What is the DUMBEST task you've had to own, as a highly paid consultant?

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I went with the client to pick up two cakes at grocery store. Each had a suggested project name in icing. Whichever cake was eaten more during a large meeting was picked as the project name. (Seriously)

likefunnysmarthelpfuluplifting

Who was the winner

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Flew internationally to deliver a birthday present from the client CEO to his son who lived in another country

(Emerging markets, so shipping was unavailable/unreliable)

likefunnyupliftingsmart

Which country?

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I once heard of an analyst nicknamed “lunch b***h”. He flew to the client site every single week, but his only responsibility was to collect lunch orders for the project each day.

likefunnyhelpfulsmart

What a chode

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I once ran around a tiny town for ~4hrs looking for 24-piece puzzles because the partner on my project thought that the 36-piece puzzles I’d ordered ahead of time from amazon would be “too hard” for groups of ~5 executives to complete in 5 minutes. 🙄

likefunnyupliftingsmart

Icebreaker ⛏

Just being there. No task or project or problem. The client literally wanted me because it gave them psychological comfort.

likefunnyupliftinghelpful

Same, the last two months of my previous project was that. I sat in a decent meeting room by myself and they would stop in maybe once a week to ask a stupid question that could be found in a matter of seconds on google. I did certification work and was billable for it 🤷‍♂️

likesmartfunny

Converting Microsoft Word documents into PDFs for my client.

likefunnysmartuplifting

Same

Telling a client (who hard coded all his numbers into Excel and used a desktop calculator because he didn’t realise that Excel wasn’t just for formatting) why his budget was £200k out because of rounding errors.

likefunnysmart

Absolute gold

Turning business requirements that the client had already come up with into user stories for the developers even though the developers could just, like, read the business requirements.

likefunnysmart

@SCM1 I agree! They could have a lower paid kid right out of undergrad doing this but instead they are paying a much higher rate for a person with an MBA to waste away ughhhhhhhhhh I’m getting dumber

Getting the Partner’s Coffee. My team made me walk 15 mins down the street to a shop EVERYTIME he said he wanted something. Only reason I was happy was he also let me buy coffee on his card.

likefunnysmarthelpfuluplifting

“SOMEONe has to get the coffee...”

Get your own coffee ffs...

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Client requested that I use billable time to edit and upload videos of my pet pig that I was required to take each weekend

likefunnyupliftingsmarthelpful

Hi sheldon

likesmart

One of our senior consultant once provided an estimate to customer of 120 hours to store “Last Changed On” on a standard SAP Opportunity object. Customer accepted it. When I got into the project, after that senior consultant quit mid way thru the project, I realized, that neither customer nor our senior consultant knew that it was a standard field and all the customer/consultant needed to do was “customize/unhide” the hidden field which would take around 45 seconds for a grandpa using the mouse and computer for the first time.

likefunnysmarthelpful

Sounds just like my manager!

I sat outside a CEO’s office for 4 hours waiting on him to arrive so a partner could just time his walk by just right.

likefunny

That’s how I met your mother

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Flew from Canada to the UK for one day because a partner forgot his laptop. 😂

likefunnyupliftingsmart

At least you got to earn those miles!

I spent a full 8 hours creating an bitmoji of my client. This included a bitmoji “booklet”, telling her which versions of her bitmoji would be used in which context/correspondence.

She was a budget director for a major agency. 🤦‍♀️

likefunnysmart

What kind of agency? Public!?

Being flown in just to sit at client site and twiddle my thumbs because they presumably like me. 8 hours a day of firm initiatives and Twitter. Oh, and 2 hour lunches to keep me sane.

likefunnyhelpful

Yep. Spent months flying in to prep for placing labels on inventory items. That took 4 hours on a Thursday.

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I (a woman) will never forget when I was meant to be going on a site inspection with a male manager and a male consultant, and the day before the trip the manager goes “(male consultant), you’re in charge of putting together summaries and questions for the three sites. (My name) you’re in charge of snacks.”

likefunnyuplifting

Someone’s gotta buy the snacks...

like

Never had a client deliverable of any kind for the first 10 years of my professional life. The last few years have been tough.

likefunnysmartuplifting

I think P1 was not in consulting the first 10 years

likehelpful

Once upon a time on my first project out of college...

Spent months (learning how to and then) building an excel scenario model for a project. Week before final handover, I worked 6-7 days straight in State A with only a few hours sleep, including none at all the night before.

Sent the Partner and Principal the final (double, triple, quadruple checked) model and presentation (they were in State B) at 5am. Headed to the airport to get a flight to State B. Got home. “WFH”.

Next minute I got a “Plz Fix” call from a ranting Partner who demanded I get to the client site ASAP, model not working. Fuck.

Shower, shave, find shirt. Travel 2+ hours to client HQ where Partner and Principal have been sat in a room for the last half a day.

Turns out the Partner renamed the model in the cab to the client site (and I hadn’t yet learned about dynamic referencing).

likefunnysmartupliftinghelpful

Oh didn’t think there were macros involved. Let’s not get “into the weeds” here 😜

funnysmart

Made an enormous bulletin board display. Think like a preschool wall, but on a BCG budget.

likefunny

Can’t post. It featured the client logo and color palette quite prominently, sorry!

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Copying and pasting ‘Click Save’ in hundreds of test scripts for a client.

likefunnysmarthelpful

I’ll see you one better - adding ‘Return Home’ to the end of each test script because the client wasn’t sure what to do when the test was over.

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