You’ve been there. Drowning.
You get a call at 4:37 on Tues. You’re in early rush hour traffic teaching your son how to drive. “Brake. Brake now. Brake harder. Harder. Now.”
The call is for a meeting tomorrow. Just you and some clients from out of town. They just have some questions; they want to know about the process. No particulars. Shouldn’t take long.
Clients from out of town always want particulars. It is, in fact, the reason they come into town. No one spends money on airfare and hotels and cab rides because they have questions about the beautiful generalities of your process.
Oh no. We will drill down.
You walk into the conference room and drown in all the paper, the binders, at least seven, open all over the table like some kind of boudoir for accountants.
Good lord.
You’re handed spreadsheets. Narratives in column form. They are pointing to various numbers here and there asking how, exactly, these numbers were arrived at?
If this was a movie from 1943, you would drag a finger between your collar and your neck. Gulp. Think quickly.
Numbers, you say, are not arrived at. They are not vacations or wedding parties or first dates. The metaphor that equates computation to travel is, you insist, inherently flawed.
They are stunned. Confused.
Look, you say, I don’t know know where they got these numbers. I know what I asked them, but I don’t know how this answers my question.
Frankly, I am not supposed to make sense of the answer. I’m in charge of asking the question. Someone else in charge of evaluating answers.
Frankly, you say much more slowly now, that’s your job. You’re the client, right? What do you think?
You sit back in your conference-room high-backed faux-leather chair. You console yourself with the knowledge that no matter what happens at this table, no one will die because of this decision.
They stare back. Ask a few more questions but you have found your boat and you are sailing out of here.
You arrive.
Later, you take your son driving. Today’s lesson is parallel parking
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