“...often incredibly arrogant, to the point of risking their careers over trivial assumptions.”
An example, please?
OK, immediately after completing installation of the first “Voicemail Japan ®” system the facility manager refused to to listen while I explained how to restart the system after an unplanned/emergency shut down.
He stated “This is Tokyo Japan, we will never have a problem, our power is perfect”.
Their company had rented a LARGE exhibition hall to announce the new state of the art technology the next morning.
EVERYONE of any importance was invited, including the emperor (Always invited - never shows up) ambassadors, heads of industry, ALL the VIP’s and press.
I woke early, dialed the system, AND IT WAS DEAD!
Not what you want when you are about to show it off to the world.
Seems some drunk had hit a power pole during the night, the transformer blew, NO POWER, system shut down.
The big show was only a couple of hours away.
I called Kenji, he got us to the facility PDQ, and when I asked the facility manager if he would like to listen while I explained how to re-boot the system he was now very quiet and attentive.
Not sure why he was so conceited that he did not just take the five minutes the day before, senior management in Japan (and here) sometimes seems to feel that ANY manual labor is beneath them.
In this case it was senseless that he initially refused critical information, which buttons to push, and in which order.
I can only imagine the embarrassment that would have been spread around if the system could not have been on-line in time.
The introduction was a success, the celebration dinner that evening was great, I still don’t know what most of the menu items were, except the whale bacon.