A Deadbeat With A Heart Of Gold

A client hired me to do a large-scale project – the largest my personal firm has ever worked on. After negotiating for quite some time, we settled on a price half of the original proposal. However, and relevant to the story later, the down-payment was the same amount as the client’s suggestion.

We never saw another dime. A year later, I ran into the client on the street, and after a bit of back and forth…

Me: “I’m over it. I just wrote off the cost. But one thing bothers me: if you knew you weren’t going to pay me, why did you bother haggling so much to begin with?”

Client: “Well, I didn’t want you to lose as much money.”