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Consulting Hell (long)
This comes from a guy I know named Dr. Scar....this is his tale of a guy he once consulted for, dating from last year:
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Nightmare clients.
I don't work in retail. I'm a consultant. Owning your own one-man consulting business raises its own levels of frustration. You don't, for instance, get a steady paycheck. You often work for free (even though you promise yourself you won't do that), and the holiday parties are poorly attended. Every once in a while you agree to work with someone who sucks the absolute essence of life out of you. You even know this is going to happen, but you need to pay the mortgage so bad that you'll take anything, knowing you'll regret it. This is one of those stories.
I've been absolutely swamped these past couple of months with what can only be considered "The Nightmare Client." I knew when I started working with him that it was going to be difficult, but I had no idea just how difficult it was going to be. For the past couple of months he has been driving me crazy and sure enough, things have come to a head.
Let me explain.
Back in February, I get a call from the Apple Store, where I get a lot of my referrals. The client is a former engineer who has decided to open up a medical spa clinic so that his wife - a former Emergency Room doctor - can go back to work using her medical skills after a 7-year hiatus. The idea was that she would be able to practice a form of medicine without the hassles and issues that go along with working in a hospital.
The laundry list of things that he wants to do is longer than my arm. First, he wants a completely paperless office. When I say paperless, I mean paperless. Zero paper. All signatures to be done directly into the medical records, which are to be electronic. He wants the data to be transmitted to a PDA that the doctor can access live. He wants a VoIP telephone system that acts as both a paging system, an intercom system, and a voice dictation system (to be inputted directly into the medical records and transcribed at the same time). He wanted security cameras set up so that he could view them from both his office and at home. Oh, and it has to be HIPAA-exempt.
He's convinced that because he can hook up his 4-year old powerbook to his 6-year old powerbook using 5-year old macintosh software, it should be the same thing for a business. Despite the fact that *all* the information needs to be accessible 100% of the time, and the fact that we're not just working with what you'd have in your house, he should be able to do all of this for under $15,000 installed. That's hardware, software, architecture, installation, configuration, and implementation.
That's right. Let me refocus this for a moment. He wants a completely, 100% automated paperless office incorporating Voice-over-IP technology (still in its infancy) built from scratch for under $15,000. (This is about 1/10th what a basic system would normally cost).
Well, I didn't know this budget (when I asked him what the budget was going to be he said that he hadn't figured it out yet, but apparently he had had a "ballpark" figure in his head) when I created the proposal. I tried my best to whittle down the numbers, but the initial figures I showed him ranged from $45k to $100k.
This is where I accept responsibility: I should have known that when he was playing around with those numbers that were so low, that he didn't have an accurate grasp of what he needed to do. I should have listened to that inner voice that often tells me when I'm getting into something that's not in my best interest, but I didn't. I needed the work, and I didn't listen. Oh well.
So, in March we sit down at a local Borders bookstore and start going over the plans for the new clinic. He's decided to lease space in a newly constructed strip mall and has about 2200 sq. ft. of space to play with. I look at the construction plans and I'm appalled to find out that there is no room anywhere for a server or any technology whatsoever. He wants a heavily technology-oriented business, but has made no plans for the technology. He did this despite the fact that I had told him previously that the server needed its own space, and that space need was pretty rigid.
Moreover, even if he were to go with paper, there was no room in the office for storage of files. So, the need to go paperless is even stronger now that he has planned himself into a corner.
What he has made room for, however, is the largest room in the entire space - a playroom for his 19-month old son. When trying to find extra room for putting in the server - you know, the very thing that will make his operation work - I suggested trimming 2 inches in every room to widen the one sliver of storage space he had. He bristled at the idea and said that not only was it out of the question to reduce the space of his son's room, but I was never to mention it again.
Okaaaaaaaay...
Thus began the process of trying to shoehorn a computer system into this office. His original idea was to put the server next to the water heater. Well, as servers don't mix well with humidity and water, I heavily pressed him to rethink that idea. Eventually we managed to reserve space for the server in the back corner of the back room. To this day, however, he feels extremely put out that he has to finagle room for the server in the first place.
We start chipping away at some of the things that he wants to do, such as VoIP for instance. The intercom headset with paging was not nearly as much of a priority. He insisted on getting rid of the backup solution. I managed to convince him to at least install a DVD writer in the server so we could back up to DVD, though.
The rest of the workload went in a similar fashion. Since he had made zero allowances in the office for any computers whatsoever, it was a struggle to create the room necessary for him to have any work done. Every step of the way was fought and he grudgingly accepted the laws of physics that state two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time (like a server and, oh, say, a wall). That is, we had to put the server and the computers somewhere, so allowances had to be made.
That was March 10. We got the finalized quote on May 5 from Apple, and the remainder of the items listed from CDW the following week. It took longer than expected because the client had to review every single item on the list, often coming up with alternatives that, quite frankly, simply wouldn't work because the technology itself was incompatible with other needs.
Then came a month and a half of trying to coordinate purchasing. This is where the difficulty with him started becoming really apparent. On every single item he wanted to make sure it was the absolute cheapest solution - whether it would work with his system or not. We went back and forth for 2 hours (at $100/hr) over a $5 difference between two printers. That's right. He spent $200 to talk to me about $5. And the man can talk.
At the time, I told him that we were going to need close to 2 to 3 months to implement all of the things that he wanted to do. The integration involved not just setting up a server, but setting up 2 Tablet PCs, an electronic medical records system (EMR), point-of-sale (POS), accounting, wireless connectivity and security, security cameras, music for the spa, presentation and graphics software, a mobile projection system and portable delivery.
I told him what we did not want to do was have all of the material come at exactly the same time, and our absolute worst-case would be if he was trying to open up the clinic at the same time, trying to train new employees on not just the process of the spa but all the technology at the same time.
Nevertheless, he didn't actually order the hardware and software until June 21, nearly seven weeks after he got the final quotes.
He then told me that he wanted to open the clinic on July 5.
With the fourth of July holiday, that meant that he had given me exactly six business days to get everything working before he wanted to open for business. Of course, both Apple and CDW said that - for those items they had in stock - it would take 7-10 business days to get everything shipped. For items that were to be drop-shipped from China or were on back-order, it was anybody's guess as to when it could be completed.
Fortunately, when it came time for the holiday, he had pushed back the opening day by a week. The final pieces of hardware for the POS system came in on Wednesday, July 6. The client came over to me and said, with annoyance, that he had scheduled patients on Friday, July 8.
Unfortunately, POSIM, the POS company, recommended that 2 weeks be spent installing, configuring, and training people (assuming that the computers were already set up, which they weren't, 'cause he hadn't ordered them yet). The client knew this, and wanted it done in two days. Well, it couldn't be done. I managed to pull a miracle out of my hat when I got it done in 4 days. Of course, that left training the staff, which included the client, the doctor, and the two aestheticians on how to use the program. This proved more difficult than it would seem, because the 19-month old demon spawn sociopath spent every waking minute screaming at the top of his lungs and getting into anything and everything in the spa.
Ah yes, how could I forget the mini-Manson (Charles, not Marylin)? The child got into everything. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this was a hostile working environment. The Tiny Ayatollah would march into any room he wanted, whether there was a patient undergoing a procedure or me trying to set up computer equipment. I didn't have a single sentence in a conversation that wasn't interrupted by the monster at some point in time or another. To make matters worse, if the client wasn't running after his kid, he mind was wandering trying to figure out what his kid had gotten into.
This is, of course, ignoring the very real fact that this was a medical clinic, with acid, hand-held lasers (he already scanned his eyes with the POS bar-code reader; imagine what would have happened if he had gotten ahold of the hair-removal laser?), and lots and lots of heavy equipment. This kid was a walking disaster area. He couldn't walk down the hall without falling down, bumping into something, and bruising himself.
The most annoying thing, though, was the screaming. He would wander the halls screaming at the top of his lungs. The client would have to come out of his office, or the doctor would have to come out of hers, pick him up, and take him back to his deluxe suite of a room. Even so, the screams pierced every room in the office. I had thought that a "spa" was supposed to be - at least at a basic level - a place that was somewhat peaceful and restful. This place was about as peaceful as Cabo San Lucas during spring break. On fire. In the middle of a hurricane.
As the customers started to come into the clinic, the spots started to show in the system. I was scrambling around as best I could to try and set things up so that the system would work, but it wasn't uncommon to come in during the morning to find that the work I had completed the previous night had been undone as the client removed hardware and/or software for either convenience sake or to keep it out of the reach of his son.
The client then had the audacity to tell me that he was disappointed that he had spent all this money (money has been a recurring theme with him; he's spent a great deal of time talking about how much money he has spent) and has very little to show for it. I explained to him that I warned him about this, but this is what he wanted. He asked me what I meant.
I told him that when we had first discussed purchasing equipment that what we did not want was for all the equipment to come at the same time as the clinic opened. I explained that he had had the final quote from Apple and CDW in early May, but he hadn't actually ordered the hardware and software until June 21. He said that he had thought that it was only an extra week, and I said no, it was an extra seven weeks, and I had the emails to prove it if he was interested in looking at them. He wasn't. Yeah, didn't think so.
I tried to point out the decisions he had made that had led to the current situation, but though he seemed to hear what I had to say, he certainly wasn't listening. His demeanor was getting increasingly belligerent and obnoxious, not to mention insulting. But how he treated me was nothing like how he treated his employees.
He had hired two young women straight out of school to work as aestheticians. One of them was Florida born-and-bred, the other came from Ohio. The first day I met them I wanted to warn them about what they were getting into. I wanted to, but I couldn't figure out a way to warn them without sounding like an asshole (thereby making myself look bad) nor could I figure out how to put into words what I had been going through. So I had said nothing, hoping that perhaps their experience would be better than mine.
On the contrary, it was worse. Neither of the aestheticians had gone to college, and the client and doctor treated them about the same as one would treat dog squeeze on the sole of their shoe.
They expected them to act as glorified babysitters, since they couldn't find an appropriate nanny to take care of their obnoxious brat. Whenever he got into something, the client would yell at the aestheticians for not keeping an eye on him, or not "being careful" that his son wouldn't get into something he shouldn't. This included, but isn't limited to, dropping one tablet, scanning his eyes with the bar-code reader, and the coup-de-grace, unplugging the server from the wall.
Yeah. When the client called me about that he said that "someone" unplugged the server. He neglected to mention it was his own kid. On the contrary, he blamed the Floridian aesthetician for the server getting unplugged, saying that it was her negligence that caused the server to get unplugged. To be truthful, he deliberately left the impression that she had bumped into the server or got caught in the cord or had otherwise unplugged it herself.
But it gets worse. He's made comments about the aestheticians' lack of education - to clients and other people in the clinic - as well as criticized them for not helping out 'enough.' He wanted to know, for instance, why the aestheticians didn't volunteer a marketing plan for promoting the new clinic - a responsibility that was not theirs to begin with.
The man brought unreasonableness to an entirely new level. Once, when the Ohioan went into the bathroom, the phone rang. Instead of answering it himself (there were only 3 people in the office at the time), he waited until she got out of the bathroom and then yelled at her for not answering the phone. Another time he gave her permission to go to lunch, but when she got back read her the riot act because she wasn't there to answer the phone and it had gotten busy (despite the fact that he gave her permission to go). The Floridian was doing a facial service for a customer, and instead of answering the phone himself, he walked into the room to tell her to answer the phone.
I was stunned when I heard this last bit. He actually walked into the middle of a session to get the aesthetician to stop providing the service and answer the phone. What..... how... why... huh?!?
It got really, really bad. It became impossible to have a conversation with the client without him becoming obnoxious and insulting. Even when he got good news he took the opportunity to launch into yet another diatribe about everything that remained to be fixed, everything that wasn't working the way he expected it to work, etc.
When I was sitting down with the staff to show them how to use the POS system, starting off with a basic sale, he kept leaving to run after his kid. When he returned, he would come back and ask questions that I had just gone over in his absence. This, despite the fact that I had specifically asked that he find a sitter for his son so that I could do the training uninterrupted. He was getting more and more frustrated with his kid and POSIM, and was starting to devolve into insanity.
For instance, he kept asking how do do a specific kind of searching for obscure information. It was a rather advanced feature of the software that I hadn't learned how to do myself, and I told him so: I knew it could be done, but I didn't yet know how to do it.
"Well, then I just spent over a thousand dollars for software I can't use."
Huh? I asked him what he meant.
"If I can't do that type of search then this software is useless to me."
I explained once more that I knew that it could be done, I just didn't recall how to do it since I had only been shown once over a month before.
Again, he said, "So I've just wasted my money."
At this point in time I was beginning to wonder if I was just having a conversation in my own head. He continued ranting about what he needed the software to do, all the money he was spending in marketing and advertising, and if he couldn't track the promotions and sales - which was why he had gone with this software in the first place, then he was paying me money for no reason.
"Are you asking me if it can be done, or are you asking me how to do it?" I finally asked.
"Yes," he said.
"No," I said, trying to be patient. "That's an either-or question."
"Both," he said. Emotions were running high for both of us. The rest of the staff was sort of trying to inspect their shoelaces with new-found interest.
"Look," I said. "I've already told you that it can be done, and I've already told you I can't remember how to do it but I will find out for you. I don't know how else to answer your question unless you rephrase it."
"Okay, fine," he said. "I didn't hear you say that."
Oh, okay. Because, you know, I had only said it four times in a row.
Then came the final insult. He called the Ohioan into his office while simultaneously the doctor called the Floridian into the kitchen. The doctor's first words were, "We think you're lazy." This isn't exactly the best way to win friends and influence people. Not only that, but it's patently false. The only reason why the clinic has people coming through the door at *all* was because this specific aesthetician had hauled ass to find people to bring in. When she pointed this out, the doctor said, "Oh, well, I wasn't aware of that."
My (non-stated) response to that is well, then you shouldn't have made baseless accusations, bitch!
The doctor also accused her of walking around as if she's "too sexy for this spa." Now, it's true that both the aestheticians are attractive - very attractive in fact. But neither one of them has been anything less than extremely friendly to everyone who has walked through the front door. If ever there was a case of jealousy this is it. The doctor is no beauty, believe me. She slaps on the makeup to cover her own "unsightly blemishes" while simultaneously criticizing and making fun of anyone and everyone who doesn't meet up with her notion of beauty or attractiveness.
As if that weren't bad enough, the doctor told the aesthetician that she wanted her to go out - using her own car, gas, and at her own expense - and sell the laser treatments (the services the doctor does) and not her own services. Not only that, but she wasn't going to pay her any commission. "Until we start recouping some of the monthly expense I won't even consider paying a commission."
cont.
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Nightmare clients.
I don't work in retail. I'm a consultant. Owning your own one-man consulting business raises its own levels of frustration. You don't, for instance, get a steady paycheck. You often work for free (even though you promise yourself you won't do that), and the holiday parties are poorly attended. Every once in a while you agree to work with someone who sucks the absolute essence of life out of you. You even know this is going to happen, but you need to pay the mortgage so bad that you'll take anything, knowing you'll regret it. This is one of those stories.
I've been absolutely swamped these past couple of months with what can only be considered "The Nightmare Client." I knew when I started working with him that it was going to be difficult, but I had no idea just how difficult it was going to be. For the past couple of months he has been driving me crazy and sure enough, things have come to a head.
Let me explain.
Back in February, I get a call from the Apple Store, where I get a lot of my referrals. The client is a former engineer who has decided to open up a medical spa clinic so that his wife - a former Emergency Room doctor - can go back to work using her medical skills after a 7-year hiatus. The idea was that she would be able to practice a form of medicine without the hassles and issues that go along with working in a hospital.
The laundry list of things that he wants to do is longer than my arm. First, he wants a completely paperless office. When I say paperless, I mean paperless. Zero paper. All signatures to be done directly into the medical records, which are to be electronic. He wants the data to be transmitted to a PDA that the doctor can access live. He wants a VoIP telephone system that acts as both a paging system, an intercom system, and a voice dictation system (to be inputted directly into the medical records and transcribed at the same time). He wanted security cameras set up so that he could view them from both his office and at home. Oh, and it has to be HIPAA-exempt.
He's convinced that because he can hook up his 4-year old powerbook to his 6-year old powerbook using 5-year old macintosh software, it should be the same thing for a business. Despite the fact that *all* the information needs to be accessible 100% of the time, and the fact that we're not just working with what you'd have in your house, he should be able to do all of this for under $15,000 installed. That's hardware, software, architecture, installation, configuration, and implementation.
That's right. Let me refocus this for a moment. He wants a completely, 100% automated paperless office incorporating Voice-over-IP technology (still in its infancy) built from scratch for under $15,000. (This is about 1/10th what a basic system would normally cost).
Well, I didn't know this budget (when I asked him what the budget was going to be he said that he hadn't figured it out yet, but apparently he had had a "ballpark" figure in his head) when I created the proposal. I tried my best to whittle down the numbers, but the initial figures I showed him ranged from $45k to $100k.
This is where I accept responsibility: I should have known that when he was playing around with those numbers that were so low, that he didn't have an accurate grasp of what he needed to do. I should have listened to that inner voice that often tells me when I'm getting into something that's not in my best interest, but I didn't. I needed the work, and I didn't listen. Oh well.
So, in March we sit down at a local Borders bookstore and start going over the plans for the new clinic. He's decided to lease space in a newly constructed strip mall and has about 2200 sq. ft. of space to play with. I look at the construction plans and I'm appalled to find out that there is no room anywhere for a server or any technology whatsoever. He wants a heavily technology-oriented business, but has made no plans for the technology. He did this despite the fact that I had told him previously that the server needed its own space, and that space need was pretty rigid.
Moreover, even if he were to go with paper, there was no room in the office for storage of files. So, the need to go paperless is even stronger now that he has planned himself into a corner.
What he has made room for, however, is the largest room in the entire space - a playroom for his 19-month old son. When trying to find extra room for putting in the server - you know, the very thing that will make his operation work - I suggested trimming 2 inches in every room to widen the one sliver of storage space he had. He bristled at the idea and said that not only was it out of the question to reduce the space of his son's room, but I was never to mention it again.
Okaaaaaaaay...
Thus began the process of trying to shoehorn a computer system into this office. His original idea was to put the server next to the water heater. Well, as servers don't mix well with humidity and water, I heavily pressed him to rethink that idea. Eventually we managed to reserve space for the server in the back corner of the back room. To this day, however, he feels extremely put out that he has to finagle room for the server in the first place.
We start chipping away at some of the things that he wants to do, such as VoIP for instance. The intercom headset with paging was not nearly as much of a priority. He insisted on getting rid of the backup solution. I managed to convince him to at least install a DVD writer in the server so we could back up to DVD, though.
The rest of the workload went in a similar fashion. Since he had made zero allowances in the office for any computers whatsoever, it was a struggle to create the room necessary for him to have any work done. Every step of the way was fought and he grudgingly accepted the laws of physics that state two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time (like a server and, oh, say, a wall). That is, we had to put the server and the computers somewhere, so allowances had to be made.
That was March 10. We got the finalized quote on May 5 from Apple, and the remainder of the items listed from CDW the following week. It took longer than expected because the client had to review every single item on the list, often coming up with alternatives that, quite frankly, simply wouldn't work because the technology itself was incompatible with other needs.
Then came a month and a half of trying to coordinate purchasing. This is where the difficulty with him started becoming really apparent. On every single item he wanted to make sure it was the absolute cheapest solution - whether it would work with his system or not. We went back and forth for 2 hours (at $100/hr) over a $5 difference between two printers. That's right. He spent $200 to talk to me about $5. And the man can talk.
At the time, I told him that we were going to need close to 2 to 3 months to implement all of the things that he wanted to do. The integration involved not just setting up a server, but setting up 2 Tablet PCs, an electronic medical records system (EMR), point-of-sale (POS), accounting, wireless connectivity and security, security cameras, music for the spa, presentation and graphics software, a mobile projection system and portable delivery.
I told him what we did not want to do was have all of the material come at exactly the same time, and our absolute worst-case would be if he was trying to open up the clinic at the same time, trying to train new employees on not just the process of the spa but all the technology at the same time.
Nevertheless, he didn't actually order the hardware and software until June 21, nearly seven weeks after he got the final quotes.
He then told me that he wanted to open the clinic on July 5.
With the fourth of July holiday, that meant that he had given me exactly six business days to get everything working before he wanted to open for business. Of course, both Apple and CDW said that - for those items they had in stock - it would take 7-10 business days to get everything shipped. For items that were to be drop-shipped from China or were on back-order, it was anybody's guess as to when it could be completed.
Fortunately, when it came time for the holiday, he had pushed back the opening day by a week. The final pieces of hardware for the POS system came in on Wednesday, July 6. The client came over to me and said, with annoyance, that he had scheduled patients on Friday, July 8.
Unfortunately, POSIM, the POS company, recommended that 2 weeks be spent installing, configuring, and training people (assuming that the computers were already set up, which they weren't, 'cause he hadn't ordered them yet). The client knew this, and wanted it done in two days. Well, it couldn't be done. I managed to pull a miracle out of my hat when I got it done in 4 days. Of course, that left training the staff, which included the client, the doctor, and the two aestheticians on how to use the program. This proved more difficult than it would seem, because the 19-month old demon spawn sociopath spent every waking minute screaming at the top of his lungs and getting into anything and everything in the spa.
Ah yes, how could I forget the mini-Manson (Charles, not Marylin)? The child got into everything. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this was a hostile working environment. The Tiny Ayatollah would march into any room he wanted, whether there was a patient undergoing a procedure or me trying to set up computer equipment. I didn't have a single sentence in a conversation that wasn't interrupted by the monster at some point in time or another. To make matters worse, if the client wasn't running after his kid, he mind was wandering trying to figure out what his kid had gotten into.
This is, of course, ignoring the very real fact that this was a medical clinic, with acid, hand-held lasers (he already scanned his eyes with the POS bar-code reader; imagine what would have happened if he had gotten ahold of the hair-removal laser?), and lots and lots of heavy equipment. This kid was a walking disaster area. He couldn't walk down the hall without falling down, bumping into something, and bruising himself.
The most annoying thing, though, was the screaming. He would wander the halls screaming at the top of his lungs. The client would have to come out of his office, or the doctor would have to come out of hers, pick him up, and take him back to his deluxe suite of a room. Even so, the screams pierced every room in the office. I had thought that a "spa" was supposed to be - at least at a basic level - a place that was somewhat peaceful and restful. This place was about as peaceful as Cabo San Lucas during spring break. On fire. In the middle of a hurricane.
As the customers started to come into the clinic, the spots started to show in the system. I was scrambling around as best I could to try and set things up so that the system would work, but it wasn't uncommon to come in during the morning to find that the work I had completed the previous night had been undone as the client removed hardware and/or software for either convenience sake or to keep it out of the reach of his son.
The client then had the audacity to tell me that he was disappointed that he had spent all this money (money has been a recurring theme with him; he's spent a great deal of time talking about how much money he has spent) and has very little to show for it. I explained to him that I warned him about this, but this is what he wanted. He asked me what I meant.
I told him that when we had first discussed purchasing equipment that what we did not want was for all the equipment to come at the same time as the clinic opened. I explained that he had had the final quote from Apple and CDW in early May, but he hadn't actually ordered the hardware and software until June 21. He said that he had thought that it was only an extra week, and I said no, it was an extra seven weeks, and I had the emails to prove it if he was interested in looking at them. He wasn't. Yeah, didn't think so.
I tried to point out the decisions he had made that had led to the current situation, but though he seemed to hear what I had to say, he certainly wasn't listening. His demeanor was getting increasingly belligerent and obnoxious, not to mention insulting. But how he treated me was nothing like how he treated his employees.
He had hired two young women straight out of school to work as aestheticians. One of them was Florida born-and-bred, the other came from Ohio. The first day I met them I wanted to warn them about what they were getting into. I wanted to, but I couldn't figure out a way to warn them without sounding like an asshole (thereby making myself look bad) nor could I figure out how to put into words what I had been going through. So I had said nothing, hoping that perhaps their experience would be better than mine.
On the contrary, it was worse. Neither of the aestheticians had gone to college, and the client and doctor treated them about the same as one would treat dog squeeze on the sole of their shoe.
They expected them to act as glorified babysitters, since they couldn't find an appropriate nanny to take care of their obnoxious brat. Whenever he got into something, the client would yell at the aestheticians for not keeping an eye on him, or not "being careful" that his son wouldn't get into something he shouldn't. This included, but isn't limited to, dropping one tablet, scanning his eyes with the bar-code reader, and the coup-de-grace, unplugging the server from the wall.
Yeah. When the client called me about that he said that "someone" unplugged the server. He neglected to mention it was his own kid. On the contrary, he blamed the Floridian aesthetician for the server getting unplugged, saying that it was her negligence that caused the server to get unplugged. To be truthful, he deliberately left the impression that she had bumped into the server or got caught in the cord or had otherwise unplugged it herself.
But it gets worse. He's made comments about the aestheticians' lack of education - to clients and other people in the clinic - as well as criticized them for not helping out 'enough.' He wanted to know, for instance, why the aestheticians didn't volunteer a marketing plan for promoting the new clinic - a responsibility that was not theirs to begin with.
The man brought unreasonableness to an entirely new level. Once, when the Ohioan went into the bathroom, the phone rang. Instead of answering it himself (there were only 3 people in the office at the time), he waited until she got out of the bathroom and then yelled at her for not answering the phone. Another time he gave her permission to go to lunch, but when she got back read her the riot act because she wasn't there to answer the phone and it had gotten busy (despite the fact that he gave her permission to go). The Floridian was doing a facial service for a customer, and instead of answering the phone himself, he walked into the room to tell her to answer the phone.
I was stunned when I heard this last bit. He actually walked into the middle of a session to get the aesthetician to stop providing the service and answer the phone. What..... how... why... huh?!?
It got really, really bad. It became impossible to have a conversation with the client without him becoming obnoxious and insulting. Even when he got good news he took the opportunity to launch into yet another diatribe about everything that remained to be fixed, everything that wasn't working the way he expected it to work, etc.
When I was sitting down with the staff to show them how to use the POS system, starting off with a basic sale, he kept leaving to run after his kid. When he returned, he would come back and ask questions that I had just gone over in his absence. This, despite the fact that I had specifically asked that he find a sitter for his son so that I could do the training uninterrupted. He was getting more and more frustrated with his kid and POSIM, and was starting to devolve into insanity.
For instance, he kept asking how do do a specific kind of searching for obscure information. It was a rather advanced feature of the software that I hadn't learned how to do myself, and I told him so: I knew it could be done, but I didn't yet know how to do it.
"Well, then I just spent over a thousand dollars for software I can't use."
Huh? I asked him what he meant.
"If I can't do that type of search then this software is useless to me."
I explained once more that I knew that it could be done, I just didn't recall how to do it since I had only been shown once over a month before.
Again, he said, "So I've just wasted my money."
At this point in time I was beginning to wonder if I was just having a conversation in my own head. He continued ranting about what he needed the software to do, all the money he was spending in marketing and advertising, and if he couldn't track the promotions and sales - which was why he had gone with this software in the first place, then he was paying me money for no reason.
"Are you asking me if it can be done, or are you asking me how to do it?" I finally asked.
"Yes," he said.
"No," I said, trying to be patient. "That's an either-or question."
"Both," he said. Emotions were running high for both of us. The rest of the staff was sort of trying to inspect their shoelaces with new-found interest.
"Look," I said. "I've already told you that it can be done, and I've already told you I can't remember how to do it but I will find out for you. I don't know how else to answer your question unless you rephrase it."
"Okay, fine," he said. "I didn't hear you say that."
Oh, okay. Because, you know, I had only said it four times in a row.
Then came the final insult. He called the Ohioan into his office while simultaneously the doctor called the Floridian into the kitchen. The doctor's first words were, "We think you're lazy." This isn't exactly the best way to win friends and influence people. Not only that, but it's patently false. The only reason why the clinic has people coming through the door at *all* was because this specific aesthetician had hauled ass to find people to bring in. When she pointed this out, the doctor said, "Oh, well, I wasn't aware of that."
My (non-stated) response to that is well, then you shouldn't have made baseless accusations, bitch!
The doctor also accused her of walking around as if she's "too sexy for this spa." Now, it's true that both the aestheticians are attractive - very attractive in fact. But neither one of them has been anything less than extremely friendly to everyone who has walked through the front door. If ever there was a case of jealousy this is it. The doctor is no beauty, believe me. She slaps on the makeup to cover her own "unsightly blemishes" while simultaneously criticizing and making fun of anyone and everyone who doesn't meet up with her notion of beauty or attractiveness.
As if that weren't bad enough, the doctor told the aesthetician that she wanted her to go out - using her own car, gas, and at her own expense - and sell the laser treatments (the services the doctor does) and not her own services. Not only that, but she wasn't going to pay her any commission. "Until we start recouping some of the monthly expense I won't even consider paying a commission."
cont.
Guess that's what happens when parents have no concept of personal responsibility. Yeesh.
but trust, there are lots of threats and curse words involved in my rant.
on so many levels, but just on the guy's "I want a Ferrari, for the price of a Hyundai" attitude on the system your friend put in, he deserves the International Entitlement Asshole of the Year Award. 
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