sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Bad Mood City

And then some. So I have a client who I really like. They are all fun, to-the-point cool to work with people, and I do a few things with them. I'm just at the very tail end of two projects for two separate people in the organisation (Bill and Ben, let's call them, ironically). Bill, I've met and done a lot with, we always have a laugh, and he's generally fun to work with. Ben, took over from Flowerpot who left a little while ago, and I've never met him. Now Ben's a busy bloke, and is clearly doing the work of two people now that Flowerpot has moved on to clearer climes (their office is somewhere silly, but I am outsourced, so it doesn't bother me).

Last Friday, Ben left me voicemail saying he had a new project he wanted to talk to me about. I called him back - he was in the middle of something and said he'd call me straight back. If I'd have sat by the phone everytime he's said that in the last two months, I'd have a sore behind and an empty ear.

On Monday, his sidekick calls me and says "Ben says you're working on the new project, can I talk to you about the details?" I say that I only know the vaguest thing and need to talk to Ben to find out what he wants me to do. Sidekick tells me that Ben says I've been working on it for a month. I say first I heard of it was Friday. Sidekick isn't happy.

I call Ben and he says he needs it in a hurry. I say that I've just started something big for someone else, so I can't do it in the next couple of weeks, but can get it done by the end of July. We talk vaguely about price, and I indicate that I need to weight the price to reflect how much work I have on right now. He says "so you can't give it me when I want and it'll cost me more than I've got." I say we haven't discussed numbers, I just want to let him know that I'm happy to try and help him out, but the short notice nature of the job makes it harder, so it costs more. He pushes me to come back to him with a price, and says Sidekick will email me something. Sidekick emails me from someone's Blackberry, typed on one finger, a 100 word sentence that I couldn't even get a Babelfish to understand. This, apparently, constitutes the brief.

Ben pushes me to get him a price last Wednesday, so I cancel my evening, work something out, get back to him at 7.30pm. I know these guys' game; they're salespeople, through and through. I pitch it like this.

"Ben, I know you're busy. I'm busy. There's two prices; the one where I add it on and we haggle and it takes ages, or the real price you can't mess with. Which do you want?"

He goes for the real price, and when I say it (25% uplift for speed), he faux-splutters all over the shop, saying stuff about his granny and a gun. Urgency, urgency, all is urgency. He'll get back to me Monday.

I was pissed, then: juggled my diary so I could do the work, worked out the price in a hurry, danced when he sang. Oh well.

Monday, he doesn't call me. Tuesday, he calls me at lunchtime, with Sidekick, conference call. We talk through the whole brief. Then we talk about money, and he starts haggling. I say that I can't reduce the price, for a host of reasons I won't bore you with. He says he'll take it to the MD, but he won't be happy. I say that if they can't afford me (it's a small project, but the learning curve is the same as big projects, so it's not really worth my while to drop below a certain level), I'm sure there's someone else out there who can help them. He'll get back to me Tuesday pm.

After the call, I think it's a good idea to confirm what I've said, and send him an email outlining the price, and what he'll get for it. I also offer the sop that I'll reduce the fee in exchange for a share of the project's profits.

Of course he doesn't come back to me. This morning I email him the final stuff on my other project for him, and ask him to answer a question I've been asking him since April. Radio silence. Email silence. Voicemail silence. I could be forgiven for thinking I'm getting the silent treatment.

Eventually, I do this. At 3.30pm I call his mobile phone, witholding my number, and say I'm just calling to close down the details on our last project. We talk, briefly. He gives me an unreasonable answer on the one pending question, which I'm not happy with. Then he says "yeah, I need to come back to you on Project InAHurry," and I say "oh, yeah," like it was completely out of my mind. "Yeah," he tells me, "we just sorted it first thing this morning. We don't have the budget, so we're getting someone in-house to do it."

Fair answer, sure, but I just feel like I don't like being treated like crap: he asked me to do something in a hurry and I dropped everything to do it. Then he tried to push me down on the price. Then he doesn't get back to me. And then he tells me, almost in passing, that he doesn't need me now.

As it happens, I have a lot of work, so it's not that, it's just that I like to keep clients happy, and I don't like being treated like some kind of commodity. He didn't even thank me for the superlative work I've done on his last project. The way I feel right now, I'd like to tell him to get lost, but I now I can't do that, so the next best thing is to write about it here. Call this catharsis, if you must.

Oh, and also, in a fit of pique yesterday at how crap he was, I made 10 sales calls (I don't really market myself anymore), and they've turned into six meetings on new things. So ya boo sucks, flowerpot people.