colloquial

I've been teaching my customer some colloquial expressions. Here's a story to illustrate. No, this really didn't happen to me today. Really. I mean, why wouldn't this story be made up because it couldn't happen on a real project...

The first expression is "thrown under the bus". For example, if my customer is having difficulties with someone else in his organization who is blocking our project, and tells me on Thursday he's going to have the guy fired, and I think he in the end agrees with me to just let things work their course, and then he calls the CEO on Friday and says "this guy should be fired and Franki agreed with me", I've been thrown under the bus.

The second expression is "blow back". The CEO calls a meeting with my customer and the offending party and says one will be fired. The offending party comes to me and says "why did you say we have trouble working together?" I try to explain that I never said that, with my customer present to verify. For the record, the offending party is VERY hard to work with, going so far as to suggest my company is at fault for a quirk of the XML standard and that I should find a way to fix it. Right. After the offending party leaves I look at my customer who is saying "oh, sorry, I didn't realize what I said would effect you". I ask why he would make something up at my expense and he said that my opinion has weight with the CEO. I point out to him that he didn't consider blow back.

The third expression is "molly coddle". So I have to spend the rest of my day with the offending party to assure him that I think he's just great. And people wonder why I have an ulcer. I'll be spending the rest of my evening doing my real work that I couldn't get done because of this unscheduled babysitting gig. When my customer asks why I was spending so much time with the offending party I pointed out that, because my customer is a knucklehead, I now have to molly coddle the offending party.

The fourth expression is "a rose between two thorns". The CEO called me into his office this afternoon and apologized for getting me caught in the middle of the political war between the offending party and my customer. I explained to him that I was a rose between two thorns (though, I am originally the rose between two different thorns, if you remember Mr. Krol). He then said "and I am the shield for the rose". Uh huh. He also said the offending party might indeed be fired but he's not sure. Meaning, I have to keep up the molly coddling even though at the end of the day it will all be for naught.

The fifth expression, which I haven't taught my customer yet, is cluster fuck.

Ech. This is why I have an ulcer.

Now, I'm off to work on my ITIL study guide. I am probably going to sit for the exam on Thursday because, yeah, I have nothing better to do.