Backstage: There's This Guy...

March 01, 2006

There's This Guy...

So there's this guy that lives in my area of NJ... He's friends with my business partner, and he works in the industry... He grates on my nerves like nails on a chalk board, and his voice resembles that very same sound... Occasionally our paths cross, though I tend to avoid that at all costs, because it's always stressful, and who really needs that?

He and I bicker constantly regarding the union. He's a union guy, and quite honestly, even though I have a card, I'm not... He claims to be a fabulous carpenter, and hes pathetic... He claims to be a certified welder, and really, he's just certifiable since he can't even strike an arc with a MIG system... He does know lighting, though I would say he is still overselling his skills in that field too... He thinks he knows how to run a lighting rental shop better than anyone, and he applies the same logic to telling me how to run my scene shop...

You might imagine he is something of a pain in the ass... You'd be right...

Ignoring all that, I am still a professional, and if he calls us with a job, I take it seriously, and don't go out of my way to screw him... Business is business, and personal is personal...

So when he called 2 weeks ago for a couple quotes, I generated them, and sent them off... The delivery was theoretically the 1st of March... That'd be today mind you... He contacted us a couple days ago to say that the job was a go. Fabulous, right?... There was no way to build what he wanted in the time frame, but apparently we had a couple days we could push back delivery... Fine...

So our policy, and this is written in stone mind you, and printed on every single quote that goes out the door, is that we get 50% up front before we begin any work, and the balance is due on delivery... For long standing clients, we become more flexible regarding payments, but for first timers, and some clients that are shaky, we are immovable from that policy... The end client in this case is a school system...

So the guy tells my partner that we will receive payment 4 weeks after we deliver the equipment... As I can't stand the guy, I prefer to let my partner deal with him, and I hear this as a one sided conversation on the phone... My partner told him we'd have to have the appropriate deposit, or no go... At that point the guy hung up... Ass...

No skin off my back, we wouldn't have made much on the job anyway...

He calls back and gets me on the phone to plead his case... Wrong move... He claims there is simply no way they can write a check in less time... He tells me there is a bureaucracy to deal with... He tells me he has no place else to turn... He tells me that they have policies...

Who cares... My partner and I have policies too... It takes 30 seconds to write a check... I feel no moral push to finance a reasonably wealthy school systems' scenery... I have been through hell and back trying to get money from other school systems for work, I will not deal with that again...

Why is it that everyone thinks that the small business operators need to be the most flexible?... As a small fish in a big pond, I have the least ability to be flexible regarding money... We're fabulous if you need something insane and impossible, all you have to do is be prepared to write the check, according to the payment schedule THAT IS IN BOLD TYPE ON THE FREAKING QUOTE!!!