missives from Houston...
Mar. 1st, 2004 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dagibbsWell, I'm in Houston again. Since the start of this year, I've spent 3 weeks in Ottawa... and I'm now on my 3rd week in Houston, too. Since the start of the year, I've had no weekend in Ontario (or Canada) in which I was not either entering or leaving the country, but I've spent one weekend entirely in Texas.
But, at least this hotel has high speed internet.
Which isn't helping a lot as I try to compose an email back to a customer. He wants to put an impossibly large amount of training into one week. Not just has he squeezed the estimated time for several sections noticeably downwards, he's also got a total of about 42 training hours for the (5-day) week. (Actual total without his "reductions" is closer to 50 hours.) Our normal, recommended, training schedule is 7 training hours/day (with a one-hour lunch break, this gives an 8-hour day). Most people then have to go back to desks, check email, etc. 8 training hours/day is heavy for 3 days, nearly impossible for 5. (In fact, I find most people at the end of 4 days of 7-hour days are generally talking about their brains being full.)
The real question is, how to tell the customer he's an idiot to try and do this, but do it (the telling) without the customer realizing I'm telling him he's an idiot.
In other news, for two days last week I almost relaxed cause I'd been told I wouldn't need to go to Germany. I was looking forward to about 5-6 weeks in Ottawa. Woot! Oops. I got an email on Friday telling me the Germany trip was back on once more. Doh! (I thought it was off, cause one of the senior managers of sales people had been by the California office and told me I wouldn't need to go, and could stop paying attention to the discussion about the customer in training.) (He didn't come by to see me, he saw me while he was there and mentioned it.) Of course, we do still need a P.O. from the customer.
I miss my sweetie.
But, at least this hotel has high speed internet.
Which isn't helping a lot as I try to compose an email back to a customer. He wants to put an impossibly large amount of training into one week. Not just has he squeezed the estimated time for several sections noticeably downwards, he's also got a total of about 42 training hours for the (5-day) week. (Actual total without his "reductions" is closer to 50 hours.) Our normal, recommended, training schedule is 7 training hours/day (with a one-hour lunch break, this gives an 8-hour day). Most people then have to go back to desks, check email, etc. 8 training hours/day is heavy for 3 days, nearly impossible for 5. (In fact, I find most people at the end of 4 days of 7-hour days are generally talking about their brains being full.)
The real question is, how to tell the customer he's an idiot to try and do this, but do it (the telling) without the customer realizing I'm telling him he's an idiot.
In other news, for two days last week I almost relaxed cause I'd been told I wouldn't need to go to Germany. I was looking forward to about 5-6 weeks in Ottawa. Woot! Oops. I got an email on Friday telling me the Germany trip was back on once more. Doh! (I thought it was off, cause one of the senior managers of sales people had been by the California office and told me I wouldn't need to go, and could stop paying attention to the discussion about the customer in training.) (He didn't come by to see me, he saw me while he was there and mentioned it.) Of course, we do still need a P.O. from the customer.
I miss my sweetie.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 07:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 09:33 pm (UTC)