Proctor THIS

For the morbidly curious among us, my aforementioned tetchiness burbled up when several merely quasi-awful events collided. To set the stage, I was sleep-deprived. We all know how ugly that is.

Then, I have to blow away everything on my weensy 80G hard drive to plunk a 40G vm image (that doesn't function the way I need it to - it's too slow to actually do a demo on) there, that may or may not need to be used in the poorly defined 'test' on day 3 (see below).

I'm already working myself up into a lather, when all of a sudden there's little crunchy things rolling around on my tongue that weren't part of anything I had eaten. That's right, I broke a porcelain tooth cap. One of two, right in the front. BROKE it. On absolutely nothing at all. So now I have a great big chipped tooth, with my real (very sensitive) tooth peeking out at the bottom. And I probably won't be able to make it to the dentist for another full week, thanks to my travel schedule. Good times.

Keep in mind that all of this is taking place at our yearly sales kickoff, which is supposed to be a rah-rah session held at a resort on the CA coast. We (sales) were all told we'd be tested on "something". A "scenario". Which as it turns out, was nothing more than a one-page description of a (fake) potential client company, and an outline of the issues they are currently facing. Our mission? Make a 20-minute presentation to them on my company's solutions. Ok, you might be thinking, "20 minutes? That doesn't sound so hard." Here's why this assignment sucked.

A typical presentation from my team runs between 1.5 - 2 hours. They are only scheduled after a thorough discovery session has occurred, wherein we grill them within an inch of their lives over all angles of IT and the project at hand. I can assure you we come up with more than a one-page summary on the average discovery. During this discovery call, we also set the stage for what kind of presentation we will be doing based on who will be in the room- sales, technical, or a combination of both.

Now you have an idea of the real process behind a sales call, and the amount of preparation and knowledge needed to do a good job. In comparison, our nasty little 'test' gave us incomplete background information, no opportunity to perform our own discovery, and most importantly, NO DIRECTION ON WHAT KIND OF PRESENTATION WAS EXPECTED. And we received our scenarios less than 24 hours before the test, and were required to attend the awards banquet that night. (When exactly are we supposed to prepare this?) So, with only 20 minutes to present, dare I try to go into the product and demo? I daren't. Believing that we are elevating ourselves to the "solution sell" (which is the kool-aid we're supposed to be drinking), and not the technically-targeted product show and tell, I did what I thought was the right thing by keeping it meta and covering the fake company's pain points and talking them through how my company would address and alleviate those issues. I ran out of time (20 minutes? I'm not even warmed up.), but otherwise, thought I did a reasonably good job. IF indeed they were looking for a solution sell. If they were hoping for a demo, I'm sure they were disappointed. I got a whiff of that feeling when they asked me to show what I was talking about (which I quickly did). But given the fact that they didn't #*(&%ing SPECIFY what/how we were to demo, HOW THE *&*% SHOULD I KNOW?

Not to mention that there was also apparently a point system to score us. Do you think they told us exactly what points they'd be scoring on? Nay. On how many points there are total? Nay. On how many are needed to pass? Nay. Just the threat of this test on the 3rd day of our kickoff (can you say "Buzzkill", boys and girls?), no time to prepare, a pseudo-intimidating testing situation (dark room, mysterious scoring sheets), and an email sent hours later with this less-than-enlightening message:

Congratulations, you have passed your exam at the
Sales Conference with a score of 27 points. The total required to pass is
24 points. This was an acceptable performance and please focus on the
feedback received from your test panel for continued improvement.

Am I the only person this throws into a homicidal rage? Perhaps. But it's just not right, man. It ain't right. I could paraphrase the whole thing thusly:

Them: You need to demonstrate, uh, stuff, like,
the way we envision it in our heads.

Me (suspiciously, confusedly):
ooookaaaaaaaaaayyyyy...

Them: Here is the information we provide you
with: "Horseradish green plastic plum tart
handle bot nono ish."

Me: ummm...

Them: You've barely passed. Your test result is:
weather.

As teenagers with text-enabled phones say, "WTF??"

So, yes. I'm tetchy, salty, owly, and d.) all of the above. And shall remain so until vindicated.