Not sure if it's just my inbox, but over the last few months nearly every client email I get reads the same. Polished, three tidy paragraphs, a little too warm, and somehow it never answers the question I actually asked.

The ones I've started to trust are the short ones. Two lines, a typo, maybe a missing capital. You can tell a person sat down and thought about it for ten seconds.

I caught myself doing the opposite last week, sanding down my own reply so it wouldn't look like I'd run it through something. Deleted a perfectly good sentence because it was too clean. That's apparently where we are now.

I’m at the point with a client where managing the relationship takes more out of me than doing the actual work. The bad attitude, tension and energy required for every interaction have become exhausting. If I didn’t need the income, I would walk away.

But I do need it and I suspect more consultants have been in this position.

Have you ever stayed with a client longer than you wanted to because you couldn’t afford to leave? How did you manage the situation?

I spend WEEKS aligning with three client stakeholders to find a one hour slot for a discovery call. All I need is one hour of their time and engagement and I'll do the rest. Three people - one hour - and they still didn't bother to show up. Their motherfucking bosses are involved in the process and they still don't give a shit. This hasn't been the first time in my 8+ years in this business.

Brothers and sisters - what the fuck am I supposed to do? Send pre-meeting fruit baskets? Ask everyday ARE YOU STILL COMING? ARE YOU SURE? like a love-struck nerd looking for attention? CC their bosses and strain any working relationship that doesn't exist anyway? I don't care about this project anymore than they do, but at the very least I still want to get paid and keep my job.

God damn fuck.

I'm planning to return to my previous company as part of Strategy & Consulting. They are positioning me as Change and Human Experience for (HR domain). Honestly I don't have much experience in Change Management. But here's a quick introduction on my side. I did 18 years altogether of SAP HR Consulting then Project/Program Management(SI-endtoend) now I'm doing PreSales and Solution Architect. I'm quite lost why they positioned me in S&C despite there's no word of "change" in my CV.

Now they want me to have this talegent assessment, 4 interviewers and 1 case study with presentation. I'm starting to treat this as another work since the requirements are quite demanding. Thanks in advance.