This story and the comment section prompted me to tell you a story from my past. 

This was years ago when I worked for a man who ran a business that offered many services to companies, henceforth Bossman. The main service he offered, where I worked for seven years, was a warehouse. He rented the space and warehousing services to companies that needed them.

Our biggest customer was an international logistics company, which had a client that needed a hub warehouse for their products. So, our customer bought our services and offered it as a part of their logistics chain.

The client produced cleaning chemicals, which were shipped to us. We received them, stored them, and when they needed to be shipped out, we collected them and informed our customer, who sent one of their trucks to pick them up. It was quite a repetitive job, and when you spent years doing it day after day, you get pretty good at it.

When this story happened, I had been at the company for over four years and was basically a manager without the power of a manager. 

This happened during winter. Every day, if there was new snow, a local plow driver would clear our yard. So far, the day had been uneventful, and I was working with my coworker Jen. We heard a truck approaching, and when I peeked through the window, I saw it was the truck our customer had sent to us.

I returned to finish the job I was doing, since I knew the truck driver didn’t need my help to back up to the docking bay. Except this time, he couldn’t, and first sent his assistant to ask me for sand for the yard.

The assistant walked in and asked where the sand was, and just as I pointed it out to him, the driver stormed in and started shouting. I’m not going to type everything he said, but imagine a Scottish sailor saying this:

Driver: “Why is it so difficult to get some sand to the yard? What are you even doing all day?”

I didn’t reply; I knew there was no point in arguing. I left the work I was doing, walked outside, and took the shovel from our box of gravel. [Driver] got back to his truck, and his assistant stood there, hands in pocket, while I threw some gravel next to the tires so he could get some grip and park at the dock.

The rest of their visit was pretty quiet; I saw no reason to talk with either, and after loading, they left. I thought he was just having a bad day and decided to just let it go. 

Two days later, I got a phone call from the Bossman.

Bossman: “Hey [My Name], are you busy?”

Me: “As much as usual. Anything wrong?”

Bossman: “Have there been issues with the snowplow?”

Me: “No, why?”

Bossman: “Two days ago, did the snowplow not come at all?”

Me: “No, it did, and there was no problem with snow. Why are you asking?”

Bossman: “Look, I know you, and know that you don’t cause problems. But the customer has filed an official complaint against us, and you specifically, and I’m trying to figure out what happened.”

Me: “What?!”

Bossman: “I’ll forward the message to you. Read it and reply to me when you can, okay?”

I was heated. I told Jen I needed to check an email and went to the office to see what was going on.

Bossman had forwarded me an email from the customer’s chief of operations. In short, the driver had made a claim that our yard had so much snow he couldn’t drive there, and when he asked for help, I had been rude and unhelpful and barely did anything to assist, thus he had to work extra time that day to keep up with the schedule.

All right. He wants to dance, and I accept. I wrote my reply to Bossman. This is not word-for-word, but imagine this being said by a drunk Australian who steps on a Lego:

Me: “The yard was plowed without issue. We had several trucks that day; no one else had any issues with driving to the dock, just the driver. We didn’t throw gravel into the yard in advance because no one had asked us to do so. We have actual work to do here; we don’t have time to patrol the yard with a shovel and a bucket of gravel just in case. He didn’t ask, he shouted at us, Jen and me, while we were packing the pallets he was there to pick up. I ended up needing one and a half shovels of gravel while his assistant stood there with his thumb up his butt. And one more thing. You don’t pay me enough to be shouted at by anyone. Next time anyone, ANYONE, comes here with that attitude, I will push them out, lock the door, and demand a new driver.”

I said to Bossman:

Me: “That’s my reply. Clean up the message any way you want and reply to them.”

I didn’t hear about the issue until next Monday, when the customer’s truck arrived, and the driver marched in. Before I had a chance to say anything, he took his hat off and dropped this bomb:

Driver: “I’m so sorry. I apologize for my behavior. I was having a very bad day and took it out on you. I hope you can forgive me and we can forget about this.”

I was too shocked to know what to think.

Me: “Of course, I accept your apology.”

After he left with the day’s load, I went to check the emails.

I was still part of the chain and saw that instead of editing my reply to Bossman, he had forwarded my reply to the COO. He didn’t tell me anything more, but sometime later, another driver approached me, laughing. He said that the story of what had happened has been going around. He told me that the driver is not well-liked at all by anyone.

So far, he had been banned by every major mall, factory, and warehouse in the local area, thus forcing him to drive long-distance hauls. This was really bad because he was the local union representative, and it was reflecting poorly on every union member.

The last time he had a disciplinary hearing due to complaints, the union lawyer present at the hearing had told him that if he got fired due to official warnings about behavior, the union would not back him up.

So, did he learn his lesson? Cut to four years later, I’m working at a new job, in a warehouse of a local food processing plant. While walking near the loading bay, I hear a familiar voice.

Driver: “Just be patient, the kid is new, okay?”

I go to see if I heard right, and there he is, talking with our loading bay operator.

Me: “[Driver], good day.”

Driver: “Oh, hi [My Name]. You are working here now, I see?”

Me: “Yeah, fancy seeing you here.”

 Driver: “Yeah, they gave me a new driver to train, just told your colleague to be a bit patient. New kids have to learn to be professionals like us, right?”

He gave me a friendly nudge to the shoulder and then turned his attention to his truck, where a young driver was doing his best to navigate his pallet truck out.

Driver: *To his assistant.* “Nice and steady, focus on backing out straight!” *To me.* “Nice seeing you.”

Me: “Likewise.”

And I left to continue my day, happy to know that people can change for the better.

I work in web development. A client is using us to design the UI for their admin accounts, accessed via their website.

Coworker: “Hey, [My Name]. Did you see that request from [Client] saying that no field was mandatory for an admin account?”

Me: “Yeah. I implemented that feature, as stupid as it was.”

Coworker: “I thought so. They’re reporting a bug.”

Me: “Bug?”

Coworker: “They’re saying that we misinterpreted “no field being mandatory for admin accounts” and some fields are mandatory for admin accounts.”

Me: “Yeah, I figured that was going to happen when they said that. Who logs in without mandatory username and password fields? I already have those settings saved, so I’ll revert to those now.”

Coworker: “Yeah, that’s what it should be, but that’s not what they’re requesting.”

Me: “What are they requesting?”

Coworker: “They only want the username field to be mandatory.”

Me: “Not the password field?”

Coworker: “Apparently, their CEO is always forgetting his password, so he wants an option to just not need it sometimes.”

Me: *Sigh.* “I’ll implement the feature, but please make sure we’re not liable for inevitable data breaches on their system.” 

I implement the feature, and they come back again later that day, saying we “misinterpreted” them again, and that “only the username field needs to be mandatory” should have been interpreted by us as “the username and password fields need to be mandatory.”

When I first started as a freelance designer, I picked up a project designing some UIs (user interfaces) for some medical software. Basically, the screens that doctors use to control the system.

Though I was only supplying the designs, the client asked that I deliver them with some basic frontend coding so they could see the interactions in action and get a feeling of it as if it were real. 

I did the project and received heaps of praise for my work.

Then it came time to pay. 

I waited… And waited… Then chased… And chased.

I got passed around, fobbed off, and told it was coming. Just be patient.

Eventually, I decided to call the CEO. I had worked with him directly, and he had been singing my praises. 

The call went like this:

CEO: “Hello?”

Me: “Hi, sorry to bother you with this, but I’m still waiting on the payment for the UI design I did.”

CEO: “Oh! Sorry, we won’t be paying for that. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

Me: “What?! No… How come, I thought you were happy with it?”

CEO: “We are, it’s very good. But you know how we asked you to submit the front-end HTML? That wasn’t in a good enough state to use.”

Me: “But I told you I’m not a developer. I thought you were clear that it was only to show the designs in action?”

CEO: “Oh yes, but read the agreement you sent over. It doesn’t actually say that. It just says ‘supplied as HTML and CSS’. We think we could argue in court that we were expecting production-ready code.”

I sat back in disbelief.

CEO: “Look, I know you only just started. I can tell you, this lesson will be worth so much more over the years than what we owe. Make sure your contracts are watertight!”

He was right. Though morally reprehensible, for the grand or so I lost, my super solid contracts saved me hundreds of thousands in the years since, and taught me a rough but important lesson about businesspeople.

I work as an engineer. I do some consulting on the side, but typically only for people I know and as a favor.

A good friend asked me to help his in-laws, who were doing some fairly massive renovations/additions. I agreed solely because he asked me to. This is not something I have any interest in or need to do except as a favor. It’s an old house and had a can of worms written all over it, with some of the changes they wanted to do.

Now he warned me that the mother-in-law can be unpleasant, but that was an understatement. She seemed to think that because I was being paid (I charged probably 1/10th what a business would) that she could snap her fingers at me like a servant. I had a few unpleasant emails with her, but it was tolerable. She was rude when I was pointing out issues with their plans, but nothing too extreme.

That changed when I started trying to find a time for me to stop by and inspect a few areas of the house to verify some information.

I offered times to stop by on the weekend, but that didn’t work for her. Tried evening times, still a no. Nope, she wanted me to stop by during my office work hours because that was best for her. When I told her no, this gets done on the weekends or in the evening, she went from rude to incredibly hostile. Telling me that she is paying me (LOL) and that I work with her availability. Not the other way around.

I CC’ed my friend in on the chain, told them I was out, and to have fun working with whoever they get. My friend apologized, and I said no worries, not my problem anymore.

She emailed back, quite stunned that I was walking away, telling me that it’s not how business is conducted. I didn’t bother responding.

About three weeks later, I get an email from the husband now asking me if I would reconsider, and he promises that his wife won’t speak to me or be involved in any way.

I hear from my friend that while the quotes came back much higher, which was tolerable for them, it was how long the wait was. They just bought this house and wanted to move in ASAP, but it’s an incredibly busy time of year for the industry.

Turns out, when companies you reach out to are drowning in work and you have a potentially convoluted and messy project, they aren’t champing at the bit to get your business. So now they are going to lose the trades they lined up because design would be a month or two out.

I passed on the request as I struggled to believe she would be kept in check and had no desire to bail her out. My friend didn’t care, saying it was nice watching her attitude give the consequences that actually affect her.

At a small software development firm I worked at, a potential client (an insurance firm) was quoted a price for some custom software development work. The job would take six months with three staff devoted to it full-time.

The client was happy with the quote, so I said:

Me: “Okay, once we get a 50% deposit, we’ll start on it.”

Client: “No, I don’t want to pay a deposit. I want to see the completed work before I decide to pay. I’m not paying a deposit for work you haven’t done yet.”

This was sent up to our sales manager, who spent about three days fielding calls from the guy trying to explain why we needed a deposit.

Manager: “Aren’t you an insurance firm?”

Client: “Yeah?”

Manager: “Which means you’re in the business of assessing risk?”

Client: “So what?”

Manager: “Would you insure a company that did all their work upfront without getting paid, with the promise of payment only if their client was 100% happy with their work?”

Client: “H*** no! But this is different?”

Manager: “How so?”

Client: “Because I work for an insurance firm, you can trust us!”

Manager: “Oh, so insurance is measured on trust, not calculations?”

Client: “Look, we’re not paying anything upfront!”

Manager: “Then we will not be doing anything upfront. Good luck in your future endeavors, but please note that such a deposit is industry standard for this kind of contract. Have a good day.”

My manager hung up, only to get a call back from the client company ten minutes later, this time from a woman. She said they would pay the deposit, and to please ignore the guy from earlier. He was the recently hired son of a senior partner, and he thought he could “reshape the entire industry” on week one.