The week in review...

What a week.

After a near never-ending battle to get a client to put arse in gear before engaging deadline, he finally supplied me with a written, if poorly-spelled brief .. that turned out to be wrong .. and late.

Had a run-in with Companies House who, in their infinite wisdom bounced four sets of company books for no fathomable or apparent reason, then lost three sets of accounts in the post, plus a string reminders, nags and threats respectively.

Then skipped several stages of the process and went directly to the fine and penalties stage.

Still, my unnatural and unholy mix of withering sarcasm, well-managed rage and blistering scrutiny forced them into a bit of climb down.

Apparently, government bodies do not admit blame or liability for anything, which my accountant imparted to me with a certain degree of incredulity.

That all changed on 3rd of March 2005.

I wrestled with an unbending, slippery and just plain fucking annoying job for two days. Well, I say two days, but that's the cumulative time I spent on it, which was spread liberally over the course of the week.

So if you have need of the splendiferous services of a creative, and you ask said creative for an estimate of time, if they say five working days, there's every chance that the five days will be scattered hither & yonder across a three week period.

Yet another confrontation with yet another agency that seem to think that they can be authoritative about not only my role in a particular project, but also take it upon themselves to make claims to the client about my services and abilities that are typically either full of shit, full of holes, or so full of holes and shit, that everything pisses out all over the place and we end up falling behind and missing deadlines.

One of these days, these people will skip the whole ego-driven jostling for primacy thing and concede project leadership to me, skip the set-backs, skip all of the misdirection and near-libelous tosh and just do their fucking job and let me do mine.

Shortsightedness is the order of the day. The agency over-sell this one minor, near-trivial feature of the project to the client. The client goes all gooey at the prospect.

Meanwhile, I'm working on substance that has a higher priority. But the agency have only one level of priority and are utterly incapable of seeing how totally unimportant that one over-sold thing is on the grand scheme of things.

Client is getting fidgety and decides to bring the deadline forward nearly a month, and also decides to demonstrate current project -- such that it is -- to superiors.

Agency doesn't bother telling me, which is always helpful:

Agency: "Oh, by the way, [client] isn't having the meeting today."

Me: "What meeting?"

Agency: "Oh, didn't I tell you? Yeah, [client] was domo'ing the project to his bosses."

Me: "No, you didn't tell me."

Gritted teeth.

Agency: "Thought I did."

Feckless to the point of being dangerous.

So while I have a tome-like list priorities, agency has one. And why is this? Because it's the cosmetic frippery that has hardly any bearing on the project, but it looks nice.

Really?

Having done some quick arithmetic in my head, nearly two hours of my day is spent getting people to do their job properly.

Chasing up invoices is the bane of my life. I have to call up every other day to get someone in the accounts department to actually lift their arse of their chair and walk down / up to the office of the signatory in question and get them to sign the damn cheque.

Them: "But he / she isn't in."

Me: "So when will he / she be in?"

Them: "I'm not sure."

Me: "Do you know of anyone who is sure?"

Trying not to sound patronizing.

Them: "I'm not sure."

Me: "Does he / she have a secretary?"

Them: "Oh, yes!"

Alle-fucking'-luia!

Me: "So, wouldn't it be a good idea to leave a note with their secretary?"

Them: "That's a good idea!"

Quite.

Me: "Can you do that?"

Them: "Yes!"

Me: "When?"

Them: "Well, Mr. / Mrs. / Miss [secretary] is on a training course for three weeks. So I'll leave a note for when they get back."

So, the weekend is a chance to wind down, get drunk, eat too much .. you get the idea.

Then build up my defenses and prepare to fling myself with gay abandon into the ceaseless yet strangely never-changing battlefield of business management and creative angst for yet another rib-tickling festival of mirth and merriment.

Wish me luck!