I plan to coast through to the weekend

I hit the laptop early on Tuesday morning and could be found making final revisions to the cost model before the clock struck eight. By nine thirty I was talking our Pricer* through the Customer request and the model and it is fair to say that she was her usual courteous and helpful self …

… Why haven't you done this? What makes you think that is my job? These were two of her particularly jarring comments this morning, made even more so by the fact that she knew we were under ridiculous time constraints. I bit my tongue and patiently talked her through the new model and baselines. She made a couple of suggestions which I adopted and passed the updated model over to her. Within twenty minutes she had thrown her toys out of the pram advising that she was not able to develop two price types from a single set of figures.

To be honest I was expecting this and had already made a start of a new version of the model along with the necessary calculations to determine a before and after unit rate. By lunchtime I had got Management consent to this approach and had finally got her to understand the concepts involved.

Over the course of the afternoon I was on constant stand-by and several times had to reiterate facts and correct misunderstandings. Eventually as five o'clock approach the price release was delivered and I passed it across to the Sales Lead. It is fair to say that they were pleased and it was passed over to the client in short order.

Final task of the day was to attend the six o'clock call and I was the recipient of a number of sincere and not so sincere** congratulations. I did the decent thing and asked for a formal e-mail of thanks to be passed to the pricing team …

… but I have a very long memory and one day I will give our charming Pricer some full and frank feedback.

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* It was a bloody good job 30% pinged me just before this call to remind me to let the chickens out!
** Our Sales Lead could make one doubt absolutely anything he says.