" I will come back to you"

[bunn]

" I will come back to you" he said.

No you won't, I thought.  We both know that,  in our heart of hearts.

For you telephoned in June and I asked you some questions about exactly what you wanted done, and you said you would get back to me with the answers.

And you got a minion to telephone me in August to ask why I had not got back to you, and I said 'because I don't know what you want, you were going to have a think and tell me'.

And you left a message demanding an urgent callback today, so that I could once again say 'yes, the kind of things that you have so vaguely described are all possible. But to give you a quote for doing something specific, or indeed, to take action of any kind, I STILL need to know how you want it to handle a) and do you want to change b) while you are at it, and do you have content for c)?    Which questions, you could not answer. May never, in fact, be able to answer, for it seems that  they are the Answerless Questions.

There comes a point when I simply cannot  make all the decisions. Particularly when they already HAVE a system that works and does everything they originally asked for 4 years ago, and the reason they want to change it , so far as I can tell, is a vague unspecified feeling that somehow it should be better, but they don't really know what the problem is with what they have got.   And also they don't want to spend much, and won't give a definition of 'much'. 

Or 'better'.   I can't really explain that I feel it would on the whole be a better world if they all stopped what they are currently doing and did something more worthwhile and creative, like turnip farming, mud sculpture or the authoring of small yet delicately written poems about the beauty of leaves.  I could easily produce a 'better' website about any of those things....

Comments

[lsellersfic.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should send a letter or email saying "We are unable to give a quote without the following information..."

Some people are much better at remembering stuff that's in writing.

Alternatively, you possibly don't need this business, since it sounds like a classic case of muddled thinking and vague requirements and its unlikely to get better even when your initial questions are answered.

[purplecat]

How hard can it be to remember which account you're logged in as??? I mean its not as if ladyofastolat doesn't managed perfectly well without posting from the wrong account left, right and centre.

Or even to remember the resolution always to log out of the secondary account whenever you've finished whatever you were doing.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Terribly hard. On the FnH boards I was always getting mixed up between my own account and the Treasurer one, until I just got myself all the permissions the Treasurer account had so I didn't need to keep swapping.

At some points it seemed as if every time I made a post I had to copy it to clipboard, delete it, log out, log in, repost... :-D

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Somewhat to my amazement, he did actually phone back this morning! Admittedly he wanted to arrange a meeting rather than provide the information I asked for, but I suppose it's movement of a sort.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

"I will come back to you" he said.

No you won't, I thought. We both know that, in our heart of hearts.

I thought you were trying to write some angsty chick-lit there!