HUMOUR
While At Work
A conversation history between a web programmer and his client
As usual, I was blissfully engaged in the gossip with my colleagues in the assurance that my client usually comes to chat after 10:00 AM. By 9:30 AM, as we were about to go for a tea break, I had just come back to my desk to turn the chat status to break. Suddenly I noticed the chat:
Client: Hello [@8:50 am]
My breath stopped as I found I had missed the client’s chat while gossiping with my colleagues before going for a tea break. “I have kept him waiting for 40 minutes?”-I thought to myself.
Me: Hi, Good Morning [@9:30 am]
My colleagues left for the tea break. I was caught up between the thoughts of how to console my client and to find time for the tea break while waiting for the calamity.
Client: Really? Good Morning? Client: How is it going to be a good morning for me? I have been waiting for an hour for your reply. Me: I just replied within half an hour…. Client: Is that good enough for you? Me: I was on my break. Breakfast….. Client: Okay, alright. What about the picture changes?
“What the hell is he blabbering about?”- I thought to myself while trying to come up with a reply.
Me: Sorry, I was working on the home page contents, what about the picture? Client: Jeez, you did not even start fixing it?
I wished that the earth beneath me would split into two and consume me as I was yet to have any idea about what dumbass mistake I had made.
Client: Hello?
My heart rate increased. I looked around for comfort like a helpless infant left alone on a street. But there was no one nearby, most of them left for the break and few of them were busy with their own work. Not knowing what to reply, I wished to disappear into thin air as if I never existed but within the dream of a butterfly, or at least that it was an early morning dream from which I would wake up to realize ‘ahoooo, it was just a dream’. But no, it was clearly not such a day. “The doomed day had arrived, this time there is no escape……”-I thought.
Client: Hello???? Are you there?? I typed some random words onto that chatbox so that for a moment he would feel I am there and responding.
Me: Yes,… Client: Again, What about the picture?
“Oh, maybe he mailed”- I thought. I rushed to the inbox and saw his mail waiting for me with words still hot and dark. The a$$#0I3 had sent that mail the previous day after my work hours and I had not bothered to check the mail inbox until now. I opened it and found the subject as if it is some sort of do or die emergency: “URGENT URGENT…PICTURE UPDATE”
“Ahh, now I understand why he popped up in the chat so much earlier than usual. But what am I going to say to him?”- I thought
I rushed through the mail while again typing some random meaningless words on to the chatbox, hoping that he would not attack me as long as he thought I was typing something, and that in that space, I could possibly understand what the fu*k that urgent issue was all about and possibly console him with my creative storytelling skill, which was the only skill I had acquired during the few years of client interaction experience as a web programmer.
My mind hyper-focused on the mail content and made sense of the issue and found out that it was just a minor bloody bug that even my boss could fix.
I relaxed with half of the headache resolved as soon as I found out the issue was nothing big. The next hurdle was to console him and fix the bug and pretend to him that the issue was so challenging that only I could fix it and thereby also make time for a possible tea break and lazy gossips with colleagues until he drops the next bomb.
Me: I am working on it. I will fix it as quickly as possible. Client: But….. Me: It is a case of … — — — blahblahbahblahhhhhhhh — — … I typed some difficult technical words with confidence to make him look stupid so that he would drop the conversation and leave me alone to daydream.
Client: Okay whatever. Just let me know when it is done. Me: Of course I will. Thank You. Client: Okay.
Might be continued... :) Thanks For Reading ❤
