At least that’s what I wanted to tell our supplier. The nightmare that is our software vendor continue to haunt me.

I was not meant to be involved until the UAT phase, but now I’m supposedly running the show. And as I pointed out to the CTO my hair is turning grey even faster because of this disastrous relationship.

It started well last year, hot guy came around bearing 4-5 brollies (umbrella po) bigger than my son. The “supplier” courting the prey, us. They came around at least two more times. By the third visit, I have enough brollies to last a lifetime. Now I want to shove them up their puckered ass.

They’re not only unprofessional, they’re liars, too. Is that one and the same?

Thursday night I snapped and sent out an email containing some words that when transposed read like “you’re a pain to deal with” and “you call by 9am on the dot or else”. What else will be I had no idea. I just felt so much better. When I hit the Send Button, I was ready to rip out his heart from his throat and eat it.

If you were in my place, you’d feel the same thing. First of all, it’s not my effing job to be chasing them for status on their progress. Our last call at 4pm their project manager said they found a bug and they were correcting it and will be bouncing their site. I went to my school run and attended to my son, logged in at 8pm and what do I see?? NOTHING. Did they fix it? Did they bungle it? WHO KNOWS?

Who do you think my bosses will look disappointingly at for being ignorant?? If I am running the show, I want to know right here, right now where the heck I stand.

Friday morning I read their top honcho’s email and I nearly had a fit. The nerve of this jerk telling me, the representative of their client, to tone down my email!!! He had the gall to tell me that I am impeding the project’s progress with my incessant need for information. He even implied that I may not have enough software development experience to understand that the “drip drip” kind of delivery will make things work than alleviate them. He ended to say he will contact my CTO.

Well… It took so much energy to ignore that and wait for my boss. I cannot engage in a word-war and risk foul-play this late in the project. I read it at 730am, CTO didn’t arrive until 830am. He was fuming and told me in no uncertain terms should I pipe down. He basically gave me leave to give these guys hell…

But I was really waiting for him to say, HE will give them hell, that he will defend my honour.

Classic Cinderalla complex huh.

Well, it didn’t happen. He said he will deal with this “stupid idiot” after Phase 1. So I drafted another email in response to the “arrogant bastard”, directed to the project manager telling him that I expect his call in 15 minutes time. That I expect the project tracker I created to be completed by that time and that not telling their clients when and where the changes will occur will never be acceptable.

9am the phone rang. All Friday the project ran smoothly. It’s curious because CTO never got the call from that jackass.

I asked the CTO whether I should handover the project to the dev manager when he’s back, but he said no. He said we should have had this focus months ago. I tried to think of an excuse but I can’t find any, this project is in UAT so it is my arena. But I said it’s “fucking frustrating dealing with these suppliers when we are paying them!”

The worrying thing is the response I got with that outburst. CTO laughed a wicked LOL, and hot guy said this is nothing. They said I should get ready when we are nearer our final Live date, when we’re dealing with banks and actual clients.

To be honest, if WE are the service provider and we mess up then I can accept the attitude I am going to receive. But not from a supplier especially when coming from someone who looks like an unwashed Greek with his disgusting chest-hair. CTO says he wouldn’t be surprised if this was some “stupid son-in-law” because if that guy was working for us, he’s now fired.

Okay rant done.

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