Deadlines are necessary, they allow whole projects to be broken down into small sections of work and resources allocated and progress monitored. They are a good tool.  However, when one key person lets the team down by underperforming the planned outcome never happens as desired.

I had switched the phone off, turned off the email, ditched every non-essential activity, like making tea and stopping to eat, to make sure I was going to meet my deadline. So with a deadline approaching and the finishline in sight 15 minutes before is not a good time to make changes that generate four or five hours work.  I should say that this was a new deadline specifically created due to Mr Underperforming forgetting this was needed and delivering it to me late. So with expediency in mind I completed minimal changes that I considered acceptable and issued it for checking.

I was castigated over the telephone so much so that I hung up and would not take further calls from him. I dared to issue something not 100% complete.  This was forgetting that the documents issued by Mr Irrational are a pile of incomplete, dimensionally inaccutate, missrepresentations of the partial solutions. But thats ok!

Mr Irrational (not Mr Underperforming) automatically considered that I would stay and complete the work: I could not – prior commitments.  As I would could not stay I had to give everything to someone else to complete. Mr Someone-else could not. He had already spent most of the day in another panic for Mr Irrational answering telephone call after call, email after email while juggling with a keyboard and mouse and taking instruction from three other people. At one stage Mr Someone-else told Mr Irrational that as he, Mr Irrational that is, would not stop and listen to his questions there was no real way forward. Made no difference!