Finally, Back To Square….

Well, its the working week for me and I must tell you, whenever its a week in which I am having a session, the blues are much more what Monday can bring and those blues stay with me for the entire week. These blues turn into worries when I am taking a session at a partner location and the client is prestigious. The same kind of story got repeated this week too where both of these things came together. Now, there is nothing wrong in this that I am taking a session at a partner’s location and there is always a great thing to have a really reputed client but the worse happens when the partner fails to deliver what it has promised and due to this, the client is upset. I really tell you that this kind of situation is something in which only if you are , you would understand its seriousness! Unfortunately, I had to taste the bitterness( even for a short time) right in the start of the week!

What we do requires that we access some very sophisticated, Oracle database installed on some really kick-arse machines. Once done, we do use these machines for many demonstrations. Now if these machines are locally available, this whole process is a real fast thing but the issue is, some times, where these machines are, that’s not the same location where the session is going on and also, some times, we need to give machines to the delegates on an individual basis. For this, at times one room only doesn’t has all the required number. So what we do at that time,we switch to the partner site where these things are given to us with a very big challenge, now we lose the local access of the machines and have to access them remotely. And this, this is a real tough thing to do without having proper bandwidth for which we need to depend on the partner who must assure that they would provide it. They do promise to do so, but as like always, its not really that easy to keep up promises! That’s what happens all the time when I have a session at a partner location and this time, the same issue did arise. The partner was supposed to provide us high bandwidth which he mentioned he is doing, but somehow, it became insufficient for us. Due to this, the remote access became really painful for us. It doesn’t matter how is the access to me since I won’t be using it much but there must not be any issue for delegates. And somehow, almost all of them were facing this slowness. They asked me to check it with the local network guys which gave a recorded answer that they are checking it. Well, by this time, atmosphere was heated and things were not really looking good. There were calls being made and no satisfactory answer was coming from anywhere. Somehow, in all of this, the day passed! Did I mention, we were still on Monday, yeah the very first day of the session turned bad!

I got another promise from the network guys that they would sort out everything and would give us a dedicated line from Tuesday, yep today that means! I am not sure what they did since when I arrived, I asked for this and they told me that its done. When I asked them to show the bandwidth to me, it was far lesser what they claimed to be coming. Well, their reply was that the check which we were using is playing games.  Now its not an answer that I would buy but I did think to take it and started waiting for the guys to come who would actually use it and would verify that its now at their satisfaction levels or not. When the delegates, what was expected , did NOT happen! The bandwidth was not proper again and there was again a temperature rise in the room. It was just not for the bandwidth but also that out of the two air-conditioners , only one was working. Well, this was too much. So I decided to make a call my sales person. I guess he was already facing the heat so when I called him and tried to explain what’s happening, before that he stopped me and told that the venue is shifted now and we are supposed to move now to that building where the machines actually were placed. Cool! So in the lunch time, we finally moved to our own building and there, things became really better! Delegates looked happy and were smiling and reported no apparent issues or problems. Finally, we were back to square. I did have last week’s session in this very building only and now, after one and half day, I was back in the same room but only for good!

Its just 20 more minutes before Wednesday to say hello and in my culture, its a day which is supposed to be considered good for starting something. Well, the start is already done but I am still expecting that things would go and stay smooth. I am really not happy looking at my ratings and I so wish that it becomes better too. I am so tired and I actually slept but just woke up and thought to write this post. Now when its done, I guess I should sleep back! Nite nite!