Decamouth Postal Services

While working as the tech. support in the HQ, I received a request from the proposal manager, K yesterday. It is a job from Decamouth in Malaysia.

Decamouth sent in request for technical services on the same job few weeks ago. According to the long chain of emails I received yesterday, the design requirement has changed -- about 20% larger demand than the original design. I didn't find out the new design requirement from Decamouth's forwarded email, but by reading through all the correspondence. All I read from Decamouth's email is -- this email is urgent, and he needs it in 24 hours time. (Why can't he just summarise the entire email correspondence then? Save my time to read through all these, which helps me to design it faster for him? Selfish bastard.)

Decamouth also requested K to provide some "value added" stuffs, so that there would be a better chance of winning the project.

As I reviewed the new design requirements, there are lots of things that weren't clear, and we took some assumptions to get it done. I listed out the assumptions, send it back to K, and told K if she wants to talk about those "value added stuffs". K said, don't bother, because it is just a budgetary, and she has better things to do. She said she has no time to deal with these vague statements. Kudos to K!!

Anyway, K forwarded my email to Decamouth, and we received Decamouth's reply today.
Decamouth basically forwarded an email from our sales representative, mentioning the area constraints, and confirmed new design requirements.

I spotted a calculation mistake from the rep's email, and it would cause the design requirement to be 40% larger than the original design instead. And I did not like the idea, where Decamouth obtain the confirmation from the sales rep, rather than from the end-user. I also hate the idea that Decamouth, who recently been promoted as a Regional Sales Manager, is in fact sitting there forwarding emails, even expecting the people in the HQ to feed him with "value added stuffs", so that he can get all the credits. I also can see where this email forward game would eventually lead to (I called it Decamouth Postal Services):

After the job is sold, customer found out that the item is under design. Decamouth would quickly point his finger to the HQ, and me. Because we designed it.
And if I could produce his email with the confirmation of design requirement, he would then change his position and point his finger to the sales rep, as the confirmation of design requirements were sent by the rep., instead of the customer.
If the rep. managed to dig out email, saying that it is indeed the customer's request, then Decamouth would just use that piece of evidence and point it right in front of the end-user.

In summary, he doesn't want to carry any responsibility, yet he gets to point the fingers to everyone but himself, when fault were found.

So, I clicked reply all, and said that there seemed to be some calculation error on the design requirements. And requested confirmation of design requirement from the end-user.

I want him to learn picking up some responsibilities, before I feel comfortable to let him take some credits. If the HQ can't produce the quotation on time, "and caused the company to lose the job" [quoted from Decamouth's email.], he should be responsible for not facilitating an efficient and transparent communication, at least.

Also, if there were any "value added stuffs" that is required, it would be Decamouth's summary of the long email chains, and his input on the sales strategies, instead of forwarding email blatantly. Shame on his Regional Sales Manager position.