[hinkley]

What always seems to happen is they say, “we want it for this much.” And you say, “that can’t be done… well, it could be done if we can assume all X are Y. Is that okay?” They agree because it means yes. Then a year later they realize that not all X are Y and they start renegotiating, like we’re just arguing about paint colors or bathroom fixtures instead of something foundational, like the footprint or number of floors or what city you built it in (we decided we don’t want to live in Detroit. Can we have it in St Louis instead?).

I have been wondering for a while if we should just never ask those sorts of questions, because they don’t know, we hear what we want to hear, they hear what they want to hear, and nobody has any idea what’s actually going on, and later we won’t look at how we got here.