I want to share a story. I don't think I've shared it here before, but I hope you'll forgive me if you've heard it before. It's a fun story.

I'm going to slightly obscure the story because I don't want to be sued for libel. All the facts presented are completely accurate as best I remember them.

This happened over 20 years ago. I was tasked with evaluating a particular product for my employer at the time. We were looking at products from 3 or 4 companies, and a major fortune 500 company wanted the business. I'd had a demo version of their offering for a week or so, but I couldn't convince it to do all the things we required. It was a good product, but it was going to fail the evaluation if I couldn't get it to do a few things we needed.

The salesperson invited me into a meeting to talk about it. In the meeting it was the salesperson, me, and this stunning but very quiet woman that was introduced as the product manager for the equipment we were evaluating. She sure was quiet for a product manager.

We talked for a few minutes. I outlined the problems I was having. I really wanted this vendor to do well, as their product was pretty nice. Then the sales guy asked me, "Joe, what do YOU NEED to recommend our product?"

So I told him.

"I need it to do this and that. You told us it could do these things, so someone in your company must know how to get them to do it. Give me a sample so I can duplicate it."

End of meeting. I went away thinking, "Great, he'll need a day or two, but we had the product manager there. She must know exactly who has my answers."

Several days later, I hadn't gotten anything, but I was invited to another meeting. This time it was the sales guy, me, and two stunning women, both very quiet. I'm afraid I don't remember if one of them was the same product manager. As I recall, one was blonde, one was a redhead.

Well, the conversation went pretty much the same as the first one. I was asked, "What do YOU NEED to recommend this product?"

I sighed and repeated my answer from the previous meeting. Maybe he'd forgotten. But I didn't go away feeling very good this time.

So several days went by. I was pretty sure the product was going to fail the test. Only one of the vendors had a product that did what we wanted. I liked the company, but I was a bit nervous about the amount of maintenance their product was going to require. I really preferred the technology of the first company, but if it couldn't do what we needed...

But before I could wrap up and submit my final report, I was invited into one last meeting. This time it was sales guy, me, stunning blonde, stunning brunette, stunning redhead, and this really hot black guy. I felt under-dressed and severely out-numbered.

"Joe, what do YOU need to recommend our product?"

I sighed, gave him the same answer I'd already given, and decided, "Man, what a bunch of idiots."

It took me 10 years to realize who the idiot had been. The very very naive idiot.