Storm in a glass of water

.. and the ship is still sinking

Sometimes you find yourself in projects that drag on and on and on and on. And you find that the only who really cares about the project is you. All the other project members have found other priorities and seem happy with that. Or they just have moved themselves off the team after never really having been part of it.

When projects drag on without any real progress or a prospect of ever finishing then the moment comes that you think: "why bother? The world's full of beautiful bunnies and flowers .." Your are so near the end and still you feel like giving up on the whole show and forget about even starting.

That's when it happens! Some dormant team members, long presumed dead, at best MIA or AWOL, re-emerge. The zombies wake up! They start screaming outrage that things are not what they should be and that it is a terrible outrage that someone (= you) has just done all sorts of things to their baby. The product that is now there is not like they wanted it, like they had in their minds and not as described in all these secret documents hidden away in a very accessible share on a server amongst 65,301 other documents.

How can you be so stupid! How can you be so ignorant! How can you be such a pathetic nitwit!

When the first dust has settled and you have shown almost inhuman patience, then the time comes when you sit down and have a look at what the problem really is. As it turns out some things have been missed. Both in development and in testing. Too bad, you are both so sorry. But it's understandable that they have been missed. The documents describing the correct behavior were kept a secret. Then after spending a few hours of work the problems are resolved.

More time was spent on the outrage then on the solution of a few omissions. On top of that if outrage was needed it should have been pointed at the ones fuming and insulting.

How can they be so stupid! How can they be so ignorant! How can they be such pathetic nitwits!

But it most definitely damages a good working relation. If there ever was any such thing ...