Have you ever "fired" a client, customer, or patient?

When I was in my 20s I had a small (well, just me) business cleaning up and detailing yachts, mostly to prep them for sale, sometimes just to brighten them up. A few times the owners (middle-aged, successful businessmen) assumed that sexual services were included.

One of them didn’t know how to swim, so I graciously tossed him a flotation cushion after dumping him in the water.

So, I guess I “fired” 3 clients.

I have fired several clients form the emergency clinic, usually for abusing my staff.

Yes. As a professional editor I’ve fired two clients.

One wrote psychology books, and she wrote like the wind and never looked back. I swear everything looked like a rough draft that hadn’t even been read over. The time to call in your editor is when you think you’ve finished making all your changes, not before you’ve started them. When I realized that I was spending more time cleaning up her messes than she was in making them, I told her I couldn’t do her books any more. Doing that as a freelancer and without something else lined up is a pretty serious statement of exasperation.

The other was a memoirist, a lovely elderly man who worked and worked at writing his anecdotes and vignettes. His friends and relatives had enjoyed his dinnertable tales and often told him he ought to write them down. But he could never get the hang of making a narrative vivid and entertaining without the gestures, the pauses, the inflections, and other special effects that you can’t reproduce in writing. He never learned how to select evocative detail or to depict events in a way that made them real to the reader. He was a real hard trier, but he didn’t grasp the concepts. He kept saying, “Don’t give up on me.” I worked with him for two years before I just had to say we couldn’t go any further. He always insisted I’d taught him so much, but honestly, it didn’t seem so to me. I still feel bad about him.

There’ve been others whose jobs I declined in the first place, but only those two that I terminated.

I fired a contractor some years back that had a meltdown in my driveway, throwing expensive paneling of antique, wrought iron graveyard fencing I had bought to fence a patio I designed. He was to install it and I saw him out of the window, have a tantrum when he couldn’t get one of the panels aligned and violently threw it into the dirt.
He then got in his truck, peeled out up my driveway, careening off the fencing and left without a word leaving all his tools in my garage. I waited 24 hours and after no word from him left him a message stating, very clearly, that he had 24 hours to pick up his tools or I would be taking them t the dump.

He sheepishly sneaked back over when I was out and got his tools. The man was 50 years old. Jackass. I do not tolerate childish tantrums form anyone. See ya.

No, he was not get paid for his one hour of work before he had his meltdown. haha

I did a website for a NYC residential builder way back in 2011. We went through a whole design process and coded up a good looking site for him.

He apparently didn’t review it much during the process but a few days before launch sent a long list of changes he wanted. That’s not unusual, but he also wanted to stick to the launch date. I wrote back and said we couldn’t make everything happen by then, but would do what we could.

I worked pretty much constantly for those last few days, put off other work, and launched with most of his requests.

He called and tore me a new one. He apparently hadn’t read the list saying what would and wouldn’t be included (too busy he said) so was expecting all his requests and thought I wasn’t taking it seriously. I was apologetic and assured him we’d get it fixed, right up until he started cussing and demanded hourly check-ins from me personally by phone until the changes were complete.

That’s not how my field works, so it was way out of what’s normal and expected. I realized he was using the same tactics he would use with a subcontractor on one of his jobs, and it probably wouldn’t stop.

He got politely fired. He still uses the site.

Only fired two other clients in 10+ years, one was more of a personality clash with an individual, and the other was a lobbyist and I should have known better. So that’s on me.

I’d rather it was all good relationships and consider all of them personal failures at some level, but there’s no point in dragging something out that will just be nasty for all involved. I think some people actually like the nastiness as part of “business” and that’s never going to be a good match for me. I’ve learned to just decline that work up front now, it’s never worth it.

I was just starting out in my business. There was a woman who called and wanted me to clean up after her dog before the lawn mower guy showed up. We made the appointment for the morning before the mower showed up in the afternoon. When I got there, opps! He had been there the afternoon before, so she said she didn’t need me, please try again next week, – one day earlier! (No payment collected, none offered.)
I come back the next week, one day earlier and guess what? The same exact thing!
I come back the NEXT week, ONE DAY EARLIER than the last time, and guess what??
Still no work, still no pay. I was getting a little pissed by now. I could see the dog shit ALL OVER her back yard, FROM THE STREET! So I said, ONE MORE TIME!
Guess what happened???

So I told her I couldn’t do the job, and I left. She seemed heartbroken! No body to clean up the dog shit… FOR THE LAWN MOWING GUY!!!

As a professional purchasing agent for manufacturing companies my whole working life, I’ve had to cut loose many suppliers who apparently do very well just saying they are going to do something, and believing that this is somehow the same as actually doing it, even something as simple as I will absolutely call you back with a solution by the end of today. (I’d hang up and think, “No you won’t”)......more times than not, they didn’t.

Every year, I’d worry a little more that this epidemic of professional bullshitters would slowly and eventually bring the country to its knees.

(Was I prescient, or what….??)

I ran a cleaning business for many years. I had a client who made it very difficult to clean for him. One time he had a small mountain of ice for me to navigate just to get in his house. Another time he had removed all the cleaning supplies from the house to clean somewhere else (he wanted me to use his-not my chemicals). Another time his dog wouldn’t let me in. It went on and on. Every week there was something else. I finally dumped him. He was astonished.

<giggles>

Thank you for your stories.

This question is on my mind because, just yesterday, I had to terminate my relationship with a new client. For the first time in 35 years, I made the decision to “fire” someone without getting paid. The few times I had to end things with a client, I’d always finish the work, bill for my time, and collect my fee. In this recent situation, it made much more sense simply to walk away and be done with it.

@Love_my_doggie, that must have been a serious affront. Want to tell us what happened?

I’ve been fired as a client, once. I was fired by my hairdresser. He said, “I can’t cut your hair any more. Every time, you want something different. If I can’t make you happy, you need to see someone else.” I couldn’t get him to understand that I wanted something different just because I wanted something different and not because I was displeased with the last result.

The question of whether wanting variety means you’re unhappy, and whether variety equals change, seems like too big a philosophical venture for this thread.

So I picked a different stylist in the shop, someone who read books and had interesting conversations. Yes, I chose him for his conversation. He’s been doing my hair for at least 15 years now, and he doesn’t care how often I want something different.

Well, @Jeruba , I think your hairstyle always looks becoming, regardless of the chosen style.

How do I know this, you ask ?
.
.
…................drones…..

I find the jellyfish very fetching.