So, you wanna know about “saffers,” huh? Lemme tell ya, dealing with them was a whole thing. Not exactly a walk in the park, more like wading through treacle uphill, if you ask me.
What I Mean by ‘Saffers’
For me, “saffers” ain’t some fancy tech term or anything you’d find in a textbook. Nah. They’re the folks who, well, they just make everything… slower. More complicated. Like they’re allergic to getting things done smoothly. You probably know the type, right?
- Always finding a reason why something won’t work, instead of how it could.
- Sticking to “the way we’ve always done it” even if it’s clearly bonkers and taking twice as long.
- Needing meetings about meetings, just to decide on the shade of blue for a button that hardly anyone will ever click anyway.
Yeah, those guys. They used to drive me absolutely up the wall, I tell ya.
My Big Run-In with the Saffers
I remember this one time, vividly. We were trying to roll out this new system. Pretty simple stuff, really, or so I thought. It was supposed to make everyone’s life a bit easier, you know? Cut down on the endless paperwork, speed things up a notch. I was actually pretty pumped about it at the start. Thought to myself, “This is gonna be great, a quick win for everyone!”
Boy, was I wrong. The “saffers” seemed to materialize out of thin air. Suddenly, this straightforward project I envisioned turned into an absolute marathon of “what ifs,” “have you considereds,” and “let’s circle back on that.” We spent weeks, and I kid you not, weeks, debating a tiny, minor feature that was, like, maybe 0.1% of the whole darn deal. Every single step forward felt like pulling teeth from a very, very angry badger.
I can still picture myself sitting in one of those endless, soul-destroying meetings. The sun would be shining outside, birds probably singing their hearts out, and there we were, inside, dissecting the pros and cons of using a dropdown menu versus radio buttons for the third blasted time. I honestly thought I was going to lose my mind. I tried explaining everything from the ground up, I drew diagrams on whiteboards until the markers ran dry, I even offered to build a quick and dirty prototype just to show them how it would all work. Nope. More discussions. More “concerns.” More “we need to form a subcommittee for this.”
And the worst part? It wasn’t even like they were trying to be difficult, at least not all of them. Some of them genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. They were just… stuck. Trapped in their own little bubbles of procedure and “that’s not how we do things ’round here.” It often felt like talking to a brick wall, except this brick wall could schedule follow-up meetings and send you passive-aggressive emails.
What I Did (or At Least Tried to Do)
So what did I do? Well, first, I think I banged my head against my desk a few times. Metaphorically, of course. Mostly. Then, I realized I had to try a different approach because the direct route was clearly a dead end. I started breaking things down into super tiny, almost ridiculously small, pieces. Like, “Okay team, can we just agree on this one tiny sentence for the help text on page three?” Small victories, right? Sometimes it actually worked. Other times, it just meant we had more tiny meetings about tiny things.
I also started documenting absolutely everything. Every decision, every objection raised, every off-the-wall suggestion. Not to be a pain in the backside, though maybe it was a bit, but more to create a record. Something I could point to and say, “Look, folks, we’ve already talked about this for six hours. Here’s what we said. Can we please, for the love of all that is holy, move on?” It helped a little bit, I think. Created a paper trail that was harder to argue with, even for a seasoned “saffer.”
And honestly? There were times I just had to find a way to bypass them. Politely, if possible. Find someone higher up the food chain who actually wanted to get stuff done and make the case directly. That wasn’t always an option, and it definitely ruffled a few feathers along the way, but when you feel like you’re drowning in “saffer” quicksand, you gotta grab whatever lifeline you can find.
How It All Shook Out in the End
Did we finally launch that system? Yeah, we did. Eventually. Months later than it should have been, and probably with a few more grey hairs on my head as a souvenir. And guess what? It worked. People generally liked it, and it did make things a bit easier, just like we said it would. All that jazz.
But that whole experience, wrestling with the “saffers,” it really stuck with me. It made me realize something important: sometimes, the biggest challenge isn’t the technology itself, or the complex problem you’re trying to solve. It’s the people. And not in a mean-spirited way, necessarily. Just… people being people, with all their ingrained habits, their fears of the unknown, and their natural resistance to anything that feels like change. You can’t just bulldoze through it most of the time. You gotta be a bit more cunning, find ways around, or sometimes, just learn to navigate through the mess and find your own little island of peace in the chaos.
That project is long done and dusted now. But every now and then, when I see a simple process getting bogged down for no good reason, or a perfectly good idea getting complicated into oblivion, I just chuckle to myself and think, “Ah, the ‘saffers’ are at it again.” And I remember those ridiculously long meetings, and how I learned to always pack extra patience (and maybe a few snacks) for the journey. Funny thing is, I heard some of those same ‘saffers’ from back then are now complaining about how slow things are with the new new system someone else is trying to push through. Some things never really change, eh?
