So, about that “two for tennis, three for fucking” thing…
Man, let me tell you, I learned this the hard way. It wasn’t even about actual tennis, you know? It was this project, this supposedly simple thing I tried to get off the ground a while back.
Me and my buddy, let’s call him Dave, we cooked up this killer idea during a lunch break. We were properly buzzing about it. Just us two. That was the plan. We figured, hey, we can bash this out, maybe a few evenings, a weekend or two. Clean, simple, you know, like a good game of tennis. Two players, clear rules, straightforward fun. That’s what we were aiming for.
So, we got started. I remember setting up the initial repository, and Dave was already sketching out the UI. We got the basic framework up pretty quickly. It was actually looking good, that little spark of something real. We were making progress, feeling that great vibe when things just click into place. I even bought some extra fancy coffee to fuel those late nights.
Then, fucking Kevin from marketing got wind of it. Kevin. You know the type. Always got his ear to the ground, sniffing around for something to stick his name on, make himself look busy and important. He wasn’t even a tech guy, not really, but suddenly he had all these ‘brilliant insights’. ‘We need more synergy here,’ he’d say, or ‘Let’s consider the brand alignment implications.’ Just a load of hot air, if you ask me.
Our manager, Sarah, who usually just let us get on with our small side gigs, suddenly perked up. Kevin had been in her ear, obviously. ‘Oh, this sounds like it has real potential for cross-departmental collaboration!’ she chirped in a team meeting. And just like that, our little weekend passion project was upgraded, or downgraded, depending on how you look at it, to a ‘strategic initiative’. That’s when the ‘three’ really crashed the party. Or maybe it was Kevin, Sarah, and the whole damn corporate machine. That’s exactly when it turned from a nice, clean game of tennis to, well, fucking.
Suddenly, our calendars were full. So. Many. Fucking. Meetings. Seriously. Instead of writing code, we were dragged into making PowerPoint slides. Kevin insisted we needed a ‘comprehensive user journey map’ and ‘stakeholder alignment sessions’. Dave and I just looked at each other across the meeting table, thinking, what the hell happened? Our simple tool, designed for a very specific, small task, was morphing into this bloated monster with a hundred features we never asked for, features nobody would ever actually use. The scope just went wild.
Dave, he started to lose his mojo. You could see it. I was just getting more and more pissed off. Every tiny decision, every line of code, suddenly needed three layers of approval. Every design choice got picked apart by folks who didn’t have a clue about the core idea. It wasn’t fun anymore. It was just a frustrating grind, a total, unadulterated mess. Our ‘two for tennis’ dream had become this ugly, bureaucratic three-ring circus… or, yeah, ‘three for fucking’ pretty much sums it up, because we, and the project, got thoroughly screwed. The whole thing just died a slow, agonizing death. Buried under piles of corporate bullshit and endless revisions.
We actually tried, me and Dave, for a bit. Secretly. We forked the original code, tried to strip it back to its clean, simple core. But the enthusiasm, that initial spark, it was gone. Killed off. And Kevin, bless his cotton socks, kept sending emails asking for ‘progress updates’ on the ‘official, strategically aligned version’. In the end, we just quietly archived the whole damn thing. Didn’t even announce its death. Just let it fade away.
So yeah, that’s my little story of that saying. Two for tennis? Sounds bloody brilliant. That’s the dream. But you let a third party in, or let the wrong kind of ‘three’ get involved, especially when they don’t get the game, and you’re just asking for trouble. You’re practically begging for a fucking mess. Learned that one good and proper, I did.
- The idea: Was supposed to be simple, quick, and fun with just two of us.
- The start: We got going, things felt good, progress was made.
- The interference: Then others got involved, added complexity, meetings, and nonsense.
- The result: The project got bogged down, became frustrating, and eventually died.
- The lesson: Keep it simple if you want to get it done. Too many cooks, or the wrong cooks, spoil everything.
Sometimes, honestly, keeping things tight, small, and focused is the only way you’re ever gonna actually build something and get it out the door. The moment it becomes a committee thing, or in this case, ‘three for fucking’, it’s usually dead in the water before it even learns to swim. Just my two cents, from experience.
