That time when your two-decade professional relationship got replaced by a fresh graduate

Thanks, Morgan. It’s, it’s great to be here. I’m really excited to share my, uh, horror stories.

Okay, so there’s two that stand out once upon a time. There was a client, and this client of mine was with me for many, many years, but then they like turned so mm-hmm. All of a sudden they were having issues with their internet. And so, you know, being an IT and tech company, being an engineer, we were trying to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the problem was not something we could solve because the problem was with the internet service provider. So, um, the, it was an attorney and the attorney’s like, well, what can we do? I was like, well, we can be patient. Um, you know, or we can, you know, put a solution in that will give you internet even if the cable company goes out. Well, great. Right. Fantastic. Let’s do it. Okay. Uh, it’s gonna cost some money. Yeah. Don’t worry about it. How much money are we talking about? Three, 4,000 plus some labor. Yeah, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. I said so you’re okay with all that? Yeah. Yeah. Don’t worry about it. Um, so I’m gonna need like a deposit. Hey, just get the stuff and I, and I’ll get you the check later. Okay. No problem. Been with a, the client for many, many years. So all of a sudden we, uh, come in, we install everything, everything is working beautifully. And so, okay, I then ask the client, um, Mr. Zakin, may I have my check? Check for what? Check for the equipment. It was like $3,500 for the, the custom router with the sim cards and all. I was like, I never told you to do that. Yes. You, you did last week, sir. Uh, pardon me. Um, we talked about this and you told me that you can’t be running your law firm with your internet keep going down. I don’t remember that. Well, anyway, you did and your daughter was right here, right? Yeah. You did say that, dad.

Yes. So he’s like, you know what, I’m gonna give you the blank and blank and blank and effing check. And so he gives it to me and he throws it at me. He says, you know what? I’ve had it with you. I said, I’ve been with you for many, many years. You know, all you do is rip me off. Okay? You come up with these stupid ideas to fix things. And then you charged me more money. I said, sir, if you look at, since you’ve brought me on, I said, I’ve actually saved you a lot of money. I said, let’s look at your bills from before I came to now, and noticing that the only thing I charge you for is when things break, right. For maintenance. Yeah. I gotta start looking for somebody else. So, you know, that’s your choice. So you know, I’m gonna give you your check. Okay. And I gotta start looking for somebody else, so no big deal. I said thank you very much. And, um, he says, I’m gonna have somebody probably come by tomorrow and take a look at it. Fine. So I’m in my office, I actually, um, get a call. From the manufacturer whose firewall we have in there. Obviously they wanna protect their vendors. Yes. And she goes, Mr. Morley, he’s like, um, we’re calling you because somebody’s calling in saying to be you or one of your staff. I said, who is it? What firewall? I’m looking in and says, is this such and such law firm? Yes, it is in such and such New Jersey. I said, oh my God. Oh, I said it and, and who’s the person? Well, he claims he’s you. So we asked him to check his email. To get the number We sent him for two factor and he said he doesn’t have time to access an email. He’s just here to fix a problem. So, um, next thing I know, he’s trying to basically get into this now. What I forgot to tell you was about an hour or two ago, the office had called me and asked me for a password to basically the server and the firewall to look around things fine, basic password. They couldn’t really do enough with that. So, um, I gave ’em the password they asked for, they didn’t even know what password they wanted, but they asked me for a password. I gave it to ’em. I said, well, when I give you the password, so I just wanna let you know that I’m not gonna be responsible for any damage. Oh, don’t worry, we’re not gonna need you anymore Anyway. Remember this guy was just having this guy come over to check things out, not to fire me. So now this company calls, I don’t recognize that person. He’s like, okay. He says, that’s what we thought. He says, I’m gonna tell the support representative to end the, uh, session with them. So he had called in. And said that he forgot the password, which I never gave him to the rest of this cloud infrastructure, everything else. Right? And so he’s like, well, I’m into the firewall, so obviously you know I have access. Yeah. And what device do you need access to? Well, everything. And it was just very vague. So the guy was trying to help him. He was trying to work with him. He was actually going to help him. I was like, oh boy. And when I called him, ’cause I got this, this call, this flag, the security got flagged me. I was like, you don’t know this? I said, no. He says, hold on. He says, I’m gonna ping a member of my colleague on my team. He says, and, and we’re gonna go ahead and terminate the support call. So he gets back to the guy, he says, yes. Uh, excuse me, sir. This is what he said. Um, uh, unfortunately we’re gonna have to terminate the call. Well, why? Unfortunately, we’ve just got a security flag. That’s all I’m able to tell you. And, uh, you’re trying to impersonate somebody who’s not who you really are. So I’m gonna need to end the call now. Okay. Goodbye. And he never called in again, and then he just tried to abortion, build everything out. So they went to things like we had all servers for them and he built these like mom and pop solutions. Nothing wrong with them, but he had commercial stuff in there so he couldn’t figure out what the heck we did. And he couldn’t even figure out how to uninstall our enterprise software. So you know what he did? He just reformatted everything. Now tell me, that is in an effing waste of time, right? This guy was pigheaded. Right. And so, you know, that’s one of those things. And this guy had done this before where, you know, he is like. You know, you’re always charging me money. I, I can’t remember one time I was out there and, you know, the guy trusts us. He says, you know, I’m gonna leave a key for you can come in and do the work ’cause I don’t want you to bother us during a week. No problem. So I come out there, I’m like, uh, there’s no key here. Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah. Oh, okay. Well, you’re, you’re gonna have to check back with another time. So we did a second time. The third time, I said, look, I said, I’m willing to forgive the first two times, the third time we’re gonna bill you for our service call. You’re gonna bill me, you didn’t get this and you were supposed to have a key out there. We even called, you know, I don’t have time for this nonsense. So we knew it was kind of going downhill, but when I did this whole thing of setting up, um, basically cellular backup wifi, so what happened is that when the, uh, let’s say the WAN would go down, it would detect it and it would make a dial out on the sim.

And so it was a great solution. Then I told him, you need to commit to three months with us, with Verizon for the service. He just, like, he was, he was getting this person, but I said, you know, normally he wouldn’t do this. So I said something had to happen. So either a, he probably just had somebody from the family that just graduated, you know, like one of these tech schools. Cause didn’t find just somebody.

But suddenly he got this guy when, um. He was gonna have him call me to talk to him. He didn’t really wanna talk to me. And then after he frauded me, I called him back and I said, look, I said, I just wanna let you know. I said, I know you work for a law firm. You didn’t work for it. I said, you’re creating fraud right now. I said, continue on the path you’re going and you’re gonna need to ask, uh, your client to help you out of it ’cause I will sue you. He never called me again. He never tried to attack my stuff. He took all my hardware and threw it out. But the horror part is we were with them for so long. The office loved what I did and they would never replace me, but this, whatever word we wanna call ’em,

Yeah. It’s not a word say. He’s not a word. I would say. You could probably say the J word, but he was, and it’s like. I’m not trying to criticize people, but it’s like, look, I asked you for this. I never said that you could, you could do that. I did. Well, you never got my signature. I said, you know, I knew you were gonna play games with me like this. You know, I’ve doing work with you for how many years.

Over 20 some years. We have been with them for 20 some years. And he always played this game and I say, look, you wanna get rid of me? Go get rid of me. He can’t find anybody to replace me. The only reason he got somebody is there’s somebody in the family. He wouldn’t just let somebody to trust with his records. Right. Right. I mean, that’s a real thing we do. Medical offices, you know, that push comes to shove. They can’t just find somebody like us. Sure. It’s not just the fact that you know something, it’s an integrity. How many doctors are gonna give you a key to their office and just tell you to come in? Right. That’s not very common.

So we haven’t trusted for a while and he treated us like crap.

So it started just this first came in, when we first came in, there was a lady, I won’t mention her name, and she was a, a nutcase. I was ready to just drop the client like 15, 20 years ago. And the office knew she was a nutcase. The lady was such a nutcase that the reason one time there was no key out there many years ago is she had a nervous breakdown and she stepped and she broke the key on purpose. Okay? This is a whack job. And so she’d come in. We got her a printer, one of the top of the line printers. Doesn’t matter what model it was, and she didn’t like the printer. What’s wrong with the printer? I don’t like this printer. Why not? I don’t like where the paper shoot is. You should have interviewed me before you brought it in. Okay, so we return the printer store, they pay me to take the printer out. Lady’s nuts. Her daughter who’s like, kind of in charge of things and liked me, and she’s like, she’s just nuts. I just, we don’t even wanna deal with her. I just wish she would quit. And so the printer’s sitting there and so I’m like, I’ll get you another printer. Okay. But I am not responsible for where the shoot is. I’m not responsible for the color, uh, for where the buttons are. So why don’t you get familiar with the printers you like? I can give you some recommendations and you pick it. And you make sure it fits all your ergonomic needs because you are a little bit too much. And I do work for hospitals and you’re just a trip. So finally we got a printer and, and the head attorneys like, he’s like, look. He’s like, I don’t care what she says. She’s gonna take this printer. She’s gonna shut up and she can do whatever she wants, but she’s just gonna like it. She’s gonna use it or she can just leave it, but I’m not getting another printer. Well, finally she decided to quit. A while back because every couple months I’d be going in there. You know why I was in there so many hours? Because she was going on sites, I won’t say they’re ex sites, but she was going on sites that shouldn’t be on, and they weren’t really x-ray sites, but they were sites for social media.

And I said, well, you know, I’ll call the guy Tom, that’s not his name. I said, well, Tom, look, this is what’s going on. I mean, she’s the reason I’m back here. She’s the reason there’s viruses on there. She’s the reason why your whole network is down. Well, what do we have to do? We need more security. Well put it in for crying out loud. Stop talking to me and do it. So everything was working smooth, everything was always good, everything was great. And, uh, she finally quit. Then they brought this other lady in who was like, let’s say a lot younger than her. And she was nice to the point, but she’s always trying to like weasel you out, right? She’s an attorney and first of all, I should tell you about her. I won’t give you her name.

But she practices another state. That state disbarred her New Jersey, disbarred her. Now she’s trying to go back and get her license again in Florida. And now she does remote work for him, supposedly. And she has two kids and she’s out of a marriage and a whole bunch of nonsense. So she’d always be trying to second guess like, you know, I found a better way to do this. We can just go online and download this program for 999. And I think you should just do that ’cause. So I said, well, maybe you should manage his, his, his it needs. Well, I mean, I could, I mean, I don’t know as much as you do, but I mean, I, I obviously how to save him money. Okay. We could try that out. How about it? So we try that out and I don’t show up for a while, do we?

She was a pompous attorney. Okay. And when you put her in her spot, she didn’t know. SHIT. Okay. She didn’t know anything. So at the end or the end, she was like, oh, John, you know, I need your help with this. And she was like, a lot more of a puppy dog. ’cause she tried different things and she failed, you know, I don’t know, computers and all, but, you know, I, I, I just can’t get in. I said, well, you, you, you got locked out. Why am I locked out? Well, you’re locked out because you logged in three times. Wrong. Well, why is that? Well, because we have a mandatory security policy. Well, who set that up? I did well. That was stupid. Well, no, it’s not stupid. I don’t have time. I don’t wanna listen to it. So then I hear from the head, Tom guy, I said, he’s like, I don’t wanna hear anything. I just wanna come in and do it. Then he is like, you know what? You’ve been here like 45 minutes already. I hope you’re not charging me for this because this whole hour you’re here is all bs. Right? You didn’t fix anything. You’ve been talking to us. I said, well, I won’t charge from the moment I get in the door. When a client comes to you, do you charge ’em for the moment they get in or do you wait until after they take their jacket off and, um, I said I charge, you know this, I charge the moment I get in the door. I don’t charge you for travel time, but I charge ’em the moment I get in the door. So, you know, we gotta start clocking you so that that didn’t last very long. Long story short, she didn’t last for long either. She tried to do some backup routine and then suddenly she’s, oh my gosh, John. She’s like, I lost all these briefs. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Mr. Ska ISS gonna kill me. Okay, well, where were they last? I don’t know. They were in the cloud. Where? In the cloud? I don’t know. Somewhere up in the cloud somewhere. Well, what service did you use? I don’t know. So she kind of calmed down. But my point is, is that this firm was on this. Teeter rocking thing where they wouldn’t pay bills for a while. You know, the time we issue the invoice, we have like a 99% rate now where people pass on time. It’s called we bill in advance, and when you run out of time, we bill again, like attorneys work I came with and said, so, um, he said, well, why do you bill like this? I said, well, you’re an attorney. Why do you bill with a retainer in advance? Why can’t I bill like that? So he got a little huffy, but then he shut up. So I think the point is, is that. What’s good for them isn’t good for you. And then they play these games. So he owed me, let’s just say he owed me. I don’t owe $3,000. So I said, Tom, I said, uh, when are you gonna fix this? Well, we have a balance here of $3,400 and I don’t really wanna order any more services or products you until this is paid. Uh, you know, you’re always looking for money. Well, sir, this bill is 90 days old. You know, that’s the problem. I’m gonna write this check to you right now. And I’ll tell you, I really should find so, and he was saying this for years, but he didn’t find anybody. That’s why.

He wasn’t gonna find somebody when this happened. He happened to have some relative, I guarantee you that graduate. ’cause when I looked up, this person who didn’t live too far from him was maybe just outta college. He started it company. So I looked into see their firm, their history, and they run out of a garage. Which is okay. It’s fine. You can start over.

Not the same last name, but I did find that they were related to somebody in the family. Now, here’s the funny part. He stopped doing business with me, but his daughter not his daughter, his, uh, daughter-in-law still thinks I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread. She’s like, you’re not cheap. Like, you know what you’re doing. Yeah. I said, yeah, that’s why you pay me. She’s like, you know you charge a lot of money for email. I said, yeah, but my email works. She’s like, I can get email for $9 a year. I said, yeah, and I back up your email every single night. I know. Like you do all those fancy things. Well, you could do the $9 and then when your email doesn’t go somewhere or when you have a problem getting your email, then you know, don’t call me. So guess what? She stays with me. You know, it’s like you have to kind of like do that. So then we had, so that was a real interesting one. And that one kind of like that set my heart palpitating a little bit. ’cause I’ve been with ’em for a while. It’s one of those ones where, you know, the divorce is gonna happen, you don’t force it. But when it was there, it’s like I took the check, I thanked everybody. I said it was a pleasure, privilege, and pleasure to work for you. Uh, one lady I call Mary. Mary, I’m gonna miss you then. I sent an email out a few weeks ago. I just wanna let you know that there’s a proper exit procedure we need to follow, and we’re not gonna be responsible for what happens, uh, if you don’t follow it. Please note that if you need us to do any of these additional things, this is the fee to convert things for your new IT company. They just blew all that outta water. Didn’t renew our email. Went through some Gmail crap. And they converted their whole law firm that had a name.com, which is a beautiful domain to some gmail.com. And I discovered this because when I was sending them invoices, nobody was opening ’em. I wasn’t seeing ’em open. I said, wonder why? So I called Mary, I mayor, what happens? Oh, we switched away from that junk we have, we have Gmail now. Our new IT guy said it’s really good. Okay, well if you want Google, know everything you’re doing, I guess it’s great. If you want them to be sleeping with you, that’s fine.

And uh, and, and, and that’s why it’s important that I put these things in writing and I send certified return receipt letters so you can deny me all you want. Here’s a certified return receipt letter, and I’ll tell you my next story, which is even better than this one. This was a juicy one. And, and you have to admit that you wouldn’t have expected this, right? Because you don’t know what you’re doing, right? But you keep hiring us. We don’t know what we’re doing. But you keep hiring me back. Well, you know, I, I, I, I feel sorry. No, you don’t feel sorry for me. You hire me back ’cause you know, I know what the frick I’m doing. Your ego just won’t let you help me.

They play games and then it’s like, you know, I’m not gonna be able to eat this month ’cause I’m paying you. Like they gimme some BS like that. You know, I don’t know if I could pay you. I’m not gonna to make payroll this month ’cause I’m paying you. And then I talked to his daughter, like she’s, he just talks out of his, he talks like that all the time. I said, was I good? She’s like, you were amazing. She, you are our best IT guy ever. You were with us the longest. She’s like, but the other guy we have right now, like, you know, he’s kind of knows him and he’s doing everything for the year for like, you know, 300, 400 almost for the year. I said I can’t work for four a year. I know she’s like, so like, you know, he kind of knows him and he’s give him a break for four $50 a year and you know, he kind of just does things. Not like what you did, but you know, he just kind of does some things and he does a lot of free stuff for him using a lot of free online stuff. The other thing is like Microsoft has a license, right? I don’t play games with licenses ever. Um, I had a guy one time beat me on a price for my license and my server by, I think it was 900, a thousand dollars. I said, that’s the cost of the license. Yeah, well he just kind of makes it disappear. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t play those games. So here’s my other one. So I, uh, was doing work. We’re a national sports center for Brother, brother International, and, um, we sometimes get clients from them, sometimes not. It just depends. Well, this per person came in with their laser printer and it wasn’t printing, and he ate a new f. So this was around the COVID time and we couldn’t get the fuser, and we finally got it, called ’em back and said, look, I said, apologize for the delay, and I realized they were open on Saturday. I said, well, the park came in. I said, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna do a favor for them. I’m going to put the fuser. I said, I’m gonna deliver to them Saturday morning. I mean, they were nice enough. They came here, they’ve been patient. I’m just gonna drop it off just as a courtesy. Then when I got there, I said, Hmm, maybe I should give ’em my card. You never know if they need me. Found out. They have an IT people. They’re horrible. They hate them. Before I know it, I’m hired as the, our firm’s hired as the IT company. We did work for them. We put all this great technology in and she was bashing this old company, this lady who runs the company. She was bashing the IT company left and right.

(Interviewee): Thank you.

Yeah, exactly. And the guy’s like, I gotta get rid of him. He’s terrible. Like, you gotta, I need you. I need you to help me. So I’m, I’m thinking of it positively in the beginning, and I’m telling everybody things, you know, this is a lot of money. I gotta pay you this. I and I, you gotta pay you this up front. What, what, what are you, what are you? Columbo? You get your money up front? I said, yeah, I, I get my money up front. What kind of nonsense is that? That’s just how I work. Colombo check. And then, and then after a while I’m like, write another check. What? Another frigging check. I just gave you a check last week. Well, I was here 10 hours. Yeah. Then what? Another check next week. Like what am I doing? Like writing your payroll every week? Well, there’s a lot that I’m doing. Your system was messed up. It ain’t that messed up. We were working without you. Well, I’m putting new router in. I’m putting Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we need to, we need to put wifi in your, it was a, it was a yard. I know. I said we need to put Wifi in your yard. What’s that gonna cost me another million dollars? No, I said it’s probably about another $68,000. I ain’t doing that. Okay, well we’ll just leave what you got and we’ll leave the one wireless. It’s fine. Fine. So we get her all going and everything’s running smoothly. I come there on a Saturday and have to get everything working and then you find the nightmare because everything there is like held together with like chewing gum and scotch chew and the stuff I don’t wanna touch, like their cameras and stuff, which I didn’t even go near. It’s literally together with like the cheapest chewing gum and tape you can imagine. You just breathe on it and it’s, you know, our cameras aren’t working. Well, I didn’t touch gear. Yes you did. I moved the desk. Well you touched our wire. All the cameras downstairs aren’t working. I said, look, those cameras aren’t put in very well. I said, whoever put them in do not. Those people, there’s somebody we know for years and they do a great job. I said, we do cameras too, and I’d be embarrassed. And not only that, I’d fire whoever put those in because I dunno how that would even meet code. Well, it works for us and you better fix it. ’cause you know, my father watches these cameras from his house to make sure nobody steals from the yard on the weekend. First it’s no big deal. And now it’s suddenly he watches them all the time from his house. Maybe he needs to get a life. So I finished this whole thing at the end of Saturday, came early in the morning, it was like eight o’clock. I finished nine or 10 o’clock after I finished putting all the chewing gum back together and everything, getting it working. And um, she’s telling me about a problem she has in her house. Like, okay, I’m happy to help her. She lives in a gated community. So I went there and she’s like, oh. She’s like, we’ve had people. She’s like, they don’t know what they’re doing. I said, well, I’ll take a look at it. She’s like, well, she said, I don’t think, you’ll be any good, but I’ll give you a shot. Take a look at it. She’s like, my house is a mess. She’s like, I can’t get wife here. I said, well, the problem is, I said, your house, the way it’s designed, the layout isn’t conducive to the wifi. You have. Can you fix it? Said, yeah, you need commercial wifi and that’s probably like about 15,000. I’m not paying that. Well, we have some other things we could do. We can bridge the signals and we can do it. Yeah, that’s more, I said, how much is that? That 1200? That’s more my speed. I said I’m not recommending that, but it’s something we can try. It’ll make it better. Oh yeah. Okay. So we try it worked too it for a while and then you know what the, the bird comes by or the truck comes by and suddenly the signal is a good one. I said, I told you that this is not a stable solution. Well, why’d you do it? I told you we should do the other solution, but I told you you could try this, but I don’t recommend it. See, you don’t know what you’re doing either. No, it’s because the signal. Yep, yep, yep, yep. There you go. With the talking. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Then she brings her boyfriend to me.

And that’s why I have people sign things or at least acknowledge in the quote, just letting you know that, uh, you chose the following solution. And per our conversation, you have, uh, elected to not go with our backup or our AP PC power backup solutions. The following issues may result by not taking the use of this advice. And you click and you sign it, and it, it’s on my quote. So, um, this lady was a little challenging. So her boyfriend was nice, uh, I think soon to be her fiance. And I was explaining to him, I’ll call him Jim, that wasn’t his name. And I was like, Jim, I said, um, your, your girlfriend, fiancé. I said, I said, I’m trying to explain things to her. Okay. But she’s a little thick. All right. I’m trying to be nice. I know you love her and all, but I said, she’s thick. He said, I know she’s thick. I said, I understand. I’m trying to do the best for you guys and for her business and all that stuff. But you guys are so thick that you don’t, she doesn’t understand what’s going on. Well, you know, John, I, I, I’ll try to talk to her, but she is thick. So, um, we were doing some work at the office and, uh, I think there was a problem with a printer, and we get a call on the phone. Okay. And, uh, he says, you know, your wires aren’t working right? Okay, we’ll get out there and fix whatever it is. I said, okay, I’m happy to fix this for you as a courtesy. First of all, we didn’t put these wires into that printer. We inherited all this wires, but we didn’t put these in. So therefore, I don’t like guarantee the wiring that I didn’t do. Well, you’re the IT people now. I said yes, but I’ve gotta charge you time and material to, to troubleshoot and probably to run a new line. Yap. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Stop this. Stop that. Just fix it and stop yapping. So we get out there. I fix it for her. Free of charge. Everything’s working. Beautiful. The next day I get a call on the phone and they start with the superlatives, you B, B, B, B, F, and F. And uh, we got a problem with our bullet. And every third word is a curse word, very calm. And uh, I said to ’em, I said, you know, I said, uh, happy to help you with the printer. So I saw the printer issue. I said, you know, we have a policy at our company, at all of my companies, uh, maybe you’re not aware of it. Uh, but I do wanna make sure you and your owners, everybody’s aware of it. We don’t discriminate for race, religion, sexual orientation, creed, color, political party, uh, anything. And, um, that means for employees, contractors, vendors, clients. None of that is tolerated. I wanna let you know that today is a warning, okay? A warning, meaning that I’m keeping this on file. The second time will be a, an official warning that you’ll get, it’ll be in writing the third time, we will terminate you. Do you understand this holds for you, this holds for anybody in your company? Fine. Next thing I hear, uh, I get a call back and, uh, I get a voicemail. The voicemail has a whole bunch of superlatives on it. Call them back. You know, I, we don’t have time fish, you know, we’re busy. We’re running a multi-billion dollar business here and we can’t get into our system. I said, well, you’re locked down. You know, you know, we never had this before. Well, you also had a security nightmares before. Yeah. We had it a lot easier before. I know the chewing gum and, and, and the, and the sneaker net. I know. Um, we, we, we’ve done a lot better for you. Uh, we’ve given you Adidas, we’ve given you Nike, uh, you know, we’ve given you, uh, motos. Which are like the $600 sneakers. Uh, you know, we’ve done a good job. See, we don’t need all that. I said no. Let me be very clear with you. I’m gonna help you with your problem today, but maybe you’re not aware of what I told your counterpart. Maybe didn’t tell you. You cursed on our voicemail. Okay? That’s warning too. You’re getting a written warning from us. Happens again. We’re done. And you’ll get a certified return receipt letter and we’ll be terminating you for unprofessional behavior. Just shut up and do our business, so, okay. That’s not cursing us or anything like that. So a couple weeks ago by, everything’s running good checking in. Um, yes sir. Everything good? Yes, sir. No sir. Everything’s fine. So we’re in the back. He’s being very good. He had a problem with something and the owner comes by and she’s like, tell that F guy just get and to fix this thing. And I said, did I just hear some F words and some other words and other things that shouldn’t have been heard? Did I just hear that? He’s like, I didn’t say that. No, you didn’t say that, but there was a lady in the background, your owner, right? Uh, I don’t know. Do you want me to replay the call? The call’s being recorded. Hang on a minute. I replay it. Did you hear that? I don’t hear that. Lemme play it again for you. So that my friends is strike three. We’re done. Okay, then bye. Then she tries to come out and tells me she’s gonna sue me. I said, we’re gonna give you all your passwords and we’re done. I said, we don’t have any time for this nonsense. I said, you wanna sue me? I will bring you to court on harassment. Threatening of our life being unsafe because the way you, you threaten us with your curse words, my staff and I don’t feel safe being on your premises anymore. And I’ll tell the judge that and I think I could get you for a pretty nice penny on harassment charges. So you know what? I’m done with you people. I don’t even wanna deal with your stupid company. You people aren’t good. Anyway, I’m gonna go back to the other guy. He knows what he’s doing. Okay. And so you don’t expect these things to happen. Right. And the last one I wanna share with you is a guy that, uh, by the way, we fired that client. That one, we, we, we fired them. The other one, um, before it was a mutual, but he fired us. We had a client, this is only three clients we fired in 30 some years, which isn’t bad. This other one, um, he had a problem with his video. Okay, fine. So we go out there and we tell him he needs a video card. He goes, we don’t need a video card. I said, yes, you do. And, um, he’s arguing with us that we don’t need one. I don’t want a video card. So then, um, I said, well, can I put one in there? He says, no. Okay. Because it’s not the video card. It it, it’s doing all the, it, it’s, it’s something with a driver. Okay. So, um, he gets annoyed after a while. We send him a bill, obviously for being there. And, uh, he doesn’t put the video card in. So three weeks later, he tells me that we don’t know what we’re doing and he’s getting another company that’s competent. I said, well, what happened? It was a video card and they fixed it right away. You people didn’t know what you were doing. Excuse me, Steven. I actually said it was a video. No, you didn’t. Yes, I did. Would you like me to go back to the phone call? See, we record all our calls for seven years. Would you like me to go back to the phone call where I actually said that to you? He hangs up on me. So when people have this narcissistic, is what I’m wanna call it, behavior, don’t try to embrace it. Just politely acknowledge it and walk away. You’re better off when somebody says to me, oh, that’s a lot of money. I’m like, yeah. And that’s exactly why you should hire us. Huh? You know? I understand. Not everybody can afford us. I get it. You know, and, and we might not be for you, just like the Ferrari might not be for you either. But you know, there are different cars for different people. There are different tech companies for different people. You can get a firm that you charge $20 like the Superstores, and they play games. See, we don’t play games like those Superstore. We just fix your technology problems right the first time. Oh, and we also don’t try to play games like tell you that you know, your whole board is bad when it’s just a battery. See, we just don’t do those things. That’s what companies like Comp You say went bankrupt. And there’s other ones on the cusp right now that I’m not gonna mention their name, but they’re in trouble too with the Big G. C ause they just try to sell you more stuff when they come out. See, we don’t try to sell you anything. We look at what’s wrong and we say, gee, this is what you need to do. And I think people think a lot of times that you know when there’s a problem that if they don’t agree with you that it must be wrong. Well that doesn’t mean it works wrong. And when I get somebody that’s trying to challenge me too hard, I was like, you know what? I appreciate you challenging me. It sounds like you got, you can fix it yourself. Um, you have a screwdriver, right? Yeah. Perhaps you should take over from here, buddy. Take care. I’ve done that from people. I, I had the, I have three prices. There’s a price if, uh, basically if you leave me alone, there’s a price if you want me. And the most expensive price is if you help me. So I think in LO with horror stories, they’re good though, Morgan, because when we have a horror story, we acknowledge that it’s a great point for us to learn. And after this horror story with that lady, I said, gee, I gotta bring our non-discrimination policy into full force. And I gotta make sure every client knows about that before they hire us. Not when they’re surprised. Let them know at the get go. Hey, I appreciate you hiring us. Just wanna let you know we have a non-disclosure here. We also have a a a no discrimination policy rules. Just wanna make sure you agree to that and initial it. I know you probably have no problem, but we just wanna make sure you’re clear about what it is.If you have any questions, happy to answer them for you.

And there are, there, there, there, there’s schmucks and there’s people out there. You, everybody, you, you know this too, Morgan. Everybody is in business to make money. Right? I always say to them, you know, I mean, uh, are you in business to lose money? No. You’re in business, you’re, we’re not a not-for-profit. We’re in business to make money. So, um, perhaps you should go somewhere to someone else that maybe wants to lose money. Um, you know, or maybe figure out how to rip you off a different way. You know, like they sell 700 things, so they will charge you cheap on their computer and then, you know, they’ll hit you up for a thousand dollars of paint. ’cause they’re a paint store too. I don’t know. But these are the things that I tell people is that when I go to bed every night and my team goes to bed, I say, you know. We have passion for what we do, but we also understand that I could put my head on the pillow every night, and I know that I’ve done the right thing every day. Does that mean I’m perfect? No, but it means I’ve done the right thing and if I’ve done something, I think that’s wrong. I’m gonna fix it for you on my dime and my dime

This can even happen working with down. This can even happen with, with new people. We’ve had some new clients come in. And especially in in our media company, they come in and they tell us what they want, or they tell me, you know, I can get a graphic designer to do all this for. I could do all the brochures for 20 bucks. 14. I could get a kid to do them, like for five bucks each. Well, perhaps, maybe you should find that person. Well, they’re on Venmo. I would use them. Or they want a custom sticker made. That has all these intricacies. Okay? And it’s not a simple shape. It’s like some real fangled shape that takes like hours to make. And not always is it hard to make. You gotta make sure your jig can get around every one of them so you can cut out as a sticker. So I said to a lady, I said, you want us to make that for you? No problem. It’ll be $2,500. You’re crazy. You’re out, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re ridiculous. If you want a simple sticker that’s round or square or oval or whatever, it’s gonna be 250 bucks. I bet my friend could do that, you know, for 50 bucks. Great. Why don’t you call her and see Funny thing they come back to me. But these are also the people that make the quotes a nightmare. And it’s okay because you gotta get every I and t cross.

That happened to me too, because I said, well, that’s our price. I said, it looks like you probably don’t want to go first. Maybe you should hire that kid. And then once you get all that done, come back to us and we’ll give you another quote on what it’s gonna cost to print it. Wasn’t that the quote? Well, that’s the quote to print it. If we design and print, yeah. If we have to print it alone, that’s gonna be more money. ’cause now I have to work with somebody else and I’ve gotta talk with them and Well, how much more? Oh, probably double. Really? Yeah, because see now I have to interface with somebody else that’s not our could date with them. Right. You don’t realize when you have to deal with somebody and then they don’t wanna deal with you by phone. They wanna deal with you through email. Well, can you change this, change this, change this. Yeah. Yeah. Can we get a phone call? Oh, we’re really busy right now, but just follow the addendum in sections two, seven and eight. And then you change. Change. Well, you didn’t change section seven A. Well, I know I changed seven B. Yeah, but you missed seven A. Can you make it so I don’t have to read like a Bible? Every time you send me an update, can you just send me like the quote number, the line number, and what you want changed, like I shouldn’t have to spend an hour to figure out what I have to do. Well, we made it very easy. We just typed it up. Yes, but I had to read it three times because everything was all like in a whole story. And I just wanna know, seven, change quality, change this, change that. Just make it easy for me. And, and that’s the challenge. Oh, and by the way, did I mention, um, we started the quote on June 1st actually no, I’m sorry, on May 30th. Um, I don’t mind going a few more days. Your quote’s actually supposed to expire on the 15th. If it goes past the 29th, the whole quote’s gonna be null and void, and I’m gonna have to start all over again because now, like it’s past the quoting period, even though we’re back and forth, right? We just don’t have a 30 day. Time period to keep modifying quotes. We’ve done six revisions to each one of your quotes. That means we’ve done 18 revisions of all of your quotes. Okay? We try to be very efficient, but you didn’t give us that information in the beginning. Oh, when are you gonna start? When we get a deposit? Well, how do we do that? Well, you pay it online. Oh, we don’t like to pay online. Okay, well, you wanna fax us a check? You wanna mail us a check? Well, we’re not crazy about that either. Well, how do you want to pay? Uh, can you pick up a check from us? Well, we usually don’t go picking up checks from clients. We get them mailed or, well, that means you’re not gonna start until you get in hand. We’re not gonna start until we, until we see it clears the bank the next day. Oh, so you, you mind driving out here? Well, I’m not gonna be in your neighborhood for another week, and I don’t wanna make a special trip just to get a check. Oh. Well, maybe my father will be like in your neighborhood next week or something. So you don’t want to just give me like a voided check? Well, we don’t like giving check numbers. Okay. So you just get people that are a little, and I find it’s, it’s the people sometimes that have a lot of money that they feel they can just pin you. And guess what happened when they went to do the authorization? Their card got declined. Oh. So I didn’t wanna be nasty. I’m like, Hey, your card got declined. Well, why your system? Well, our system declined your card because the bank said something’s wrong. Yeah. But then you did again, it declined. Yes. The system saw the transaction within two minutes and saw it as a duplicate transaction and void it because it thought it was fraud. Well, that’s your system. No, your bank actually has fraud on the card. You need to call ’em and tell ’em you’re making a transaction or a certain amount so they allow it to go through. That’s crazy. Have you ever made a transaction over this amount of line? No. Well, now you understand what we’re talking about. But to be fraud, this is complicated.

Tax like anal retentive tax.

(Interviewee): I get that you might have questions. I get that. And that’s why we do a conference call. We meet, but then when you have to keep going back, well, we gotta review it again. Again. Well, are you making a change? No. You gotta wait for the head person, and I’m just the finger person to let you know that that person hasn’t made the decision yet. Okay, well what are we doing on this one? Well, we’ve approved two of the quotes, but not the other. Oh. And the quote that that one got approved. That should have been approved. ‘Cause the name’s wrong on it. What was already approved. I know, but Line 13 should have a different name on it. Okay. We can change the name. That’s not a big deal. But I, I think people have to realize that we’re not here to keep them company. We’re here to run a business. And, you know, we wanna get in and get out, right? Not that we wanna do a bad job, but we don’t wanna spend 17 hours on the phone with somebody. Okay? So what kind of paper? Why don’t we go through a million different types with you? Why don’t we talk about the font types too? Why don’t we talk about, uh, the potential of, uh, the font, the, the, the plastics and this? That’s not important for you. You hire us, we’re gonna pick what we need. Oh, by the way, did we tell you? Yeah, we’re not gonna use you to mail it. You’re not? No, no, no, no, no, no. We’re gonna mail it ourself. Oh, I gotta requote it again. You do? Yeah. That price was with mailing. Oh, we just want the things. Oh, and then, by the way, did we tell you we want a sticker too? cause we want to use it in the future. So you wanna design a sticker because you wanna use the sticker now, but you want to use them for a different reason in the future. That’s right. You can’t make this crap up, but I swear to God. But the best thing is you have to go with the flow. You have to go with the punches. And, um, I think the biggest thing with these horror stories that I’ve learned is that, you know, mm-hmm. Horror stories are gonna happen. Right. And I think they’re great.

I don’t wanna call ’em so much horror stories. I like to call them challenges of opportunity. ’cause they allow me to embrace that. It’s not like a horror movie. It’s like something I see in the back mirror. Okay, I see it, great. I’m gonna avoid it, or I’m gonna steer clear of it. And now I know, but I’m not panicked from it. Right. I know there’s a snake on the left. I know there’s a, a line on the right. Okay. I’m just gonna go a different way, but I’m not gonna let it ruin my whole day. I like to say if you ever get up in the morning and you bump your arm or your toe, you’ve probably done that, right? And you this morning actually, okay, you say a few superlatives and you kind of go through your whole day. You, you, and then you get in the shower, you burn your arm or this and that, and then you go to have breakfast. And what do you do? You pour the, the milk on the cereal, it goes all over your pants. Then you smack the, the, the orange juice guys. Of course it breaks the beautiful uh, the crystal orange juice guys. It breaks. So now you not only have to clean that up, plus you’re running late. Now you have to change your pants ’cause they’re all wet. Now you’re getting in the car, now you get in the car and you’re like, ah, I don’t have to be there early. ’cause it’s no real reason. Well, your top client decides to pay you a surprise visit this morning to see. What kind of, um, modus you operate on. So suddenly, um, it’s 9:15 and your office calls and says, uh, where are you? Oh, uh, uh, I’m just getting, getting, uh, some breakfast. I’ve been in a while. Well, why aren’t you here nine o’clock? I know, but nothing ever happens. Well, Mr. Johnson just came in today and he was wanting to talk to you about his ad campaign. Oh, well that’s great. Not anymore. It’s not. He left. He said, if this is the kind of attitude that our company puts forward. I don’t think I should trust you with my media campaign. Oops. So that all happened because you spiraled down. If you would’ve said, okay, and I’ve done this before. If you break something, okay, I broke a glass. All right. I knocked the picture over. All right, let me pick it up. The rest of my day is gonna be great. You see what our mind does is it, it basically goes, the energy goes, the thoughts flow wherever our energy goes. So if we focus on it being a good day, we’re gonna attract those things. The best way I can explain this, Morgan, is if you ever, if you drive a car, if I’m gonna ask you, what color car do you drive.

Color, color. Color.

Gray?

Gray. Okay. I used to have a gray. I have a white car. I’ve had white cars. So if I asked you, Morgan, are there a lot of gray cars on the road where you are?

See, if you ask me of a lot of white cars, I’d probably say there’s more white cars. Are we wrong? No. See our perception, our Raz or acting system is going and saying, Hey, that’s what you focus on. So when you focus on opportunity, guess what happens? More opportunity comes into you, and I’ll give you a quick story of this. When I was, uh, looking to do a huge event at a major mall, I said, I don’t know how I’m gonna do it. I reached out to them, I called ’em, I said, Hmm. She gave me the number. I said, well, that’s a little bit outta my budget. She’s like, well, she says That’s what it would cost if you do it. I said, well, how do these other people do it? That are like my size or smaller. She said, well, they don’t pay like that. Said, what do they do? She said, well, they partner, oh, well how do I partner? She said, well, we’d have to set up a partnership meeting. I said, well, do they pay very little? Because we’re partnering, so we’re like giving it to them and we’re working together. Oh, so by being a partner, you basically give it to me from us, nothing, and I basically help build your mall traffic. She said, that’s right. See, my director wants to bring more traffic in, so we partner to do those things. So I didn’t know how I was gonna do that, Morgan, I had no idea. But all I learned is that somehow I’m gonna get in there and October I’m gonna have a vent with a couple hundred people. Didn’t know how in July, I’m actually meeting with the director. She says, oh, she says, I’m gonna have my assistant director come and would you mind if we gave you maybe a tour around the whole facility? And I know you like the Ferris wheel, so I have arranged with Dave to give you a ride on the Ferris wheel after we meet, if that’d be okay. So you just never know what’s gonna happen. But if you’re like, oh my gosh, I can’t do this. So a year ago I’m like, I can never do this. I can never do this. But guess what? I went out there, I was like, oh, your bid for our, our facility is gonna be like 48,000 and you have to give us 20 some thousand to Starbucks. Oh my gosh. Like, how am I ever gonna do that? So I was like, how do other people do that? I know they’re not paying that kind of money. So I started asking the question of why not? Right? Why not? Why can’t I do it? And I think this is what gets us in trouble with horror stories. We see this horror story like with this thing, with this, this attorney, for example.

If I took that home and I, and I swallowed that, and I chewed on it, and I let it make me sick, right? That could incapacitate me, right? That could take the wind outta my sails. I’m a sailor that could really demotivate me and my staff. Why is my staff so motivated? Because I’m motivated. I come in. Hey guys, it’s great to see you today. You’re a bull fire. Yeah, it’s great. It’s raining. That doesn’t matter. It’s raining out there. But we got so much to do, and I think it’s your attitude that really makes the difference in these quote unquote horror or what I’ll call learning stories. Because by me embracing this Morgan, I now know what I have to do when I get a new client. I now know how I have to handle them. I now know that one of the most important things working is it’s okay to fire a client. Right. I mostly, you never wanna fire a client.

I like to call that not cynical. I like to call that realistic. So we have to have a realistic perspective, but we have to shoot for the stars, right? So we have to realize this might not happen. And if it doesn’t happen today, well you know what? I might get something better than that tomorrow. I. That’s gonna help me propel forward.

Like I was sharing with you at the mall. I could said, oh my gosh, I’m never gonna get in. Never gonna get in. And then magically I was like, gee, maybe I should just write them an email. And somebody reached out to me. Then I said, gee, look at that. I don’t wanna go for my lungs. Oh, well we should set up an interview. We should set up a, a visit with you. A visit. So, you know, you, you have to. You have to be a little creative. What I like to say, Morgan, is I don’t work in my days. I just creatively play. And so like,

What I probably should have done a little bit differently is I should have played a little more and although I was professional, this great stuff I, when he said to me. You don’t wanna get that. The first thing I should have done when I said, great, here’s your passwords. I wish you guys all the best. It’s been nice working with you, and I should have assumed he was gone already.

I love that. That was how I started my, my thing. And I’ll encourage people, check it out@believemeachieve.com, my link tree. You can go to, um, my, uh, super motivational Friday and you can look at John’s bubble video. And I talk about the fact that, you know, when we learned to play with bubbles like we did when we were a kid. See that’s what we lost when we got into teenagers. We heard the parents and other people like, and other people like other kids, deprogramming us a different way. So if you can just get a, get a bottle of bubbles and just figure out how you play, figure out what it was like to play when you were three or four years old and go back, re regress back to that, and take the skills you have today and you’ll become a success that you didn’t believe was possible.

Thanks Morgan. It was a privilege and a pleasure and honor. ©2026 Client Horror Stories by Beloved by Clients – Privacy Policy, Terms & Conditions – Resources – Beloved by Clients