On Tuesday, one of my regular employers (a major British education company which I'd better not name) asked me if I could do a presentation for them. I always try to be accommodating, because they are a pretty regular source of income for me.
When was it? This Thursday! (OK, I'm getting a little annoyed already. I think it's ridiculous to be trying to organize events at such short notice - and, frankly, it's inconsiderate, unreasonable, impolite to be trying to impose on your presenters with less than 48 hours' warning. And I just know that this means the "organization" at the venue is going to be even more chaotic than usual. In China, unfortunately, 48 hours' notice is quite a lot.)
Well, OK, maybe. What time? In the evening. (Doubleplusungood. However, it is going to be 500 kuai plus travel expenses for a half-hour appearance, so I figure I can crowbar it into my cramped schedule somehow.)
Oh, yes, and it's going to be in a university. One of the universities, as it happens, that I used to work in - and swore never to work in again. Never mind: I think this event is being staged by a private school that just happens to be using part of the campus. It should be a survivable ordeal.
I'm annoyed about the short notice. I'm annoyed about it being in the evening. I'm annoyed about the (habitual) lack of adequate briefing from the employer (English company but all Chinese staff - communication not good!): no explanation of what this school is, what the intended purpose of the presentation is, who the likely audience is or how large it might be. I am especially annoyed about the timing (the presentation I have been asked to give should run to 3 hours; our clients are always too tight-fisted to pay for the full session when they're only running it as a non-fee-paying promotional event, so we fairly regularly condense it into 1 or 1.5 hours - but these guys have asked us to do just half an hour!!). But I am used to this kind of thing by now: I can busk it somehow. I am trying to be accommodating, trying to be nice.
The liaison at the school doesn't contact me until Wednesday evening - by text message. We get into a protracted exchange of messages, by the end of which I have blown off the engagement.
"Will it be OK to meet at the East Gate at about 7.45pm? Or would the South Gate be more convenient?" I ask.
"I will meet you at the East Gate at 8.05," she replies.
Huge warning klaxons go off inside my head.
I know this campus well, and none of the classroom blocks or lecture halls we are likely to be using are less than several minutes' walk from the East Gate, possibly 10 or more. And it is always politic to be at the venue a few minutes before the scheduled start time, to make sure that the computer and projection equipment are working OK (a consideration that is all the more important when we are on such a tight time schedule - with really not a second to waste).
I remind my contact that I am supposed to be starting speaking at 8pm, so would really like to be in the room no later than 7.55pm.
She tells me that I am the second speaker.
I remind her - politely, but firmly - that I have been booked to speak from 8pm to 8.30pm, and that if there are other speakers, they will have to go on before me or after me.
After further frantic text message exchanges, I discover: a) they want me to run a quiz with the students at the end, to give away some book prizes (there are only two prizes, but even so, this will eat up a few more valuable minutes that we should be using for the already dangerously attenuated - almost unviable - presentation); b) one of her colleagues wants to give an introductory speech of about 10 minutes (and I know, from bitter experience, that it will probably run longer; it will certainly seem to run longer); and c) we can't start any earlier because..... someone else is using the room until 8pm! So, even if that previous group gets out of the way right on time, we can count on it taking at least 5 or 10 minutes to set up the room for our use and to get all of our audience inside and sitting down. Thus, we are looking at having probably around 10 minutes available for the main body of my presentation, at best; possibly less than 5 minutes. Utterly, utterly ridiculous!
No, I am not prepared to give up a big chunk of my evening (after an already exhausting day at work), to travel to the 'wrong side of town', to hang around for 40 or 50 minutes..... just to speak for 10 minutes or less.
It's not really about the money for me; I need to feel that I am doing something worthwhile - and there really is nothing useful that I could tell these students in less than 10 minutes.
And no, I really don't want to have anything to do with people who can be so infuriatingly naive and disorganized. (Even though not actually a part of the university, I fear that this school is tainted by the typical university mentality: they probably thought they had bought me body & soul for the entire evening, and that it really wouldn't matter at all if they started a quarter of an hour or a half an hour late and kept me there until well past 9pm. No, sorry, people: 8.00-8.30 means 8.00-8.30, and not a minute more.)
Alas, I find myself ultimately more frustrated with the English company that was supposedly setting this up. They should have told this client that 30 minutes was not long enough for this presentation. They should have told them that it couldn't possibly be any less than 30 minutes. They should have told them that it is vital to work out exact timings for all parts of the event. They should have told them that it is unwise/unacceptable/pointless to try to organize events of this kind at just a few days' notice. They should have told them all this before they even asked me to do this gig on Tuesday. Should have, but didn't.
Then, when I told them about all the problems with the administration and the timing, they should have told the client that it was impossible to proceed, and they would do better to postpone the event (if they staged it over the weekend, during the hours of daylight, they'd get a much better audience anyway!). But NO: instead, they came back to me and suggested that I could stay there longer, in order to deliver a full 30 or 40-minute presentation, no matter what time we actually managed to get started. (And this, despite the fact that I had already explained in a phone call that I had other plans for the rest of the evening and absolutely could not stay beyond the 8.30 finish time I'd orginally been given.) My contact seemed surprised, uncomprehending, aggrieved. She then said sniffily that she would see if she could find someone else to do the presentation. I could not restrain myself from pointing out to her that she had already told me the day before that she was unable to find anyone else for this engagement; and also, that it was downright RUDE to be asking people to take on jobs like this at less than 24 hours' notice, and that I thought it was very unlikely anyone would agree to it even if they were free.
I have, thus, probably just torpedoed one of my longest-standing and most lucrative business relationships here. But sometimes, you know, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
No comments:
Post a Comment