Things have been really busy at work lately. My number of clients has increased exponentially in the past three weeks, and I’ve gone from spending endless stretches of time dusting the spaces between the keys on my keyboard with my tongue to spending endless stretches of time sighing loudly and declining to take client phone calls because I am too busy dusting the spaces between the keys on my keyboard with my tongue.
To be honest, I actually like having a lot of clients to handle. It helps the day pass more quickly, enables me to write and then ignore countless to do lists, and allows me to feel important. But the frightening thing is that the more clients I have, the more people that are relying on me to provide answers to their questions. And the questions. My god, these clients must stay awake all night thinking of questions to ask, questions that sound very much like the same questions they’ve already asked six hundred times. The scary part is that I am me, and that makes me in no way qualified to answer important questions regarding selling to the federal government.
On a rare occasion, I will admit to being stumped and will defer the question to someone who may be able to provide a better answer than myself (everyone else in the world). The rest of the time, however, I respond to every question by saying, “Well, I would do…” and then I speculate. And the client assumes that, since they are paying for me to know more than them, I am giving them a valid and correct answer. If they’d listen more carefully, though, they’d realized that by saying “I would”, I’m actually just sharing what my best guess would be.
Example:
“What should I write in this section of the proposal?”
“Well, I would just write something about…”
I’m not telling them what the government wants them to put in that section because, quite frankly, I don’t actually know. I’m just guessing. But the good thing is that the client is at least saving time by paying someone else to do their guessing for them. Shouldn’t that count for something?
I know this sounds terrible; clients pay to receive high quality service and then they get me and I’m really just concerned about what’s for lunch and then dinner and did I remember to pick up dental floss because I haven’t flossed in three days and that’s bad for my gums and when am I due for a teeth cleaning anyway? And speaking of cleaning, should I wash the sheets tonight, or should I wait until tomorrow? In my defense, however, being in this position for the past three months has given me the experience to make at least educated guesses, so I’m probably better than just asking the homeless man sitting on the sewer grate by their office. But not by much.
Please don’t think the money they pay for my time is a waste, however. These clients don’t know that I’m really just fielding their questions with mere speculation, so they go home at the end of the day feeling confident and reassured and correct. And I go home and wash my sheets, because while the client was asking a particularly long question, I was planning my day for tomorrow and I realized that laundering my linens just didn’t fit into my schedule.