19th August, 2003.
The Cow-orker bails up our manager and tells him the Saga of The Dodgy Website. He retaliates for the loss of half an hour of his life by trying to understand what exactly she's telling him.
"Why did A***** say P**** couldn't have the product he wanted?"
"Because the supplier has a dodgy website, and she doesn't want to give him our credit card details to pay for the goods."
"And she'd checked out his website?"
"Oh no, I told her about it. You should see his website. It's all under construction, and there are no price lists or anything."
"You mean like our website was at the start of the year?"
"But he wanted our credit card details!"
"Why's that a problem?"
"Because he has a dodgy website and he won't ship us anything without payment first!"
"What did you tell A*****?"
"Nothing! I went up to see her, and I saw she had a copy of P****'s request, and I told her I had a copy, too. So then I told her about the website, and how he wouldn't even send me an invoice."
"Have you asked him?"
"Yes, hours ago."
"It's midnight over there, you know."
"Oh. But anyway, she decided that the whole thing was just too dodgy - "
"Because of the website, and because he wanted payment first?"
"Exactly! Anyway she decided that the whole thing was just too dodgy - "
"Not because of anything you said to her about the website?"
"No, she decided that all by herself after I told her about the website, and how shonky the whole thing was. So anyway, she decided the deal was too dodgy and we weren't going to go ahead with it."
"Did either of you check with P**** first to see if the more expensive stuff you wanted him to buy instead would actually do the job?"
"I told him afterwards." Does that count?
"That's not the same. Did either of you talk to Purchasing about it first to see if we could pay the way he wanted us to?"
"I couldn't ask anyone at Purchasing to stay here until midnight to give him the details over the phone." [Note that she evades the question entirely].
"Why can't they fax him the details? We've done that before."
"It doesn't matter now." Except to P****, naturally, whose elsewhere in the building pulling his beard out in frustration. "A*****'s said we're not doing it."
"But that should be Purchasing's decision, not A*****'s."
"But the guy's website -"
"Has nothing to do with it! You got A***** so worried about the supplier being unreliable based purely on what you think of his website, that her knee-jerk reaction has been to cancel the order for something a client needs urgently. What exactly did you tell A***** about this order?"
"Nothing! She started it! I went to see her about something else and she said Look I have a request from P****, do you have one of these, too?, and I said Wow, what are the odds? I do! And then she asked me to tell her about how the order was going and I told her about how the guy wasn't giving me anything I needed and wanted our credit card details before he'd ship anything to the other side of the globe!"
"You realise that makes no sense, and is exactly the opposite of what you said at the start of all this?"
" ... ! "
He gives up trying to get to the bottom of things and walks away while he still can (talking to the Cow-orker is like landing a plane in that respect).
The Cow-orker glares at his retreating back before imploding and attacking a nearby snack machine for food.