Bureaucracy
I'm used to doing work for large organisations. Submitting a proposal and having it run past many different comittees, panels, and departments isn't that unusual. I think the longest "lead time" I've encountered for a project thus far has been about two years. The last few days, however, have really taken the cake insofar as the most red-tape.

The client is booking five days of training. Two now, three next year. The training for this year is on a tight schedule, but that's okay. However the client does have a few interesting quirks. Firstly, they pay invoices at the end of the calendar month after they've been receieved. That means that today (last Friday of the month) is the deadline for the invoice to be provided if payment is to be made before 2003. That's okay, printing and sending invoices is easy.

However, for me to deliver the invoice, I first need to sign the customer's "standard agreement" for contractors. The agreement is about a dozen pages, most of it is either non-applicable, or standard CYA (Cover Your Arse) for things like privacy laws and disclosure of confidential information. Alongside all this are the requirements that I give full intellectual property rights to the client for any material I present or develop. No thanks, I'd rather keep IP.

So, after taking the contract past the client's solicitor and risk management office, the appropriate changes had been made. Of course, by this stage (after many many days of to'ing and fro'ing) it's 1:30pm Friday, so there's only 3.5 hours for the contract to be signed, and invoice entered into the accounting system. I actually had a representative from the client drive a considerable distance to my office to have the contract signed and witnessed, and now she's driving back again with two hours to spare to get it processed. :)

I can now understand why the client wanted to be billed "all at once", instead of on three separate occasions. It's very likely that three invoices would have meant three contracts. :)