The Games We Play

Well, I finally have some time to write something down. Why? Cause I am waiting at the airport. Another one of those trips where I spent a 14 hour day for a one hour meeting. Well this time it was two meetings, actually one meeting with some pissed off developers and a presentation to the Big Gorilla.

Actually, the developers weren’t pissed until they heard what we had to say. It’s a long story, but I will try to tell the short version. You see, I am an infrastructure planner, developers love my stories, or they hate them. Good news, or bad, but never in-between. Yes or no, never maybe. Engineers like definite answers, no room for shades of grey. Yet, there is always grey. That’s what makes a good planner, being able to ferret out the important black and white and massage the grey to make it work. What are the hot buttons, who are the people involved, it’s a game, just like any. Deliver the message the right way so the right people like it, while still making sure the engineering is sound.

Anyway, we have this client, a Big Gorilla down in the jungle. They are in a tough spot as they need to make some improvements, and they have needed to do them for a while. Well, the projects only cost about 120 million bucks. They can’t bring in development unless they make the improvements, and they can’t construct the improvements unless they get some money from developers.

Anyway, these two guys, they got 50 acres, right, a mere speck in the Big Gorilla’s forest. Well, they want to build some houses. Can’t do that unless you got some place for the crap to go, right? Well, anyway, the Big Gorilla has been telling them, “sure you can connect, all you need to do is pay Joe Engineers to do this study, right.” Except the Gorilla already knows the answer, No capacity…….So they show up at the meeting where we tell them, “Sorry mates, no capacity”. The dude looks at us and calls the whole thing a set up, and starts spouting about litigation and lawyers and all that good finger pointing stuff. We say, hey man were just the messenger, but actually they weren’t pissed at us, just the fact that they have millions of dollars on the line and yet, they have to jump through another hoop.

We felt like some chumps…..you see….the Gig Gorilla needs money, and Joe developers got some (at least right now) and Joe developers, they really want this project to happen, right. So the Big Gorilla uses us to leverage Joe developer and squeeze some lunch money out of them. Except, these Joes are not going to back down, there like that scrawny kid who fights back, kickin and scratching, held up by his shirt collar as his feet swing two feet off the ground.

We got played as the middle man, and Joe was pissed, F-bombs dropping like its going out of style…….poor schmucks. You can tell they are under the gun. Looking at losing it all, the thing is, Big Gorilla needs them, or needs their money, but Big Gorilla needs them to sweat a little so they may agree to kickin down a little more than they would otherwise.

Playin with people like that ain’t right, but we had to keep our mouths shut, cause, you never know when that BIG contract could be right around the corner, and self preservation is the name of the game in Jungle. Big Gorilla dishing out bananas to those that scratch his back.

It’s a sick game.