Favors

“Hold up a minute Sir! I’ll need to check your bag please.”

“Oh sure. Sorry, I was in the moon.”

Just another day, just another routine check by the security guard at the front door. After a day like this, who wouldn’t be in the moon. Having a project sacked by higher ups so close to completion date is like waking up from a dream still drowsy to find a bear mauling through your tent. A sudden reality check that brings life back at front and center.

When did it stop being surprising that people address me as “Sir”… what was I thinking anyway? How did the day pass by without me noticing.

“That’s a big cup of coffee, you expecting a long day?”

“Hey hey what do you think?”

“I think you are a crack head.”

A short exchange between co-workers wrapped up all the fun that happened during the meeting from 8:30AM to 11AM. 2PM is a conference call between clients and myself while a sudden surprise call interrupted my lunch, which wasn’t missed all that much because it was consisted 100% of caffeine. Time is ticking and 4PM seems to be closer than I thought whenever I had time to look up from the wires and papers that now clogged my desk. My 3 desks.

“Yes.” “No” “hmmmm” “arrg”. Some got lucky and I was able to consciously form a word whilst the rest will just have to contemplate the meaning of the guttural sounds that comes out of my throat. I trust them to understand that it means I am in shit and I appreciate that they delay whatever it is that they need to discuss with me till later. As the deadline approached, I was reassured by the presence of my sales guy sitting at my desk, using my phone calling in favors, pulling strings. It’s a disposition that granted me freedom even from the inquiries of my manager and bosses. There’s only so much favors you can ask a day before anyone start getting annoyed at you though, between the two of us, we’ve probably used up all our favor reserves for the year ahead to complete this project.

Favors to get the equipment, favors to get the drivers redesigned, favors to get in touch with the head of other departments and favors to pull the director into the picture to haul other department’s asses, cut through finance and override bureaucrats.

There! DONE! it works!. Adrenaline rushed through our veins as we hurried to the scheduled meeting to discuss the positive result and hear briefing from the client side…

Perhaps the most disheartening thing that can happen to people in our field, or any field of business, is to have their project sacked due to financial reasons. The concept works, the objective honorable but in the end it’s still up to a simple formula in one person’s head that calculates cost vs return. We are just small fishes in a pond of sharks.