It’s going to cost what now?

Have you ever played the telephone game? You know, that game where you whisper something into someone’s ear, and then they whisper it into the person beside them’s ear, and they whisper it to the next person, and so on until you get back to the original person? You’ll start with “please pass the ketchup” and end up with “please don’t make me pay this much money to my contractor”? You know the game. You tell the client how much you think the project will cost, based on your vast knowledge of guessing, and they whisper that number to their spouse., the spouse whispers it to the in-laws, who whisper to the neighbors, etc.., etc.,  and the next thing you know the price is 53.275% under the budget of the original number, SUCCESS! But, wait, you also whispered that number to a contractor, and he marked that number up base on his vast knowledge of guessing, and whispered that number to his subcontractor, who in turn, giggled, and whispered it to the site supervisor, who called OSHA and the next thing you know the price has increased by 2.5 million percent. NOT SUCCESS! Then you gather the client and the contractor in one room and whisper at them both for a while about the importance of the design concept, or the use of natural light, and then they stop listening to you and start whispering numbers at each other, and asking silly questions like “How did we get so far over budget?” or “Do we really need 4 lights shaped like artichokes.” And you whisper under your breath.

You know the game right?

Feel free to play along at your office. I’ll start.

**whispers “one hundred and fifty thousand dollars”*