As a private investigator in Romania, sometimes things are just rushing ahead of me. This is just a small happening, which may show that when preparing for a project, you have to verify your thing in the smallest details.

1. I was heading to an interview; not the “change your life” kind. No, alas. It was
just a regular interview, for a case I was working on.
Obviously, the second most important tool is a good voice recorder; first most
important being, ahem, your questions.
Questions, check. Good questions, if I am allowed to say so myself. Voice
recorder, check. Good machine, modern, digital, and so forth.
Batteries? Check. Good batteries, well known brand. Used just once, for a
couple of minutes. "Checked" actually was done only bu looking inside the
battery compartment, to see if the things were in there. They were. Good
enough for me (or so I thought).
Packed and ready to go? Check. Beautiful morning, breakfast great, full of life.
Arriving at interviewee address, I prepare everything and start the voice
recorder thingy; a brief red light, and then silence. No, I really mean silence. My
interviewee was staring at me, not understanding why my face turned purple in
an instant; me, silent for lack of anything human to say, and the machine silent
because, well, batteries were dead.

2. Did I mention the interview was taking place in a remote area, some 20 kms
from the city, basically a manufacturing unit in the middle of a large field. No
shops, no spare batteries in my backpack, therefore no way to get a couple of
AA’s in time (decent time) for redressing the situation.
Long story short: interview was canceled. Interviewee had a good laugh, me
not. Two hours after my arrival back in the office I was still purple.
That was a lesson learned the hard way. Prepare everything to the smallest
detail, and then, after you checked everything, check again. And this is true for
any case I handle, and for any (and I mean any) job I undertake on behalf of
my clients. True for the last 25 years of professional investigations, my main, sole,
and only occupation.
And I hate purple, for what is worth.