Saturday, April 17, 2010

I Feel Very Puppy Shame

Hi,
Today we have been declared half a day holiday.

Re: Holiday? For what? why all of a sudden?
.
How do i explain this to a customer, who is at the other end of the globe?

If there was a sudden natural calamity, I could explain, and he would emphatize with me.

If there was a social disturbance or unrest due to political situations, well even that is something that could be justified.

But, how the hell do you explain that, there is a strike of truckers/tankers who supply water to our facility and as a result we are facing acute scarcity of water and hence we have been declared half a day holiday.

Should i offer him the butterfly effect of chaos theory? that a strike of truckers halfway across the world will delay the availability of access to high speed networks to it's customers by a week.

The revenue loss incurred could be compensated by working on some other day, even the delay could be avoided by "stretching".

But how on earth do we regain the loss of face?

4 comments:

RamNarayanS said...

These are situations that warrant creativity, and not say puppy shame. :-) :-) (Don't we point out SP and network issues for VPN connects, maybe call this as an infrastructure failure. :))

Ask your PM or his boss, what they told the client? Or how would you have told it? (I am surprised there aren't borewells there or water desalination plants in that mega facility.)

Maybe build a case for everyone to have a laptop so that they can work from home in situations like these. :-D

Appu said...

Somehow, i couldnt place VPN failures and this failure on the same level.

If it's me, just tell them point blank. [call a spade a spade]

this sounds like a good one. ana sontha selavula sooniyam! [no more case buildings where the efforts may not bear fruits]

Ramesh said...

Really awful to have to explain shutting down because of such a reason. Perhaps creativity might suggest a "paper culture" in a certain part of the office !!

Appu said...

unfortunately paper is not panacea