Et tu...

"Your soul for the chance to mess with others like you for the rest of your life."

That's what I figure the Devil must have offered a friend who recently migrated to the "Other" side.

He is no longer a vendor, waiting at pre-bid meetings to hear the client's wish list. Instead, he's now the Client, asks for the world in return for peanut shells, arrives last at meetings and proceeds to dish out impossible inanities that we all have to pretend we understand and take notes of.

Incidentally, this blog started with a vendor reality check...actually, it features a marketing cow-worker, but trust me, these two creatures are entirely fungible. If you missed it, catch it here.)

Back to this ex-friend. He's making rapid strides towards earning his spurs in his new herd. He's already mastered the art of saying nothing while continuously making sounds with words. "Seamlessly mesh these opposing objectives with each other and I think you have a broad idea of our overall expectations from this project." This, from a chap who used to say usually say things like "Are you nuts? How can we finish ALL THAT in a week?"

He's a Client now, no longer bound by such definite, cruel, Vendor logic.

Brute Force

He's traded it for the kinder, softer, infinitely malleable position of a client. He's able to keep a perfectly straight face and describe something that requires doubling of the budget as "a bit of a stretch, but one that I have no doubt you'll find a way of making happen without any budgetary implications."

I appreciate that the vendor-client relationship is intrinsically adversorial. Both may want a good final product, but they obviously go in opposite directions on price. I also understand that someone's got to do the "other" job too.

It just seems that if you were ever a vendor to start with, your soul is the last sale you have to close before you get a job on the other side.