Give peanuts, get monkeys :)

Yesterday - Not the brightest of Mondays I have had. Basically, I am trying to do a tradeflow estimation.

Here’s how I’d summarize the project so far.

1. I am a new hire who is doing this without any training.
2. Now, since the brands whose estimations I am handling were acquired recently by us, I am essentially living the acquisition – learning the acquiree’s systems and trying to fit them in somehow into our systems.
3. The knowledge in the old system has been lost – simply ‘coz no one gives a damn - so basically I can summarize how most of work days progress by the picture below

Image courtesy: http://photos.surfline.com/albums/userpics/10102/

4. The guy in USA is asking my boss for a certain deliverable. Which he ofcourse is more than willing to promise – use thodi na karni hai Microsoft Excel se shaadi…

But, here’s the catch. The deliverable was never delivered even before the acquisition – reason being its way too much of an effort for the end purpose this estimation is going to serve. It’s a bit like trying to wield a bull just to hang your jacket on the horn!! :D.

Evidently, I had queries – on the methodology used to do the estimation. Which is when I heard the most amazing dialog in my stint at work so far. All credits and copyrights of the next few lines go to the guru in USA.

“Approach the project in this manner – think that there’s a party at your house. Obviously I am interested in the party in your living room and not your histrionics in the kitchen. So, why don’t you just serve me the goodies and let me decide on what I like best.”

Now that I think about this incident earlier in the day, I feel like saying this to him

“Dude…get real. Parties are for invitees. Those who gatecrash have to do the dishes and eat the leftovers.” :D. Different thing that had I said this, I would be working on a different b than my blog – biodata!! Lolss…

Gosh…I should have nailed this thing when I had the chance. Anyways, the obvious method in this case was – ASSUMPTIONS. This one word in English is a million blessings put together!!

Amazing that sitting in an A/C room in a plus Singapore office, I can govern how an entire country will play out for one entire year just by drawing a number I like and putting it into something as simple as F16 (an Excel cell!!).

This should be real good fun…delivery on Saturday. Which reminds me – bugger, pore over the excel and not on horsespeak…adios for now.