The Great International Spotlight Hunt
The search for the spotlight continues.
Sometimes, the smallest things on a project take on a life of their own, ballooning into situations so ridiculous you just have to laugh.
We were sourcing smart lights for a client—a specific model they had personally approved. The order was placed, the boxes arrived, and everything seemed fine. Same model number, same everything. Except, it turned out to be a slightly different variant. A tiny, almost imperceptible difference in design, but a difference nonetheless.
The problem wasn’t the smart light itself; it was that we had already purchased all the other conventional, non-smart lights to perfectly match the original, approved version. Now, nothing matched.
In a normal world, this is a straightforward fix. But for some reason, one member of the client’s family seemed to have a pre-existing bias against this particular supplier. I could just feel it. Suddenly, this minor mix-up wasn’t a logistical hiccup; it was a conspiracy. The narrative became, “The vendor is lying. He’s trying to cheat us, to deceive us!” All this for the tiniest of discrepancies. To be honest, the lights were so similar that most people wouldn’t have noticed. It wasn’t some grand deception; it was the same brand, the same model number, just a fractional variation.
But logic had left the building.
Instead of pursuing the most practical solution—simply replacing the conventional lights to match the new smart ones, a matter of a few thousand dirhams—we were sent on a wild goose chase. The supplier, desperate to prove his integrity, escalated the issue. He contacted the corporate head office of the lighting manufacturer. Now, they’re involved.
And so began the great international spotlight hunt.
We now have people coordinating across continents, from a city I won’t name, to a neighbouring country I won’t drag into this, to somewhere much farther east, well, just for dramatic effect (maybe)—all trying to track down a ghost. The manufacturer’s head office is telling us, “Well, we just sent a shipment to our distributor in one place I won’t get into… and another to somewhere else equally far. We’ll check their stock for you.”
All this effort, all this drama, to find a handful of recessed spotlights that are possibly discontinued.
I find it hilarious. Here we are, managing a complex project with countless moving parts and significant challenges that require our full attention. Yet, a disproportionate amount of energy is being poured into a global search for a light fixture that makes zero material difference to the final outcome.
It’s a perfect little storm of human emotion, perceived slights, and misplaced priorities, all swirling around a simple recessed spotlight. And as the emails fly between places “that-shall-not-be-named” , all I can do is shake my head and smile. Sometimes, the most absurd moments are the ones that tell you the most about the human side of any project.