Spotting Tuff Clients In The Construction Business
Some clients can make your life a living nightmare, if
you choose to work for these people, they could make your life extremely
miserable. Here's a story about a man that called me one time for an
estimate, but didn't seem to understand, how to treat people, especially
people that don't need to work for people like him.
I once had a man call me for an estimate, and he requested that I give
him at least three referrals, before I went to his house. He was
sarcastic and seemed to treat me like a possession. This is one of the
reasons why I am self-employed, I don't like being treated as someone
else's possession and there are quite a few people that are
self-employed, that don't want or expect to be treated as a child.
I gave him the three referrals, because I needed some business at the
time. It took about a month for him to get back with me and when he
finally did, I had plenty of work and didn't need to deal with this kind
of person.
He had irritated me, but I figured, that since I had went through all of
the trouble and he actually went and visited each one of the three
houses and got an extremely positive response from the homeowners, I
thought, I might as well bid his job anyway.
I was supposed to meet with him at eight o'clock, one evening and it was
about six o'clock and I didn't have anything to do, so I called to ask
him if I could come over a little bit earlier. He got a little snotty
with me and told me that my appointment was at eight o'clock.
I couldn't help myself, I waited until eight o'clock and then called the
man back and told him that I wasn't interested in bidding his work
anymore. His personality almost changed instantly to that of a young
innocent child. He ask me nicely, when could we schedule another
appointment, I told him that I was too busy and I wouldn't be able to
bid his job, anytime soon. He immediately switched back into the role of
Mr. Dictator and started to tell me, that it was my responsibility and
obligation to give him an estimate.
I'm going to have to leave the rest of the story to your imagination.
Some of the words that I said to him, would only show my ignorance. I
didn't handle the situation very good and wish that I wouldn't handled
it differently.
The moral to this story is that, I didn't have to work for this person.
Some people can become verbally abusive and out right cruel to
contractors and other people. Try to avoid working for these people at
all costs. All it takes is for them to get mad at you once, and it
creates an uncomfortable working environment for everyone involved in
the project.