Most of us have had one before, all of us have heard of them ­— the customer from the place that never “freezes over.” Did we do something wrong; do we deserve them; is it some kind of rite of passage? Actually, the answer is mostly “yes” to all three questions — we usually did something wrong, something we knew not to do. And, that means that we kinda deserve what we got, a little like paying the piper, and paying and paying. It can reasonably be called a rite of passage because once we pass through there we should remember the path and not be tempted to go there again. If you paid attention to what was happening the first time you found yourself working for one of these “types,” you should recognize some characteristics of behavior.

Problem clients seldom infect our operations when we are busy but not swamped; we have capacity available but are not starving for work. Why is this — because only when we are under or over busy do we feel invincible, superhuman, infallible, desperate or panicky. It is during this time we overpromise, underdocument and above all underlisten.

Frankly, I’m quite certain that every difficult client who passed through our bank account in over 30 years told me more than once what they were going to be like, if I let them. Why would I let them, because I’m sure I under- listened.

Here are some of the things I should have heard: 1) “Our last remodeler didn’t know what he was doing.” 2) “It’s a good thing we held back some money or we would never have gotten the job finished.” 3) “We could have done it as well as he/she did.” and 4) “We didn’t even take the lowest bid.” These are the easy ones: You should be asking in every qualifying call whether they have ever remodeled before; what kind of experience was it; if good, why didn’t they call him/her again; if not good what was wrong (that’s where the above answers come from). If the caller doesn’t have anything but criticism of the former contractor, make sure you are on guard because this is usually an unorganized prospect who will blame job problems on everyone but themselves. The “hold backer” is easiest to stop because when they don’t pay as agreed, that’s what you do — stop.