No, the purpose of this post is to talk about salesmen. And I say this with the knowledge that one of my best friends is a salesmen. But besides him, I really, really hate having to deal with salesmen. Like, to the point that my blood is starting to curdle from the amount I’ve had to deal with them in the last couple of weeks.

Let me explain. Actually, let me not explain, since this is the Internet. But let us just assume that I am helping someone out technologically, and to do that I have had to deal with a bunch of salesmen. Salespeople. Whatever. And I have found it to be the most unpleasant thing I’ve had to do in a long time. Why? Well, let’s see.

1 – Once they get a hold of your phone number/email/address they grab on and don’t let go.

I have gotten so many calls, and have had so many voicemails and so many emails since this project has started that I’ve lost count. Oh, and they say things like “I don’t want to pressure you. I’m just checking in.” But really what they are doing is pressuring me. Little do they know that I have absolutely no control over this situation, so they’d be better off calling a random number and hoping to get an answer.

2 – They usually don’t know what they are talking about.

The technical questions that I have are in some cases pretty easy to answer, and in some cases actually require a knowledge of technology to answer. So I know when I’m getting bullshitted. And with these salespeople, I’m getting bullshitted. And honestly, I don’t even really blame them. Their job is not a technical one. But then they are put in a bad position of having to sell technical solutions. So they are caught in this in between world of knowing just enough to frustrate me.

3 – They are smarmy.

Seriously. Do they ALL have to use that much hair gel?

4 – They are TOO nice.

Look, I’m not your friend. You are not my friend. You acting like you are my best buddy in the entire world is not going to make or break this sale. Be polite, be professional, and answer my questions. That is what I am looking for. I’m not looking for some fake chumminess. There are people that I enjoy talking to that I would talk to about my life if I wanted to. And you know what? A lot of times I don’t even talk to them about that stuff. So I definitely don’t want to talk to you.

5 – They try to weasel their way in.

They really want to come to you. They really want to meet at your place. They put up road blocks that make it difficult to get information except on their terms. Hey, you know what? That is obnoxious. You should be catering to me to a certain extent. If I make it clear that I am uncomfortable with you coming to my place of business right away, then respect that. Don’t say that it is impossible for you to do your job. Because if other people can do it, you can as well.

So yeah. I guess I’ll stop ranting down. I just needed to get that off my chest. Salespeople… So glad I stuck it out to get the CS degree…

Nothing.

That’s right. None of the issues that I went into the meetings hoping to get solved, did get solved. The first meeting was about this woman at work who completely lied about me. So the meeting was about how to make her happy with the software that I’m writing for her. We brought in some experts to look at what I had done. And you know what? They said that my software looked amazing. Just like the liar-woman had said herself a few months ago. But then, right after the meeting, we tried to get a hold of her. No luck. Not responding. What a shock. At least I think my boss now understands that I have been telling the truth about her and the situation.

Meeting the 2nd was at Dad’s work, to figure out an issue for how they do inspections and how we are tracking them in a piece of software I am writing for them. And you know what? After three hours, nothing was solved. If anything, we were further away from the solution than we were when we went in.

The third meeting was today. A planned follow up meeting about the liar woman. But she still hasn’t responded, so the meeting was basically pointless, and just ended up being over an hour of my boss talking about other things. It wasn’t bad, because I like my boss, but it didn’t solve the issue at hand. We actually even discussed stuff from the meeting I had at Dad’s, but we weren’t able to come up with any other solutions.

So I guess I’m just wondering, what is the point of having meetings? Do they accomplish anything? I’m not sure that I’ve ever really been in a meeting that has accomplished anything. In fact it seems like most things get accomplished when someone just goes and does something, and then faces the consequences later.

Which brings me to the point that I’m trying to make. I think that China has a very good possibility of bypassing the US in a lot of ways, such as technology, because at the end of the day the government can just say “Go do this. Build elevated trains in that city.” Here we have meetings and decide that we’ll put off things until the next meeting. Democracy.

Democracy has failed.

Some background. I’m working on this project that is separate from the group that I work in usually. It is part of a research grant that the History department is working on, along with an architect from outside the University. It is an interesting project, but I came on board 2/3rds of the way through, and it was my job to fix up some old code, something that I could definitely do.

But some people, notably people who aren’t doing any programming, decided that it would make sense to use technologies that I am unfamiliar with. That’s fine. I can learn them. Except they don’t want to give me the time to learn them. Instead they want me to “learn as I go”, which isn’t really applicable to the technologies that they have decided on. They didn’t listen to me when I told them this would be very difficult, and basically decided for me that I would do things this way.

Now they are getting very snippy with me because things are taking so long. Not only am I having to learn several new technologies, but I’m also having to do so in a framework already written by someone else who does things in a very inscrutable way. So I’m stuck, and getting pressure to do tasks that are very difficult given the situation.

But on top of that, people are now saying different things to different people. One person says “Yeah, person A is off the project.” Another says “Person A is still on the project, just less so.” And Person A says that he is still on the project full go. But I’m the only person who all of these things seem to be said to, and so I’m in a very uncomfortable place.

Why can’t I just sit in my office and look out the window?

But because of this situation, I’ve been slightly nervous about the current economic downturn. Missouri is already one of the worst in the nation for funding higher education, and this seems like an opportunity for it to become even worse. I know that it doesn’t necessarily mean that, but we’re talking about being nervous, not about facts.

To compound this, about a month ago the head of the entire University of Missouri System sent out an email saying that “everything is fine.” Those kinds of announcements always leave me nervous. It is like when the owner of a sports team comes out and says that the head coach is not in danger of being fired, and then the next day the guy is gone. But a month passed and nothing happened, so I figured that everything was fine. Until yesterday.

Yesterday we got another email from the same guy saying that there is a hiring freeze on and that all budgets are going to be reviewed with an eye for things that can be cut. They didn’t say anything about letting any faculty or staff go, but is that just the next step? Who knows at this point.

I’m not too terribly worried, because our department is well funded and important, and I like to think that I’m valuable. But still, it isn’t fun to think about.