can you handle this Joe ?" guy is trying to cheat you. He wants you to feel important, clever and helpful (what you aren't, don't dream pal.. you are just another zombie in a cubicle), so that he could get rid of something he just can't do himself. He wants you to work hard on a pretty difficult matter. And that's not what you want. What you want is : sit on a chair all day waiting for the pay check to come. Not to get your head busted into hardcore problems.

But, you can't say no. If you dare, you will be seen as a total looser. And this will stamp for ever your file in the company. So once he asked the question, you have no choice but to proudly accept. And you have no choice but to solve the problem, unless you would like to be seen as the biggest lame of your business unit.

Unless, you find someone wise to advise you how to get out such a situation.

And once again, as an old man having got the hang of things in business life, I could provide you some nasty bit of advice.

Here is what you can do :

1. Just pass the "hot potatoe" to someone else

The easiest, but not the smartest way. If everyone applies this technique, the burden will go all the way round the office before it ends on the desk of the very last junior consultant hired. And that could be you.

2. Pretend your name isn't Joe

Thus, as your boss mixes up first names, he may also mix up skills and so on. So you are not the one with the best profile to do that job. He may be very confused and guess you are taking the mick out of him. But all you have to do to clarify the mess is to tell him who is really Joe.

3. Fake an heart attack

If you were good enough, in your acting classes in college, it could work. If you weren't, you could fake a gastro.

4. Make it big

Make the problem even more complicated. Ask for details. Come back every day to give your report, tell minute after minute how it's going on, ask for advices, and above all, demand more time and ressources. Get other people involved. Inflate the project so that it will go totally out of controll. Let everyone panic about it.

You will handle this one for sure, but you will never get another one.

5. Get into something else quickly

Find another "can you handle this Joe ?" guy who will give you another project. A project classified "top priority" that you can rely on to dodge the first one, and which will be less boring to you. Especially if you can cut it into small tasks, all of them you can delegate to all the "Joes" you would find in the corridors the next minute you got the project.