Monday, Monday...

An email exchange with a client prompted a memory this morning. We had been discussing whether an impromptu "procedure" developed last month was going to be continued, because it had been my understanding that the procedure—involving the translation and return of certain types of documents ahead of others, out of turn, so they could be processed before the end of the fiscal year—represented a temporary state of affairs and not a new way of doing business. I had raised the issue because another such request had been received since the first of this month.

In the back-and-forth that followed, I recalled the following episode:

I am reminded of a time when I worked at TTI, where there was this fellow on the NASA side who insisted on delivery of his department's translations by COB Friday (effectively turning most of them into rush jobs), the idea being that he would "review" them over the weekend. (This claim never failed to raise the dander of translators, as said individual had absolutely no background in Russian.)

After a while, we noticed that the return receipts sent from his email account were consistently dated on the Monday following delivery. After a little investigation I learned that he just wanted to go home Friday evenings with "peace of mind," knowing that the stuff he had to read or to e-mail back to Russia on Monday was done before he left the office for the weekend.

Short of not paying for work, I'd have to think hard to imagine a better way of getting on a translator's bad side.

Cheers...