There are a lot of cheap people out there. What’s more, there are a lot of cheap people running super profitable businesses, cutting corners that take from the people below them instead of paying up themselves.
OP worked for a guy who owned a television station, and he was known for always finding a way to avoid paying his bills.
My first job out of college was for a local TV station. The owner was (and still is) the worst human being I’ve ever met.
This guy has money, but he will cheat and lie, anything to get out of paying his bills.
So, when the station was sold to DirectTV and one of OP’s buddies came in to get the transition done, OP warned him that this was the type of guy he was dealing with.
When I started working there the owner had just signed a contract with DirectTV to become part of their broadcast package. Since they were at the time purely a local TV station, this meant that we had about 2 months to upgrade our system so that we can start broadcasting to DirectTV customers in the entire Bay Area. Every day that we fail to do this past the deadline means that the owner would suffer a penalty, per the contract.
Not knowing about how any of this works, the owner hired a friend of mine to come in as a freelance consultant. My friend told him that for about $15k USD he can get a system that will automate the entire process, which of course this guy didn’t want to pay.
He tasked my friend with finding a cheaper way (around half) AND to pay for all the hardware upfront and get reimbursed later.
Knowing what a piece of crap this guy is, I warned my friend not to front the money because he wouldn’t get paid back.
The guy just smiled and said “Watch me.”
When the boss man tried wriggling out of a bill, OP’s friend was ready to pounce.
So he made it work, we went live on schedule and the owner was happy. Then my friend went in and presented the guy with the bill.
Immediately the usual excuses starts: “Oh, I’m a little short this month, can I pay you later?” etc. etc.
Then my friend pulled out the trump card.
Not only did my friend threatened to take all the equipments back and takes the station off the air, he reveals that in order to get the uplink working for cheap, someone had to come in EVERY DAY and code the broadcast manually.
It’s not a terribly complicated procedure (takes less than 5 mins) but of course no one else at the station knows how to do it but him.
He came in with a threat big enough that the boss was never going to call his bluff – which he didn’t – and taught him a lesson about spending money to make money to boot.
So either the owner can pay him what he’s owned, PLUS a $2,000/month “consulting fee”, or the station goes dark and he starts paying the penalty to DirectTV.
The owner paid…fast.
So instead of $15k, he ended up shelling out more than double that amount as my friend lapped up his $2k/month fee for close to a year before he felt bad and finally teach someone there how to do it.
Moral of the story: only thinking about short term gain will always cost you more in the long run.
Does Reddit think the friend was as selfish as the boss? Let’s find out!
This commenter says some scumbags never learn.
No one had a bad thing to say against the friend.
Then there’s this reminder that most people with money have issues with morals.
They say it was more pre revenge than pro revenge but still.
They would have kept the job longer, too.
I’m glad this guy was prepared.
Otherwise this would have been a very different story.