Suck it up!

In my job I often have to suck up both clients and suppliers. I have learned that it most often pays back being nice to suppliers; you get them to do the impossible things when just asking nicely. How ever, there are two kinds of people where it doesn’t help talking nicely to; Michelin chefs and Hell’s Angels. You just have to yell at them so they get the message.

Last week I had to make a Michelin chef feel my anger, and I promise, he will NEVER fuck up with my clients again. Problem with Hell’s Angels is that you don’t want to yell at them. But as long as you don’t know they are Hell’s Angels, it works perfectly.

For years ago we had a nice guy, let’s call him Mr R, to renovate our bathroom in Copenhagen. He fixed it well, but there were some minor things I wasn’t satisfied with, so I called him and asked him to come and fix them.

“I don’t really have time…” Mr R answers.
“You just better get your ass over here, NOW”

Mr R came, fixed the things and I was happy.

When we moved to our house, we had again a bathroom to renovate, and of course we contacted the liable Mr R. He came, fixed the bathroom, but again left a little thing undone. I called him:

“You didn’t cover the pipes under the sink!”
“It wasn’t included in the price.”
“Bullshit, you better get you ass over here NOW and fix it!”

Again Mr R came, fixed the pipe cover and I was happy.

A couple of years later we found out that there was something with electricity that Mr R hadn’t done quite after the book. Meanwhile a colleague of my husband has also engaged Mr R to fix his bathroom and told that one evening Mr R had forgotten his HA jacket in the bathroom he was working at. So now we had to call Mr R and ask him to fix the electricity;

“Wife, you call Mr R, won’t you?”
“Hell no, I am not gonna call him, you do it!”
“No I am not gonna do it, you do it…”
“No, you do it…”
“No, you do…”