This brought back some memories. Long ago I had to do some AAA for line rendering on some hardware that didn't support line AA natively.

A big customer was furious that they had bought a part that didn't perform the way they wanted, so I was voluntold to fix it.

I was given a ridiculous timeframe to come up with a solution and present them to our customer in a big in-person meeting with all the decision makers. I managed to implement three different alternatives so that the customer would feel they had some agency selecting the one they liked the most. The best looking by far was a form of AAA.

This was one out of several of these big last minute fires I was assigned to solve. Years later my manager told me how great it was knowing that the could throw any crap at me and I would be able to fix it in time.

However, these sort of experiences are why I struggled with burnout during my career, which led me to save like crazy to retire as early as possible, which I did.

For younglings out there: when they ask you to do the impossible, remember that failure IS an option. Push back if you think they are asking you for something unreasonable.