Today I was on the hook to give a presentation to a Very Very Very Important Person. Not just "my regional manager" or something like that, think "CEO of a Fortune 500 company" type of person. I, and others, knew we were on the "optional"/"if there's time" list, but we had to get fully prepared and dressed up anyway. After a long day of waiting and uncertainty, it turns out that this person and their sizable entourage had a full day of other activities and so nobody got to present. There was a polite fob off of "oh, maybe some other time, we'll set something up" but really that's probably not going to happen. Realistically, there was a >50% chance that we would get bumped, but it still sucks we didn't even get 5 minutes. FOCUS: What have you spent an inordinate amount of time and effort preparing for that didn't end up happening? What caused it to not-happen? How did you get over it...or did you?
This happens on the regular with my company. The Managing Director will come up with some far fetched idea like for our cloud system: Single User Sign On which would work with this home grown Citrix/RES/Windows 2008 R2 abomination that we ram down people's throats. Hmmm, I say. That sounds like a fun project. I do a TON of research and then implement it on a test bed. It worked after weeks of planning, tweaking, setbacks all on my own time after work and on weekends. I demonstrate it to 'Huhs' and 'Not Bad's' only for it to be scrapped and another engineer to wipe my VMs to test some bullshit other project without my permission. It has taken me a while to learn to ignore the things the MD 'wonders' about because it goes no where. TL;DR. Stupid MD who wants to know if things are possible then never to use them after you put in the work to prove that it is.
Practicing law. The amount of time prepping for eventualities that never happen is the basis of the job.
This is exactly what I thought of as I read the focus. In college I worked for one summer at a small firm and spent weeks helping prepare exhibits for trial. This was my only project for nearly half of the summer. The day before trial the case got settled. I was bummed that all my work went to waste and just like that, it was over. I worked a great deal on an attempted murder last year but when it came down to the 11th hour, the victim was suddenly unwilling to testify. We would never have gotten a conviction without his testimony so we were forced to offer a plea deal which the defendant took. I was pissed because I could've been doing a lot of other shit at work if only this little fucktard gang member had decided he didn't want to testify months ago.
Briefing my flights and never actually flying them. I've spent countless hours, days, weekends preparing products for some of my briefs, most notably one I had about three weeks ago for a night check ride. A fellow pilot and I got our flight scenario on Friday afternoon, so we began planning then. We came in on the weekend to prepare the brief, both Saturday and Sunday all day. We come in Monday, and the entire scenario gets changed. Back to the drawing board for the rest of the day. The flight was supposed to go on Wednesday, and we flew a different flight Tuesday night, so we stayed until 4ish am finalizing the brief on Tuesday after we landed. Wed night comes and it's thunder storming. No flying for us. Yesterday afternoon we get told we're going to fly the same flight tonight. So days of planning must be crammed into one night and one early afternoon. I'm at home now, but I'll be going in the finish the planning a couple of hours before I'm allowed to be in as per our standard operating procedures. This wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't happened at least four times within the past 4 months for different reasons.
I mean if I had a dollar for everytime I was going to a bar or party expecting a certain girl to be there thus I took extra care in preparing myself physically and mentally only to have them not show up, I'd have like...6 dollars. More business related, I've routinely put together 30-35 slide decks preparing for presentations of anywhere from 30-45 min only to either have a manager swoop in and take the presentation off my plate at the 25th hour or be asked to provide input on a single slide from that deck in the space of a larger meeting. Of all the times I've been told I'm tasked with a presentation that will get me "great client exposure and visibility", about 10% of those actually end up turning out in me presenting anything of note to them. Fucking glory-hunting advertising execs.
Air Traffic Control. We spend countless hours studying and memorizing frequencies and procedures in training. Then once you get your rating in a facility, you get to use the quick reference books and charts that have all that information already in them.
Sales. I used to work at The Onion doing local ad sales in Chicago. You'd get a potential client say "Come on in!" I'd get a ton of competitive data, dress-up, prepare all sorts of swag to give to them, and then have them bail last minte and NEVER reschedule the meeting. If I had a dollar for that, I'd probably have $200+. Fuck commissioned sales.
...and my flight tonight got cancelled...again. Although, I didn't really spend too much time on preparing, it still sucks that I have to do it again.
Hahaha oh this still makes me laugh. A researcher at my Uni invented a very useful, but quite niche product. The University has a wholly-owned subsidiary company that specializes in selling these products. (Incidentally, the sales cycle for this product activates around October and runs through to Dec every year). We started licensing negotiations with the subsidiary. After a year and two month's worth of negotiations (welcome to the public sector) we managed to get a deal signed. The subsidiary worked with our researcher to develop the product, which took about 6 months full-time work for the researcher and cash contributions from the various parties just shy of $100k. We start making advance sales. We launch the product. National press is interested because it addresses a hot-button topic. I go away to South America and the States for 7 weeks. When I come back, I'm informed that the University, in it's infinite wisdom, has liquidated the subsidiary. Hahahahaha. Genius.
The whole military is terrible about shit like this. My personal favorite scenario Commander: Hey guys, random general will be coming through your building briefly while visiting the base, be ready for him. Officer in Charge: Hey guys, make sure we clean this place up really good, we don't want the general to have a bad impression of us. Senior NCOs: IF WE DON'T SPEND THE NEXT 8 HOURS PAINTING ROCKS AND POLICING UP PINE CONES THE GENERAL AND HIS POSSE ARE GOING TO ASS RAPE US TO DEATH. Cue general either spending 2 minutes in our building or not showing up because he didn't have time. And seriously, what kind of person is going to be like "Hey, dude, check out this building's rock garden" "Holy shit, it's Fall and there isn't a single leaf to be found" "We should totally increase their funding, I've never seen anything like this before in all my days" "Mother of god, they polished the stainless steel bathroom stalls with baby oil, get my personal check book" I once spent 2 hours hand cleaning an F-16 because a general was supposed to fly it. They ended up using another jet because they didn't realize the one they had me (and 2 other people) cleaning was grounded.
This made me think of all the time my mom spent preparing for Y2K. She was practically a doomsday prepper.
Heh. Control: "Squadron commander wants 50 AGM-135s ready to go when the next sortie flies out an an hour!" *Ammo busts their asses getting 50 AGM-135s assembled* Ammo: "We got that ordinance ready to go Control, you want us to start delivering it to the flightline?" Control: "Scratch that, squadron commander wants 110 JDAMs instead, tear down those 135s and get those JDAMS assembled on the double!" Ammo: ... I know nobody knows what I'm talking about, but rest assured it really, really, sucked.
In college, I had been part of a group of students that was throwing a concert festival on the MU's campus. No, I wasn't in a frat, and it wasn't for money. We were donating the proceeds to research in heart disease. Anyone that has dealt with beauracratic red tape before need to face the biggest gauntlet- university administration. We had to have permits for EVERYTHING. And when I say "everything" I mean over two dozen individual permits, some with conflicting requirements that made the concert impossible without breaking a code or two. I had been involved with hiring the talent and The Urge (a fairly large, regional band) was interested in playing the festival. Then it ended up pouring the entire day, and with the few indoor places we consulted, it would be a shell of it's conception.