My current thought of the day is that sometimes you really need to consider firing clients. As I’ve pointed out in the past, much of the world seems to ignore both e-mail and voice mail. Here we are with all these wonderful ways to communicate, except that everyone ignores them. Voice mail is pointless if no one ever returns calls. (Am I the only one who ever calls people back?) But then there’s the thrill of e-mail where people can take the opportunity to dump all over you.
About a year ago, I got the following at 6:30 am in my e-mail box. I had been faxing him the same form for approximately 6 months. He decided to lose his mind.
>>when you fax me, DO NOT fax me all that crap. just the actual ad. i dont give a you know what about the other stuff and it wastes my fax paper and resources and ink and all that. total waste. send the invoice postal mail please. dont fax it. actually, the more i think about it. no FAXES unless i ask for it please. email has worked quite well. thanks.<<
For one thing…I think typing e-mails in all lower case says something about a person (like maybe you are too lazy to learn how to capitalize and/or use the Shift key). Not surprisingly, this was the same guy who endlessly harangued me about prices. To say I was sick of it (and him) would be an understatement. For months, I took the high road and just "took it" from him.
However, in retrospect, I think I made a mistake. I should have politely told him that I have plenty of clients that love working with me. Apparently, he wasn’t one of them. That’s fine. The customer is always right, but sometimes the customer needs to be right somewhere else.