The drive to my client that morning was surreal and completely different from the dozens of other drives I made to their location over the past 10 months. We were at the finish line for what was a really big deal. I was trying not to think about the money I stood to make for fear that my premature celebration would sabotage my sales karma. After three painful months of negotiations, it was the last day of the quarter, a quarter that could be devastating to my company should it fall apart at the last minute.
The Order Prevention System
The order was supposed to be completed and in our hands over a week before. Instead, it was lost in the newly deployed enterprise resource planning system (ERP) the client dumped over $250 million into. The shiny new ERP system was supposed to automate and improve the company’s business processes. Instead, it looked they built the perfect Rube Goldberg Machine for processing orders. The client assured me that getting the order completed was a simple process, but with each passing day, it was clear no one really knew what the next steps were to get the job done.
The evening before the last day of the quarter, a lady in procurement guaranteed me everything was finalized and the system would email the order to my finance group and me. I was still lost in the maze of doing business with this company and wasn’t about to leave anything to chance.
I insisted on getting a printed order too.
“I’ll be by first thing in the morning to retrieve it,” I told the client.
Sales Conspiracies and Other Ridiculous Thoughts
Pulling into the guest parking lot at my client, I could feel that something wasn’t right. A glance toward the main entrance of the corporate headquarters of the massive company filled me with terror. Everyone was exiting the building rather than going in to start their day. Any positive thoughts I had evaporated in an instant.
“What now?” I thought. I seriously wondered if a secret conspiracy was underway to screw me over. I’d never felt so much stress and pressure in my life. Any and all things seemed possible in the moment, including crazy conspiracy theories.
“How could this possibly be happening? My order is on the other side of those doors, but I can’t go in there to get it. Holy crap, this thing is not going to happen!” Losing my job was about every other thought I had over the past few weeks. No deal meant getting fired.
After mentally shoveling more dirt onto my unemployment grave, a blaring car horn snapped me out of my burial trance.
Does Anyone Know What’s Going On?
“What’s going on?”I asked as I approached the first group of people in the parking lot.
“We thought it was a fire drill, but we heard there’s actually a fire somewhere in the building,” they explained
“Yeah, sure, their ERP system probably caught on fire trying to print my friggin order,” I said to myself with a smirk.
The screams of distant sirens approaching. were all I could hear over my prayer that the electronic order was already processed and waiting safely in my email inbox. The last few workers poured out of the building as the fire trucks arrived. Rumors were rampant in the parking lot, none of which quieted my anxiety or shook the images of my order being burned to a crisp (and losing my job). Someone from the client led several of the firemen into the building with their hands full of tools.
“Sure enough, this som’bitch is gonna burn down,” I obsessed over my fate.
I called the contact at the client I was meeting to get the order. We found each other in the parking lot and speculated along with everyone else what was going on. About 30 minutes after the firemen arrived, it was over. The doors swung open to the building, and security people waved everyone back inside.
False Alarm
It wasn’t clear what had just happened. As for me, I didn’t care if the fire was still raging, I just wanted to get my order and be done with this madness. My contact asked me to wait in the lobby while he went to the procurement department to fetch the order. Apparently, it wasn’t as easy as collecting a piece of paper and returning it to me.
“What the hell is going on here?” I quietly screamed inside my head.
The Order Is On the Way, No Problem
My contact was a super guy. He knew how stressed I was and apologized repeatedly for nothing going as planned. He called me every 20 minutes or so with an update while I paced around the lobby. Close to two hours passed before he reappeared from the bowels of the building.
“More bad news coming my way” must have been in a thought bubble over my head. I just knew he was about to follow up with, “Sorry, David, your order is lost in the machine and no one here knows how to get it out.”
Much to my disbelief, my contact approached with a manila folder. By this time, the nausea was so intense I was ready to blow chunks. He handed me the folder and apologized for the wait, as well as yet another botched process.
We laughed about the lunacy of the events from the past week. After a lengthy handshake and discussing plans to visit the following week, I headed for the exit.
Extremely nervous, and still certain another shoe was about to drop, I opened the folder.
Yes! There it was! After a quick read through the text, a wave of relief passed through my body, vanquishing the anxiety. But that wouldn’t be the end of things…
A few weeks later, I received a strange-looking email. Although it looked like some kind of computer-generated scam email, it was from my client. Double-clicking into the note produced the electronic order that I was guaranteed to get on the last day of the quarter.
