Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Middle Men Are Ridiculous!

Something I have learned after seven years working in architecture is that middle men rarely make projects more efficient. Usually a middle man will just gum up the works a tad, but on a certain project, which will remain nameless, dealing with this middle man (and by middle man we're talking about a company) has been one of the most painful processes in my entire life. Not physically obviously, but mentally. It just drains the life right out of you....makes you want to scream....frustrates you so much that all you can do really is laugh at how ridiculous the situations get to be...you get the idea. Well today I thought I would open a little peep hole into this process and share with you one little incident that exemplifies how awesome it is dealing with this sort of thing. Of course I won't name names or companies, which means I have to alter the correspondence a tid bit, but you'll get the idea.

E-mail to Mr. X at 10:17am: Hi Mr. X, Would it be possible to get the word files for Section 3 of the ____ documents? Thanks, Natalie

Response at 2:03pm: Natalie, Please let us know the purpose of your request. Thanks (and he copied two of his co-workers who are also infamous for making things so much quicker and easier for me).

E-mail to Mr. X at 2:09pm: We wanted to pass along the file to the contractor so he could fill in the information and send to the owner.  Thanks, Natalie

Response at 3:12pm: Natalie, Please let me know which document in Section 3 you are referring to. Thanks. (i.e. he wasn't going to send me the whole section because that would be too fast and easy).

E-mail to Mr. X at 3:17pm: I believe they need the whole section which would include: (followed by uninteresting list of 12 items). The request was for Section 3, so I just assumed they were hoping to get all of it, if possible. Thanks, Natalie

Response at 3:28pm: Natalie, These documents are not meant to be provided to the Contractor as Word Documents.....blah blah.

So here's the thing, if you look at my first e-mail at 10am this morning I asked "would it be possible?". If it wasn't possible couldn't you just say this from the beginning? It took me all day to figure out that I could not get these files for the contractor. Awesome!

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