Lack of planning on your part does not equal panic on mine..

[FawkesFyre]

The title was paraphased from a sign in an old manager's cube...I used to not like it, until I came to realize how true it was.

I've been working on this one rfp online for the past month. The sales guy I work with on this gave me the slip every freakin time I tried to schedule a meeting. He waits until Friday to finally talk to me when the rpf is due today!

He actually admits that he was slacking on this one and throws all sorts of changes on me keep me late at work friday night. I log in today and find that the company has closed the bid...early. So now he gets to run around like an idiot trying to find out WTF.

I feel no sympathy with him...we will likely still get the account...at least my job is done...he gets to do the rest.


Now my brain is rotting on a conference call for my next project where I have to sit hear and listen to all this junk that doesn't apply to me right now.

[Shurikane]

And THAT is exactly why I hate teamwork. Every time I had to put up with it, I ended up getting the shaft because one or two people didn't do anything and the others are forced to work harder to make ends meet.

My prime example happened in sophomore year. We were three people in a team. The two idiots sat on their asses from beginning to end, goofing off and making a veritable parody of the work we were supposed to do. I ended up building the entire project all by myself, handed that to the teacher, and the idiots got the game good grade as I did because it was a team effort.

[Legend]

Poor Shuri. Most of my group projects in HS were about the same, but the nice thing is that the teachers often had you submit a report of sorts as to how well you thought the other group members contributed, etc etc. So if they did absolutely -nothing-, they'd get the bad grade they deserved unless you were incredibly nice and still gave them a good report, which I heard of happening, but then you can't bitch about them getting a good grade for doing nothing, because there's no way the teacher is gonna know you weren't telling the truth, or possibly care if they do given the report said they did.

[Ming]

Shuri, I feel your pain. As a business student in college, I had to endure group projects ALL the time because obviously no one in the corporate world is competent enough to do things on their own.

But now that I'm working on an office, I can see that some things never change. Although I will give credit to my department...when we have to work as a team on things, everyone contributes their fair share to get things done. But, all of our work is dependent on our sales department, who often times has no clue what the hell they're doing. As a result, my department has to be doubly careful and try to catch all the problems that sales creates.

Now, I live by the mantra "CYA" or "Cover Your Ass". I make sure that I get at least e-mail confirmation from our sales department before I do anything for them...that way, any mistakes that are made are on them, and not me.

[Tobias]

This occurs not just in the business world, but in the world of media as well. Luckily for me, most of the projects I've had to do, I've had good cooperation, yet there are problems. This alludes to a situation that I had to remedy for a bunch fo my friends.

One of the guys in my friends' film-group is a senior, has decided that he doesn't care anymore, and was assigned as their DP (Director of Photography...be nice!) Now, The whole time my friends are doing their work, they ask him after every take how the shot looked. He claimed that it was fine, for the sake of rushing the project along. What he neglected to tell them is that he didn't White Balance (Adjust the light balancing to offer perfect whites) and adjust the exposure/apeture/shudder speed to allow for no Blaring Glare. THe result was a horrible set of film that was un-usable.

When my friends told me of their dilemma, i put my own project on hold, and spent the night reshooting their piece, getting everything set up for them, offering my input on their takes and shot, and also shooting multiple takes when the moments arose that another take would be helpful, for perfection's sake. Not only did I do this, but another friend of ours who is also a film major pitched in. Along with us two filming, another friend of theirs pitched in his ideas for the villain of their piece, and ended up suggesting great ideas and ended up being the villain, having a friggen awesome time doing it.

The end result: The film was beautifully done, amazingly coriographed (SP?) and overall, just that much better. My friends said they are going to put my name and the other guy who helped out's name in the DP slot, putting the original guy under both of our names. While it seems like a mean thing to do, after what those guys put them through, i feel he deserves not even getting his name in there...but alas, thats TOO mean...even for me.

[Jaena]

I remember that one of the first nights Link and I were talking again he was working on a PowerPoint project, compiling information from his group. HE showed it to me, and afterI told him it didn't make much sense, I actually stayed up, unknown to him, and redid it so it made more sense. Two of the 4 other people in his group hadn't done ANYthing, and so across the bottom of every slide I put the names of the three (counting Link) who did do something. And I put my own name on there as well.

In the end, Link ended up getting an A, the other two who did help a tiny with research got an A or B, and the final two didn't get mentioned in the grade list off. My name ended up only being on one slide, but it still helped boost my self-worth to know that I got an A on a project that wasn't even mine. (I had had to re-look at some of the research sites because the slides made THAT little sense... then, Link is the type to procrastinate, so it was kinda thrown together at the last minute)

[FawkesFyre]

I learned the hard way that the unsaid motto of the business world litterally is as Ming stated..."CYA".

In this job, I've gotten into the habit of filing away ever email and response according to the project...because we never know when something will pop up.

It came in handy last week when I need to check something from a project that I handled 8 months ago... Yet this kind of thing happens all the time with proposals b/c it can take forever for the vender to go through their selection process.


I haven't heard a thing from that Sales guy in regards to submitting the RFP...and at this point don't really care.

I hated group work in school. I never trusted my team to do their part, and for good reason most of the time. I almost got shafted once b/c the rest of the team made all the decisions, and left me out...luckily we got to do those team evaluastions where I got to put in my 2 cents. It helped that the prof knew me too.