So, this ‘Marcel guy’ thing. It’s funny how some people just stick in your mind, not always for big reasons, but because they teach you something, even if they don’t mean to. I had my own ‘Marcel guy’ experience a while back, and it really was a whole process, a real practice in dealing with, well, certain types of folks.
I got roped into helping out with a small community project. We wanted to set up a little website, nothing fancy, just to share news and events. Simple, right? That’s what I thought. Then I met Marcel. He was put in charge of the ‘creative direction’, or something like that. Nice enough guy, always smiling, always talking. Talking a lot, actually.
My ‘practice’ started right there. We had our first meeting. I suggested we use a simple template, get it up and running in a week. Marcel, he leaned back, stroked his chin, and said, “Ah, but we must consider the essence.” The essence? For a local gardening club website? Okay, I thought, let’s hear him out. This was just the beginning of my journey into the Marcel method of doing things.
What followed was weeks, not a week, but weeks of ‘considering’. Here’s a little taste of what my practice involved trying to navigate:
- He wanted a custom font that he said “spoke to the soil’s soul.” Took him three days to find one, and then it wasn’t web-safe.
- The color palette? Oh boy. He brought in actual paint swatches. We spent an entire afternoon debating shades of green. I just wanted one green!
- He insisted on ‘philosophical discussions’ about the user journey before we even had a single page. He’d say things like, “What if a user feels existential dread when they see the ‘contact us’ form?”
- Every image had to be “emotionally resonant.” A picture of a prize-winning carrot wasn’t just a carrot; it was “a testament to human endeavor.”
Honestly, it felt like trying to build a tiny birdhouse with someone who insisted on blueprints for a cathedral. Every simple step, he’d find a way to make it grand, make it complicated. My practice was learning to nod, to say “interesting point, Marcel,” and then gently try to steer things back to earth. Sometimes it worked, mostly it didn’t. I remember once, I just wanted to pick a button style. He started talking about the “psychology of click-through rates” and “haptic feedback expectations.” For a button that said ‘Read More’!
We did eventually get a website up. It was… okay. It looked a bit like a philosophy student designed it after too much coffee. But the real thing I got out of it wasn’t the website. It was the ‘Marcel guy’ experience. I learned that some people aren’t trying to be difficult. They just operate on a different frequency. Their idea of ‘done’ is way different from mine.
My big takeaway from that whole practice? Sometimes, you just gotta manage the energy. You can’t change a ‘Marcel guy,’ but you can change how you work with them. Lots of little check-ins, very small, concrete tasks. And sometimes, you just gotta let them have their paint swatches and philosophical discussions, then quietly get the actual work done when they’re busy pondering the ‘essence’ of the next thing. It’s not ideal, but hey, projects still need to get finished, even with a Marcel guy around.