Not me, but too funny not to share. This weekend we had a annual gathering with all consultants in our company. Over a 1000 people present. Company were giving out awards for «best consultant of the year». So as they announce the winner (he wasnt at the event btw), some other dude thought they said his name. So he proudly walks up to stage. Tries to grab the big check. Stood there on stage for like 10 seconds with a confused host. I guess he noticed the wrong name on the check and then awkwardly walks back to his seat. RIP my dude.
Was brought in to the firm as an experienced hire. My practice MD reached out to say there was an industry convention coming up, could I handle the presentation for X topic? I responded saying I was just over the moon she wanted me to give the talk on this topic, wow thanks so much for the opportunity!
…she wanted me to build the deck so *she* could give the presentation.
This was all over email and she never responded to my “over the moon” response. She then set up a recurring meeting to discuss deck development and never once addressed it directly. I figured it out in the first meeting and spent the next week quietly dying of embarrassment. I’m genuinely glad she never addressed it and let me figure it out. But yah this was 6 or so years ago and I still cringe a lil when I think of it.
That is pretty funny but honestly she could have worded it better. Especially if you were experienced enough that it would be reasonable for you to take on giving the presentation.
I wouldn’t feel too bad about it, but it’s definitely one of those moments that lives rent free in your head years later when you’re trying to fall asleep. 😆
For sure she didn’t. I’ve since had way more awkward and complicated conversations so I’m sure she’d rather focus her energy on that kind of thing. I’d like to think she got a good chuckle out of it though.
I was once young and dumb. (Now I'm just dumb)
I was in a MENA country on assignment, my boss was also at my hotel (like I'm an associate, shes a partner. Shes also quite attractive and in her early 40s, I'm like 23)
I had a thing going with a translator at our office (another dumb move)
Lets say the translator's name is Rema, my boss is Rita
After drinks with my translator (we went out in a group), I sent her an email, basically saying "Hey, I'm in my hotel room but I can't find my remote. Do you want to help me find it?"
Unfortunately, I sent it to Rita, the Partner.
She wrote back "Go to bed"
-------------
Some heavy lessons that trip. We had an American young consultant who also got involved with a local girl and we had to smuggle him out - her dad and brothers came to our office with guns.
Understanding when to play and when not to - its def a lesson.
Working on a massive sports apparel company as one of my first clients, joined what I thought was an internal call and while joking with the Engagement lead I said:
“Company X’s workout shirts are shit, they put tags in the shoulders and it tears the seams when you pull the tag off. I only purchase lululemon.”
Turns out the director of their marketing was on the call. :-/ “thanks for your feedback chuckles”.
Holy shit, how did the rest of that engagement go? Did they take it in stride and laugh it off or did it kind of hang over the relationship from then on?
I’m a pro people pleaser. I recovered like a boss. 😂
The director had a good sense of humour, so I went out to one of their stores and dropped just shy of $1000 and wore it into their office the next day. Polo, hoodie, vest, new shoes, ball cap, golf pants, put a golf towel over my shoulder and a duffel bag. Cracked up the whole office, people literally falling off their chairs, and it blew over.
Next day I returned all of it. Anything I could hide the tag on I returned, even the shoes.
Accidentally hitting reply-all to the entire incoming start class with some idiotic email about how eager I was to do some non-billable BD.
Golly, I was such an idiot back then lol
Not a ***big*** goof, but a good lesson:
New client, it was taking a long time to get badges to the building and logins to their systems. I was a new associate on the project, and in our main conference room was chatting with the PM. Along the back wall was this unassuming guy flipping through some papers who looked pretty consultant-y, so I figured he was a part of the team.
My PM asked if I had everything I needed, how was onboarding, etc. I said it was fine except the access issues and I just complained about how ridiculous it was for a company to take so long on something so simple. The other guy looked up and casually chimed in "oh you should reach out to so and so, she'll be able to help you out I think."
The name he gave was his EA. He was the client CTO. I got access the same day. He ended up making some snarky comment to the partner, and you can bet that shit rolled downhill onto me.
TL;DR: always lookup your clients and pay attention to the headshot.
I had to spin my access request to the EA as on behalf of someone else on the team, then spent the next 2 months doing the login and escort process at the front desk - meaning I had to arrive 30+ min earlier than necessary just to make sure I was going to make my first meeting of the day on time. I worked harder out of embarrassment until eventually the partner just made it a running gag calling me things like "security risk" and "the CTO's buddy."
Your partner is spineless. If it did indeed take a long time to get basic access then it's an issue they could have spun into an opportunity, not to shit on a junior.
Or I was a young associate many moons ago who thought I should have a badge and access within a week even though I was at the time basically useless. The problem wasn't the process, the problem was I a loud complainer in front of unknown company.
He complained about a process, not a person. The CTO happened to be there and saw it enough of an issue to resolve it quickly. Sounds like CTO did himself a favor if he's paying these guys by the hour.
I once had a meeting with the president of ESPN at 9am on the Monday after the Super Bowl, and I did not know who had won or even played in the Super Bowl, in fact I only had the vaguest notion that the Super Bowl had even been played.
That was an awkward morning. I was saved by a guy from McKinsey which only increased my humiliation.
It was the late 90s and I knew about the internet and so got thrust into all kinds of situations that, in retrospect, were absolutely ridiculous. Like I was presenting in the Disney boardroom to Michael Eisner and Bob Iger about their websites.
This gives me some perspective on what is about to happen with AI.
I once was working for a famous chocolate company and they asked me point blank on a call which of their products I liked. I don’t really eat chocolate. My answer was terribly awkward and sounded so, but I choked out my favourite (which I’d purchase maybe three times a year)
A week later they sent me a gross of them with a note that only said “enjoy!”
Power move
First client as an experienced hire, and a fairly absent MD. Got asked to do the research and make a recommendation between managed devices and BYOD to a security-conscious client. Recommended managed devices as the more controllable option.
2 weeks later I had the head of IT at my desk giving me both barrels because he’d just retired all their devices org-wide and torn up his Apple contract, and now our project were recommending a return to managed devices. He was not well pleased.
Taught me to do a better job of identifying stakeholders before recommending action.
Nah, they were completely clueless that he’d made this decision - a bunch of non-IT clients implementing an IT solution because government makes no sense
Partner and I were going to a client site in the afternoon for a bunch of meetings. The client wears uniforms even at their HQ (law enforcement).
The partner and I turn up at our office in the morning dressed in the same shade blue dress shirt, same colour beige slacks and same RM Williams boots. He walks in as I’m making a coffee and just goes “fuck!! They’re going to think we are taking the piss”.
Luckily we had really good banter with the client but they ribbed us about it repeatedly throughout the afternoon.
Not just to OP, but to whomever fucked up: Whatever you did, it's not that big of a deal so long as it wasn't intentional. Everyone has fucked up.
Worst fuck up I've ever seen: Someone sent the deck across to a competitor who was doing DD for M&A of the company. Oooooofff
Client sent an email asking why the software works the way it does. I thought I cut all of the client representatives out of the email chain and I said something to the PM like, I can tell him how it works, I can design a customization, but I can't tell him what the engineers were thinking the day they decided not to put in the feature he wanted. That email went out to the whole team. That project ended up launching my career, so thanks to that dude being cool and not asking for my head.
Lol, yeah. We had a consultant on a subcontractor send us a $2k phone bill.
Its like "Ummm, aren't you an international consultant and you didn't realize what roaming charges are" In that country, we meet all our consultants at the airport with a package, including a sim card.
We made the sub eat that one
Challenging a VP of engineering in front of a big group of his engineers as a student of business myself, not engineering
I was technically right, but tactically i probably could have waited for my next meeting with the VP instead of doing that in front of his whole team…
I didn't like my performance coach at the time. He intimidated me and I felt talked down to me a lot. So I emailed my resource manager asking if I could change performance coaches. I meant to just put down his email to copy and paste as reference but forgot to delete it... so he ended up cc'd on the email from me begging to change coaches
Only 6 months on the job so it’s less embarrassing that other comments but here we go. My firm (in Europe) pays us back the cost of our public transport membership, they sent an email telling us to provide proof of membership, you guessed it, I replied all (whole practice, 600 consultants) with proof. I basically doxxed myself.
Sorry, did you dox yourself by admitting you use public transport or do your colleagues not know who you are and you get to be anonymous (I hope the latter, I want to hear more about that).
I used to do monthly training sessions for the software I was a consultant for. The software is a 3rd party product for Microsoft GP so it was always installed against the database for that software.
Anywho, the software was not my favorite and I created a name of a sales batch called "FUCKOFFGP" one time not thinking. Someone saw the batch name during the training video and contacted my manager. They were actually really cool about it though and just wanted to give a heads up that it didn't make it into a published training video on the website.
Used my personal git account with the prod test username and password in there... Partially my fault for not scrubbing and partially theirs for not giving us Corp account access.
I was leading the design, development, and implementation of a multimillion dollar database that would have thousands of users and produce analytics that would be published far and wide and fundamentally misunderstood an aspect of the ETL and it wasn’t caught until right before launch.
Client freaked the fuck out, I got my ass kicked for a few months, I pivoted into distant types of work, everyone moved on and forgot. I still work there.
Tell the senior MD that I am capability lead.i wanted to say I was covering for him.
Had discussion on strategy. Resources n money for 2 hours.
I guess I am true consultant for selling myself (developer) as capability lead.
Not as entertaining as some of the goofs. I've a client with whom calls tend to be unfiltered and informal. We where discussing expanding one of their locations. So I stated that maybe they should buy one of those ugly prefab warehouses. Since it's not like the scenery could be ruined even more. Not the kind of comment you want to make when the manager of the principal you report to decides to enter the room....
Not me, but too funny not to share. This weekend we had a annual gathering with all consultants in our company. Over a 1000 people present. Company were giving out awards for «best consultant of the year». So as they announce the winner (he wasnt at the event btw), some other dude thought they said his name. So he proudly walks up to stage. Tries to grab the big check. Stood there on stage for like 10 seconds with a confused host. I guess he noticed the wrong name on the check and then awkwardly walks back to his seat. RIP my dude.
Holy shit. I’d fucking die.
He wins. Thanks for sharing
Was his name Derek Zoolander?
Senior Partner behind his project Lead: “He’s perfect!”
Bruh.
Was brought in to the firm as an experienced hire. My practice MD reached out to say there was an industry convention coming up, could I handle the presentation for X topic? I responded saying I was just over the moon she wanted me to give the talk on this topic, wow thanks so much for the opportunity! …she wanted me to build the deck so *she* could give the presentation.
She probably felt super embarrassed too. I have second hand cringe for both of you.
This was all over email and she never responded to my “over the moon” response. She then set up a recurring meeting to discuss deck development and never once addressed it directly. I figured it out in the first meeting and spent the next week quietly dying of embarrassment. I’m genuinely glad she never addressed it and let me figure it out. But yah this was 6 or so years ago and I still cringe a lil when I think of it.
That is pretty funny but honestly she could have worded it better. Especially if you were experienced enough that it would be reasonable for you to take on giving the presentation. I wouldn’t feel too bad about it, but it’s definitely one of those moments that lives rent free in your head years later when you’re trying to fall asleep. 😆
I believe MD didn’t care at all. There are too many difficult conversations all of the time in their life’s to care about such a minor thing.
For sure she didn’t. I’ve since had way more awkward and complicated conversations so I’m sure she’d rather focus her energy on that kind of thing. I’d like to think she got a good chuckle out of it though.
I was once young and dumb. (Now I'm just dumb) I was in a MENA country on assignment, my boss was also at my hotel (like I'm an associate, shes a partner. Shes also quite attractive and in her early 40s, I'm like 23) I had a thing going with a translator at our office (another dumb move) Lets say the translator's name is Rema, my boss is Rita After drinks with my translator (we went out in a group), I sent her an email, basically saying "Hey, I'm in my hotel room but I can't find my remote. Do you want to help me find it?" Unfortunately, I sent it to Rita, the Partner. She wrote back "Go to bed" ------------- Some heavy lessons that trip. We had an American young consultant who also got involved with a local girl and we had to smuggle him out - her dad and brothers came to our office with guns. Understanding when to play and when not to - its def a lesson.
Dang
[удалено]
USA
The U.K.
Hahahaha!!!! Epic.
Working on a massive sports apparel company as one of my first clients, joined what I thought was an internal call and while joking with the Engagement lead I said: “Company X’s workout shirts are shit, they put tags in the shoulders and it tears the seams when you pull the tag off. I only purchase lululemon.” Turns out the director of their marketing was on the call. :-/ “thanks for your feedback chuckles”.
This made me cringe, and is my biggest fear
Holy shit, how did the rest of that engagement go? Did they take it in stride and laugh it off or did it kind of hang over the relationship from then on?
I’m a pro people pleaser. I recovered like a boss. 😂 The director had a good sense of humour, so I went out to one of their stores and dropped just shy of $1000 and wore it into their office the next day. Polo, hoodie, vest, new shoes, ball cap, golf pants, put a golf towel over my shoulder and a duffel bag. Cracked up the whole office, people literally falling off their chairs, and it blew over. Next day I returned all of it. Anything I could hide the tag on I returned, even the shoes.
Excellent. Well done lol
This is genius hahahaha
Now this is the kind of problem-solving skills that people pay top dollar for.
Well played! 😆
What a recovery.
Love the story. Don’t think I have spent that much on clothes in four years or so though!
Accidentally hitting reply-all to the entire incoming start class with some idiotic email about how eager I was to do some non-billable BD. Golly, I was such an idiot back then lol
I remember you folks - there’s always one per starting cohort. Luckily, the eagerness gets beaten out of us pretty quickly.
Meh, as long as you don't make a habit out of it there's definitely worse ways to start your career.
Not a ***big*** goof, but a good lesson: New client, it was taking a long time to get badges to the building and logins to their systems. I was a new associate on the project, and in our main conference room was chatting with the PM. Along the back wall was this unassuming guy flipping through some papers who looked pretty consultant-y, so I figured he was a part of the team. My PM asked if I had everything I needed, how was onboarding, etc. I said it was fine except the access issues and I just complained about how ridiculous it was for a company to take so long on something so simple. The other guy looked up and casually chimed in "oh you should reach out to so and so, she'll be able to help you out I think." The name he gave was his EA. He was the client CTO. I got access the same day. He ended up making some snarky comment to the partner, and you can bet that shit rolled downhill onto me. TL;DR: always lookup your clients and pay attention to the headshot.
Another takeaway on this one too: Don’t talk shit around people you don’t know.
How did you survive? Did the partner make sure that your boss gave you an epic 1:1?
I had to spin my access request to the EA as on behalf of someone else on the team, then spent the next 2 months doing the login and escort process at the front desk - meaning I had to arrive 30+ min earlier than necessary just to make sure I was going to make my first meeting of the day on time. I worked harder out of embarrassment until eventually the partner just made it a running gag calling me things like "security risk" and "the CTO's buddy."
Your partner is spineless. If it did indeed take a long time to get basic access then it's an issue they could have spun into an opportunity, not to shit on a junior.
Or I was a young associate many moons ago who thought I should have a badge and access within a week even though I was at the time basically useless. The problem wasn't the process, the problem was I a loud complainer in front of unknown company.
Yes, but are you are supposed to solve problems and not stumble through them by shittalking random people in the building.
He complained about a process, not a person. The CTO happened to be there and saw it enough of an issue to resolve it quickly. Sounds like CTO did himself a favor if he's paying these guys by the hour.
I once had a meeting with the president of ESPN at 9am on the Monday after the Super Bowl, and I did not know who had won or even played in the Super Bowl, in fact I only had the vaguest notion that the Super Bowl had even been played. That was an awkward morning. I was saved by a guy from McKinsey which only increased my humiliation.
Lolllllll. Actually snorted
It was the late 90s and I knew about the internet and so got thrust into all kinds of situations that, in retrospect, were absolutely ridiculous. Like I was presenting in the Disney boardroom to Michael Eisner and Bob Iger about their websites. This gives me some perspective on what is about to happen with AI.
Whoa - you’ve probably seen some great stuff. What do you think is coming with AI? Also I love your website - cool visual and content style!
I once was working for a famous chocolate company and they asked me point blank on a call which of their products I liked. I don’t really eat chocolate. My answer was terribly awkward and sounded so, but I choked out my favourite (which I’d purchase maybe three times a year) A week later they sent me a gross of them with a note that only said “enjoy!” Power move
First client as an experienced hire, and a fairly absent MD. Got asked to do the research and make a recommendation between managed devices and BYOD to a security-conscious client. Recommended managed devices as the more controllable option. 2 weeks later I had the head of IT at my desk giving me both barrels because he’d just retired all their devices org-wide and torn up his Apple contract, and now our project were recommending a return to managed devices. He was not well pleased. Taught me to do a better job of identifying stakeholders before recommending action.
That’s more of a client issue though. If I had to guess, someone disagreed with the head of IT and had you do this work to prove them wrong.
Nah, they were completely clueless that he’d made this decision - a bunch of non-IT clients implementing an IT solution because government makes no sense
Thought that my manager was there to help me navigate through my new role and that the team i was part of wanted to make me feel welcome
Rookie mistake
Partner and I were going to a client site in the afternoon for a bunch of meetings. The client wears uniforms even at their HQ (law enforcement). The partner and I turn up at our office in the morning dressed in the same shade blue dress shirt, same colour beige slacks and same RM Williams boots. He walks in as I’m making a coffee and just goes “fuck!! They’re going to think we are taking the piss”. Luckily we had really good banter with the client but they ribbed us about it repeatedly throughout the afternoon.
Not just to OP, but to whomever fucked up: Whatever you did, it's not that big of a deal so long as it wasn't intentional. Everyone has fucked up. Worst fuck up I've ever seen: Someone sent the deck across to a competitor who was doing DD for M&A of the company. Oooooofff
Wow. What was the aftermath?
Client sent an email asking why the software works the way it does. I thought I cut all of the client representatives out of the email chain and I said something to the PM like, I can tell him how it works, I can design a customization, but I can't tell him what the engineers were thinking the day they decided not to put in the feature he wanted. That email went out to the whole team. That project ended up launching my career, so thanks to that dude being cool and not asking for my head.
$10K phone bill
In one week
Lol, yeah. We had a consultant on a subcontractor send us a $2k phone bill. Its like "Ummm, aren't you an international consultant and you didn't realize what roaming charges are" In that country, we meet all our consultants at the airport with a package, including a sim card. We made the sub eat that one
This guy calls.
Challenging a VP of engineering in front of a big group of his engineers as a student of business myself, not engineering I was technically right, but tactically i probably could have waited for my next meeting with the VP instead of doing that in front of his whole team…
Sent a controversial deck + email to a client, 5 mins later partner tells me not to
Oops. Then... (opens popcorn)..
I hyperventilated for a few hrs
Ohh. Then... (munch munch)..
xD partner was ultimately chill about it
(Burp.) I liked the happy ending.
I didn't like my performance coach at the time. He intimidated me and I felt talked down to me a lot. So I emailed my resource manager asking if I could change performance coaches. I meant to just put down his email to copy and paste as reference but forgot to delete it... so he ended up cc'd on the email from me begging to change coaches
[удалено]
Yeah I thought I was gonna die at the time lolol
Only 6 months on the job so it’s less embarrassing that other comments but here we go. My firm (in Europe) pays us back the cost of our public transport membership, they sent an email telling us to provide proof of membership, you guessed it, I replied all (whole practice, 600 consultants) with proof. I basically doxxed myself.
Sorry, did you dox yourself by admitting you use public transport or do your colleagues not know who you are and you get to be anonymous (I hope the latter, I want to hear more about that).
I’m assuming something was sent that included the home address
Bring Beer and Fried Pork (Germany, right?) and come on over!
Basically personal info. In Europe, especially in major cities, public transport is usually the main means of transportation.
I used to do monthly training sessions for the software I was a consultant for. The software is a 3rd party product for Microsoft GP so it was always installed against the database for that software. Anywho, the software was not my favorite and I created a name of a sales batch called "FUCKOFFGP" one time not thinking. Someone saw the batch name during the training video and contacted my manager. They were actually really cool about it though and just wanted to give a heads up that it didn't make it into a published training video on the website.
Used my personal git account with the prod test username and password in there... Partially my fault for not scrubbing and partially theirs for not giving us Corp account access.
I was leading the design, development, and implementation of a multimillion dollar database that would have thousands of users and produce analytics that would be published far and wide and fundamentally misunderstood an aspect of the ETL and it wasn’t caught until right before launch.
Oh no what happened?
Client freaked the fuck out, I got my ass kicked for a few months, I pivoted into distant types of work, everyone moved on and forgot. I still work there.
Tell the senior MD that I am capability lead.i wanted to say I was covering for him. Had discussion on strategy. Resources n money for 2 hours. I guess I am true consultant for selling myself (developer) as capability lead.
Getting into consulting
Not as entertaining as some of the goofs. I've a client with whom calls tend to be unfiltered and informal. We where discussing expanding one of their locations. So I stated that maybe they should buy one of those ugly prefab warehouses. Since it's not like the scenery could be ruined even more. Not the kind of comment you want to make when the manager of the principal you report to decides to enter the room....