I am a bit of a soft touch. If you come over looking for hay or feed and tell me you can't afford to feed your animals, there is a good chance you will not leave empty handed.
I have done payment plans, given away hay, sold at cost, whatever it took to keep a customer going. However, I don't like to be taken advantage of. I like to get a thank you and it really peeves me when a person questions the quality of the reduced price item.
Do you really think I am going to give you my best hay for free? I may be sympathetic but I'm not that sympathetic.
So...
I have this long time customer who alternates between annoying me a lot and annoying me only a little. I often forget just how much he annoys me and I am nice to him. This is like throwing him a bone. I have to quit answering my phone as it just means he will call me on Sunday and want something stupid.
His cows are starving and he owes me money. Since he has annoyed everyone in a 15 mile radius, and since he always has to have some unique and clever plan to make anything he does just a little different, no one local will buy from him.
My problems started when I was nice to him. I had 12 ton of crappy fescue straw I wanted to get rid of. I let him think it was hay and that I was being a nice guy to let him have it at a reduced price. I forgot that I sold it to someone else. (Actually traded it for some hauling). I felt so bad about promising something I didn't have that I mentioned hay in a barn at Gopher Valley. The sun was shining and I needed to get the hay out of that barn anyway.
The guy keeps calling me about his hay. It is pouring down rain and sometimes snowing. I am not driving a loader tractor 15 miles in sleet to load hay for this moron!
Then I mentioned some screenings I had just purchased.
He can't just say thanks! No, he has to have the best of what I have. I was selling them to him at my cost and he questions the price.
I am so completely annoyed and he has no idea why.
Now he is calling me and offering to take me to the Blue Goat for lunch. I would much rather just apply the price of the lunch to his hay bill...
Why am I unable to be an arsehole? I must go back to being grumpy and never answering the phone.
If is an excellent defense mechanism.
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Sounds like a master weasel. Lunch at the Blue Goat raises the perception that he is a generous fellow doing you a favor, thus the illusion of reversing some aura of social debt. Good luck with Maginot Line phone service.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I rarely answer the phone. I really should have call display as I have missed some legitimate calls that I might have benefited from. But Sasktel is already living pretty high off me and I hate to add a few more dollars a month for the call display.
ReplyDeleteIf his cows were really starving, he shouldn't be eating at the most expensive place in town. Have him build fence at your place for part of the debt, and move the cattle into it for the rest. Then place an ad & call the butcher.
ReplyDeleteMake him trade you cattle for his bill (and future sales). Then you can sell the cattle and recoup your losses.
ReplyDeleteI was just in a bad mood this morning. He is an interesting fellow and I wanted to help him out. It is just that nothing ever works out easy like it should.
ReplyDelete