I’m not in the UK so hope this won’t be outing. Have changed details for privacy.
Imagine my name is Eleanor Smyth but I changed my name when I married and am now Eleanor Johnson. Imagine also that I’m the Head of Finance for a huge organization.
A company who sells financial services software has been contacting me for quite a while now asking for me to meet with them for a product demonstration. We’re now in a position where we’re going to stop using our existing product so doing demos with several organizations. The successful company will also be given a piece of work to prepare our related systems for integration and testing and training so there’s a project element as well as a product. The budget for the project is roughly $15m and then the product will be roughly $2m/year so it’s a big piece of work.
The Relationship Manager let me know that the call would be led by one of their sales people who he referred to as (name changed), Edwina Craig. All good and a zoom meeting was arranged.
I’ve just looked at the Zoom invite and can see that Edwina Craig is actually on there as Edwina Craig-Dyson.
Edwina Dyson was the school bully. Thoroughly unpleasant person who made my time at second level very difficult. She was so insidious. She wouldn’t physically bully but it was constant picking and awful comments. When I was in school, a classmate killed herself. I remember one day Edwina and some of her gang surrounded me after school and she basically told me that nobody liked me and everyone was upset that the other girl died and not me. Awful stuff to try and get your head around at 15. It was constant and draining snd, in hindsight, I’m just glad it all happened before social media and mobile phones so at least I could go home and get a break from it.
I finished school, moved to a city 400 miles away and haven’t thought of her since.
I googled Edwina Craig to see her LinkedIn profile picture and found one, but I can’t make out if it’s her or not- I haven’t seen her in over 20 years. I think it is. The location also makes sense.
So, if you were me and it is her, how would you play it? Ultimately, if they have the best product for the best price, we’ll go with them, but I don’t want it to be a walk in the park for her if she really is who I think she is.
I don’t think she’ll know I’m me, if you get me. My name isn’t uncommon and I’m based on a different city than where we grew up so I don’t think she’d make the link.