TREAD - Burning Bridges

I try not to burn bridges in my professional life. You never know when you might need a job or a sub or a supplier and that guy you don't get along with is the only option. In my opinion it's just the smart way to operate.

Tonight I had a meeting with a new client that went south fast and it was everything I could do not to tell her to go fuck herself and walk out the door.

I took on a small job for this couple for two reasons:

1) I was recommended.

2) There was a promise of future work.

I put together an estimate and it was accepted.

We were starting on a Monday but I was going to be out of town so I walked my foreman through the job on the Friday before and delivered all the material.

On that Friday the client added a bunch of additional work.

We had a hard finish date. Had to be done by the end of the day Tuesday. I looked at the additional work and said we could do it but I didn't have time to give them a quote for the additional work. They said that was fine. We'd handle it as a change order.

We did the work and the client was very pleased with the out come.

They called today and asked if I could come by to talk about additional work. So tonight at 6 pm we met. The first thing she said was that she had concerns about the cost of the previous work we did.

I asked what her concerns were and she said it was about the change order. It was too expensive. I explained that she literally doubled (more than doubled, actually) the amount of work. And at the last minute.

She tried to tell me we'd discussed the additional work earlier and that I'd just forgotten it. This pissed me off. I reminded her of our contract which had a very complete scope of work in it. If she felt I'd forgotten something she should have said so.

Then she started in on how the work took too long. I explained the difficulties in the additional work she asked for and pointed out that we still hit our hard finish date.

Eventually she got to the new project. She showed me very basic sketches of the work and asked for a price

I told her without specifics and complete plans I couldn't give her a price.

She complained about that and I told her we just finished discussing her concerns with the cost of a job that expanded without quotes. I told her I wouldn't give her a price without specifics.

She told me she just doesn't want change orders.

I reminded her that the change orders were her fault. I didn't force her to do anything.

The rest of the meeting was very cold but we left it with her planning to call me when real plans were available.

She may never call me and that'll be fine. If she does call, unless I'm starving to death I'll tell her I'm too busy.

I'm too old and too tired to deal with people like that.