The downs at work

A sales guy, a leader from another team and my boss (a little) really pissed me off today..

We were supposed to submit a proposal and some documents to accept the invitation to tender to a certain company by 1300 today. (8/18)

This invitation was sent to us like somewhere the last week of July so we had a good 3 weeks at least to complete it. Since this is not a new customer too, we didn't have to work from scratch and just had to brush up the current contract and to include some new ideas.

The contract was divided in 2 parts, the helpdesk part and the full-time onsite outsourcing part.

I did my part in checking all the helpdesk details, raising questions, holding meetings with my boss and then clarifying doubts with the procurement manager whenever needed.

Throughout the whole time of checking and raising possible questions, the leader of the other team and the sales guys kept complete silence. No contribution at all on their part.

Fine.

So anyway, since many of them were going away for holiday from last week, I specifially reminded my boss who is going on a holiday too and only coming back TODAY ( day of submission) to get to it done asap. But... he didn't even till the day he was due to leave.

Fine again.

He told me he was going to write up the proposal in Japanese over his 1 week holiday and I told him to send the complete parts even in bits and pieces whenever possible because I had to re-write everything in English!! I foresee it is impossible to finish everything if he is going to give them all to me in one shot.

But he didn't obviously...

He finally emailed me at like 11:30pm yesterday night and expected me to finish everything by 1pm today. Of course he didn't command me to do it... He said just do your best and if you cannot finish, just send in Japanese.

C'mon... the other party can't even read Japanese! If I really did that, then the contract is gone for sure.

But somehow, by God's grace.... really really by grace and favor with my other colleagues who knew I had to finish this up with no disturbance, I managed to finish writing everything in English somewhere before the due time.

Then to my horror, I realised there is a need to let my president sign all the documents, fill in all the prices which I have not received instructions for...
But guess what? None of them were to be found that moment. No one who had the power to make the decision was around.

So... I got really pissed... I dug up some past information and emailed to all of them that I am going to put this certain price, in which if nobody emails me back, that is going to be the final one.
They emailed me back of course.. each giving a different quote.
SEE! None of you sat down to discuss when you had so much time to!

Anyway... in the end, with the help of another director, we managed to get the President to sign the documents. ( he was really being very gracious... he signed not even having to read the contents. Very dangerous Mr President. )
Once again, with lots of sigh, a bit of anger but much grace and supernatural strength, we gathered and finally could submit all the necessary stuff on time.

Seriously speaking.... I don't think the Sales guy deserved a single cent of the commission. I wanted to write an email to "scold" them and warn them never again to give me such last-min work...
But somehow I withheld. I am not afraid of them thinking badly about me.... I just didn't want to add fuel to the fire. What's the point of making my boss feel worst...
Yup... I think I withheld because of him. He is a nice guy, he works hard... but well well... forgiveness and tolerance I guess.

My boss emailed me later to apologised though...