Threatening Soda Art

Most of the time our clients are wonderful to work with. We are busy enough to choose the clients we want. I turn down about 2-3 clients a year. It takes the form of an estimate with a very high hassle fee tacked on, that way if they still want to work with us, we make the hazardous duty pay rate. Often I turn them down before even sending an estimate. Sometimes after I send the estimate I realize this is not a client we want to work with and I give them the name of a company I think they are better suited for and gracefully back out before we’ve signed a contract.

Many years ago we worked with an elderly woman who lived in a mobile home park. As the project progressed we noticed she was not completely "there" when she started voicing some weird ideas. Our project included building decks and stairs on the exterior. The guys never went into her house, but she called me one day insisting that the guys had gotten into her house and used her phone for long distance calls while she was at the beauty shop. I asked the guys and of course they had not used her phone.

It became obvious that she was more than a little paranoid. I offered to pay her phone bill, telling her that all she needed to do was make a copy of the bill with the calls and I’d gladly pay her back. Of course, since the guys hadn’t used her phone, there were no long distance charges on it.

We finished the job and sent her an invoice and payment never arrived. After a week or two, I called to see if I could go by and pick up a check. She started yelling at me about a bunch of unrelated stuff and I began to think about how I was going to get paid without a battle.

She went on and on in her rant and she ended by telling me she was afraid to go out of the house because the guys were out to get her. What? I tried explaining to her that they were across town on another job and she could stop worrying about them.

She told me why she was so threatened. She said on the last day, Karl had poured out his soda on the pavement in the street. He’d poured it out “in the shape of a gun pointing at her house”. It was all I could do not to bust out laughing.

Although Karl is very talented, I don’t think he’s capable of pouring out a soda in the shape of a gun!