Jianjun's Blog

Yesterday afternoon a friend called me asking for urgent help with an interpretation project. He’s running a small translation and business consulting firm, and often outsources projects. He told me he’d been traveling out of town, so hoped that I could lend a hand.

The assignment is a one-day interpretation job at a car factory. Well, I used to do interpretation, but that’s a long long time ago (1991-1997) when I was still with Long Shun Rong Pharmaceuticals. And I’d never had any experience with automobiles. I had no choice but to decline.

My friend sounded anxious over the phone. I knew he needed help since he promised his client that he would send somebody over – somebody qualified for the work! He cornered himself by creating this difficult situation. Now the only wise thing to do is to apologize to his client and cancel the job.

Sometimes I’m appalled by what some colleagues dare to offer. All my business courses told me to “meet and exceed customer expectations”, not “to jump on every opportunity and shock your client”. When you are not sure if you can do the task well, leave it to someone else.

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