I doubt if it's a question or doubt & whether it needs to be asked?

It's a great fun looking behind, but it was one of the biggest tragedies in my onsite life. Some customers are always cunning and you need to handle them with utmost care. It used to be fun working with Japanese bosses, and I remember one of the incidents forever... It used to be a decent English speaking guy who has at least 30 years of experience and my offshore was working for a project with him. Being at the offshore where I was working, I never knew the difference between doubt and a question, and so was the case with my colleagues.

Somebody sends me a question from offshore and it reads "I've a doubt about the handling the slider for zoom and scale. Is it ok to update the image while the slider is dragged to a new position and dropped?". And I ring back to the offshore straight away feeling the question is stupid enough! But a pretty senior guy shows green to ask this question to the customer and I had no other go!

Then I goes to the customer-san, the best English speaking guy at whole office may be, and asks him. Customer-san, I've a doubt! The doubt is about the slider control and blah blah blah, bang bang bang... I must say, the color of his cheeks changed to red right when I finished the question and the first response from him was "Is it a doubt or a question?". Oops! I'm really not sure what the difference between both is! But I applied my logic; his face wouldn't have turned red if it was a doubt, so maybe it was a question! With all my confidence I answered, "Customer-san, I'm sorry! I think it was a question". And I thought think ended here, I promise I didn't even wanted an answer to my question or doubt or whatever it may be. I just need to get out of this mess now and go back to desk!

When I thought it was settled and ok, there comes the second amazing question from the red customer! It was a simple question, "Do you have common sense?” And I never give up, I gently replied, I'll check it with offshore and let you know. He got the point and I got mine too!

I always knew that the zoom slider is obsolete unless it does a real time update in the image! I still don't know why I trembled to the pressure of offshore and asked such a stupid question! Later I found that they were having some technical difficulty in updating the image real-time and they fix they found was to change the requirement. Sometime it’s so crazy!