My client from Europe is here, and we've been working at the office of one of his subcontractors in the Washington, DC area. We're trying to get the proposal in shape before he returns home on Wednesday or Thursday. It's been a lot of work for him, me and the representatives of two subs who are working with us on finalizing the document. But it is beginning to shape up. We've made a lot of revisions to the technical section, and my client is now re-working the Management Plan. I am scheduled to go back down there today, but they are calling for a lot of snow here, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. My car, which doesn't have front-wheel drive, doesn't go in snow and thus neither do I.
So last Friday, we are all sitting around discussing the proposal and the remaining things that need to be done. All of a sudden, someone says, "maybe Deborah should go to Europe with [the client] so that she can help with proposal production." Oh no, I can't believe what I am hearing -- the dreaded "P" word -- Production! I look around to see if there is somewhere that I can escape, but we are in a big conference room and there's nowhere to go. So I shuffle through my papers, pretending I didn't hear, and I keep my mouth shut. The discussion wanders off to another topic.
I can only hope that this subject doesn't arise again, or at least if it arises, that my name isn't part of it. Right now, I can't think of anything much worse than getting on a plane to Europe, working on production tasks where a zillion things are bound to go wrong, and then flying back here, probably with the proposal in hand.
Please, please, please, spare me from the "P" word.
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