My wife got a job working in the office for a local contractor. It was stressful and not particularly well-paying, but she stuck it out until the day the owner came in upset because someone had used a thin rubber band instead of a fat rubber band on the outgoing correspondence. He proceeded to lecture the entire office on this for ten minutes before [Wife] began to snicker. She said it was simply too ridiculous. And then she laughed.

The old man got upset.

Owner: “You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

Wife: “I’m not. How can anyone take this seriously?”

Owner: “Then maybe you don’t really need to be working here.”

Wife: “You’re right. I don’t. I quit.”

She picked up her stuff and left.

They called her for months asking her to come back, but she just laughed and said no.

I work for a home installation company. Like a lot of businesses, we belong to the Better Business Bureau, and we have an A+!

We have a couple who wants a bay window and some new siding. Great! That is just what we do, and we do it well. The job is slated to take two weeks. During installation, the customer calls and wants to have us look at their patio door; we do that, too!

Well, the boss arrives at the appointed time to discuss the new door, only to find that the customer is drunk at 3:00 pm and raring to fight with anyone.

My boss is not to be messed with. He will be professional and courteous, but the minute someone gets abusive, he will shut it down hard. So, drunk hubby starts by putting down the boss, stating we’re overcharging them, telling us that he could have done the job by himself, etc. My boss tries to reason with the customer’s wife while she is trying to get her husband to shut up but to no avail.

Finally, the boss tells the man to sober the h*** up and excuses himself, stating that he can come back at a better time.

The next day is when the bay window is set for installation. The bay window comes with an unfinished (not stained or painted) seat; the entire area of the seat is maybe three square feet.

The customer instantly pitches a major fit when they see it. We hear everything in the book: we promised we would do it, we never mentioned it, we offered to have the factory do it, etc.

None of this is true; in fact, on the customer’s contract, directly above where they sign, it states that we do not do any staining or painting. On this particular contract, the salesman even starred it when they were signing.

This is our inter-office signal that they did in fact review the paint/stain clause with the customer. This type of situation is exactly why we started doing this, and it has saved our butts before.

The customer will not be mollified! We must stain it and stain it now or she is not paying!

Again, the boss really hates to be pushed and he counters with, “If you don’t pay, we’ll exercise our lien rights.” We simply file a single piece of paper with the courthouse and then the lien is on file. Then, both sides have thirty days to come to an agreement.

Well, the customer stains the seat, and the installer collects the balance when he is done. The project is complete, and the customer never has to deal with the boss again. Or so I think.

Then, we receive the Better Business Bureau complaint this morning. No dispute on the price, no dispute on the product, no real dispute at all. The wife is just unhappy with the boss and wants an apology.

IT’S BEEN THREE MONTHS since the incident! Three months and they are still stewing? I treated them extremely well, and the installer treated them above and beyond, as well. But because my boss stood up for himself and told your husband to knock it off, we owe you an apology?

My answer to the BBB is to give them the entire scenario. I state that this job has been complete for three whole months now, and there is no dispute over the product. The account has been paid, and I also attach the original contract with the customer’s signature next to the starred No-Stain clause. I detail the abuse, and the boss’s response, backed by me and a fellow installer as witnesses.

Now, this lady claims she is going to go all over the Internet to tarnish our name. So now we’re building a case of libel against them. All this over a boss refusing to take abuse.

I work wholesale, so I deal with contractors. A person calls from a well-known company.

Customer: “I need a capacitor.”

Me: “Okay. What kind of capacitor?”

Customer: “I just need a generic capacitor.”

For those not in the loop, there is NO such thing.

Me: “Well, that’s not a thing. Do you have any specs that could help me?”

Customer: “It’s for a [Brand] air conditioning unit.”

That is NOT helpful information.

Me: “Do you have a model number of the unit, or at the very least the specs of the motor? I can’t just give you a random capacitor; that’s not how this works.”

Customer: “I do not.”

Me: “Well, without any kind of information, I can’t tell you if I have it or not.”

Customer: “Why not?”

I am kind of fed up at this point. In the end, I say:

Me: “Unless you have some kind of information for me, I cannot help you. In fact, no one can.”

It’s the closest I’ve come to actually calling a customer stupid.

Many years ago, I worked for a contracting firm in New York that specialized in Lexan glass windows. We were contacted by a very well-known jewelry firm near Wall Street about replacing their aging front display window with an extremely large panel of Lexan. By “extremely large”, I mean two inches thick, six feet high, and fourteen feet long! This panel was literally going to be bulletproof! The owners wanted to get rid of the “jailhouse ambiance” of having huge vertical bars all across the display window.

They and we agreed upon a price for the installation — almost astronomical considering it was just a big window. As we removed the old window and the bars, we realized that the framework surrounding what would be the new window badly needed beefing up for better security. We recommended a couple of other contractors to perform that work as that was outside the scope of our knowledge and experience. The owners, already unhappy about the amount they were having to spend, declined to do so even after we practically begged them to and required them to sign off on an agreement holding us harmless for the framework holding the new Lexan panel.

A week after we completed the installation, we got a frantic phone call early in the morning from the owners of the jewelry store. My boss and I arrived at the store’s location to find that the thieves had come very well-prepared. They had drilled two holes in the Lexan panel, installed collapsible grappling hooks on chains through the panel, and apparently simply hooked the chains to a tow ball on the back of a large vehicle. The entire Lexan panel was laying on the sidewalk — completely undamaged except for some minor scratches and the two drilled holes — along with the chains and grappling hooks, having been completely jerked out of the storefront.

We all — the police, the store owners, my boss, and me — stood there gazing at the now-empty display window and cases in the store. The store had lost close to a million dollars in jewelry and expensive watches.

The owners immediately tried to blame our company for the failure of the Lexan panel to protect the store. We took the position that the Lexan had done exactly what we’d promised and that its mostly undamaged condition was a testament to that.

Our insurance company and their attorneys argued with their insurance company and attorneys in arbitration for months until the judge hearing the case finally found completely in our favor. His analogy and the lesson: when the plumber putting in your new toilet says you need to replace the floor under it, and that’s out of his scope of work, LISTEN TO HIM!

A couple of years ago, my dad discovered that there was a hole in the roof. He could stand in the hallway and look right up into the sky through the hole. This was at the beginning of September, and the weather forecast mentioned heavy rain that afternoon.

As Dad always wants to support businesses in their tiny hometown, he called the only roofer in town listed in the phone book.

Dad: “Hi, I’m [Dad] at [address]. There is a hole in my roof that needs to get fixed.”

Roofer #1: “Uh-huh. I can drop by in May.”

Dad: “May? That’s eight months from now. I can see the sky through this hole and it needs to be fixed ASAP.”

Roofer #1: “Okay, so, see you in May, then.”

Dad: “Absolutely not. Bye.”

Dad was not happy when he consulted the phone book again and called a roofer in a neighbouring town.

Dad: “Hi, I’m [Dad] at [address] in [Town]. There is a hole in my roof that needs to be fixed.”

Roofer #2: “Oh, that doesn’t sound good at all. I could— Wait, did you say [address]?”

Dad: “Yep.”

Roofer #2: “I’m over at [Parallell Street] on a job. My lunch break is in half an hour. I’ll drop by and check your roof then if that’s okay with you.”

Dad: “Sounds good!”

The roofer came over and agreed that the hole needed to be fixed ASAP. He called again right after his lunch break.

Roofer #2: “Hi again. So, your roof needs to be fixed urgently. We are basically done here, and what’s left is just cosmetic. I want to fix your roof before this incoming rainstorm. I’ve talked to the homeowner here, and we agreed to finish his roof tomorrow, instead. He was very eager to help out a neighbour in need.”

My dad has been recommending one of these roofers ever since — the other, not so much.

But it was quite the coincidence that the good roofer was working so close and could drop by basically right away.

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