bad customers and court cases - summary

Fri Jan 31 16:46:19 PST 2003

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 09:33:07AM -0800, Mark C. Langston wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 03:37:32AM -0800, alvin at maggie.linux-consulting.com wrote:

> > -- one of my points will be..
> > 	- bring me any unix box... and i'll be in that box within
> > 	a minute ... after its ready for lilo prompting ...
> >  	or boot> for sun.. etc.etc..
> 
> I think the point here is not that you're capable of doing it, but that
> you didn't do it for the client, after not giving them access to their
> own systems through your actions.
> 
> Forgive me, but your attitude seems to be, "I did all this work for
> them, and they're just too stupid to understand what a great job I did."

Just to state the obvious, if your customers were smart enough to
understand all this stuff on their own, they'd never have had to hire
you in the first place.  If you're selling your expert knowledge, then
you have to package it appropriately.

This sounds like:

"I'm a car mechanic.  I want to take my customer to court because they
won't pay me.  They claim I never did the work for them because when I
gave them their car back, it took them two weeks to shimmy the lock, and
during that whole time they couldn't drive the car anywhere to make
their deliveries.  They had THREE PhDs trying to follow my simple
instructions to bend a coat hanger and slide it down between the window
and the door panel to catch the lock.  I mean, how simple is this?  How
long would it take you?  I don't trust anyone with the keys if they
can't simply break into the car inside of five minutes.  It's sad enough
they didn't even have a slim jim."