IT'S A SUGGESTION!!!!!

Have you ever had a person ask for a suggestion on how to do something and then argue with you about how it won't work? That really frustrates me. That just happened no more than 10 minutes ago.

We have a project that our client has assigned for us that covers 22 states. The states are divided into two teams. One team has 14 states, the other team has 8 states. The Lead on the team with 8 states asked a few of us for suggestions on how to best develop the requested output. When I gave my suggestion, his response was, "My team has never done it that way, and I can't change things with such a short deadline." My response was that the team had done it that way, and in fact was the standard way of doing this type of request when I was on the team prior to my promotion in March.

To make a 15 minute discussion short, he wants input, but doesn't want suggestions. I think what he really wants is for us to tell him to do it how he wants to, and then sympathize with all the work he has. He won't be getting sympathy from me. While he is dealing with a maximum of 32 algorithms across his team of 6 programmers, I am dealing with the QA of 56 algorithms by my team of 1 in half the time.

It's a suggestion!!! Don't ask for them if you don't want them!