When someone is contacting a professional for a set service, it is usually wise to listen to their advice.

This is especially important if the professional warns you that there is a significant risk to getting what you are asking for.

The guy in this story had a customer who not only didn’t listen but actively ignored him, so she got exactly what she asked for.

How much water do you want… exactly?

I deliver bulk water to people who don’t have access to city water or their own private well.

For nearly all customers its a simple process.

Either they call for deliveries, or they have agreed to automatic deliveries.

Sounds like a simple business.

When I show up, I hook the truck up to the fill pipe and start pumping and either listen at the vent or hook up to an installed alarm in order to know when the holding tank is full.

This particular customer had their holding tank installed in a small utility room next to their living room and didn’t install a vent to the outside.

And they refused to allow us to install an alarm because they didn’t want us to put the 1/4 inch hole in the wall to run the alarm wire.

Solution?

No big deal sounds like it would work out fine.

They call when they need 2000 gallons of water and we show up and pump exactly 2000 gallons of water.

This procedure worked without flaw for over a decade.

Literally hundreds of deliveries with no issue.

Que owner deciding to sell.

We are contacted by the new owners and set them up as a new account and head over for our first delivery and meeting.

We especially go over the issue with us being totally unable to tell when the tank is full.

We offered to install the alarm again for free, but they declined.

So, we let them know when they call for water they MUST be sure they have enough room in the tank for 2000 gal.

Or to let us know how much water they have room for.

We went over this several times and they laughed saying they understood and would be calling when they were below the 2000 gallon mark.

Two weeks go by, and we receive a message on our answering machine from the new customer, no gallon amount is specified.

They are asking for trouble here.

This set off a warning bell though because it was a household of two, and its only been two weeks since we filled them last.

Thats HIGHLY abnormal.

We expected more like five weeks.

So we call back just to double check.

No answer so we leave a message asking for confirmation.

Couple hours later we try again.

By the next day we had left four messages asking to confirm that they were ready for a full load.

No reply.

Well, they did call so boss sends me out.

I knock on door as a last attempt, still no answer so I hook up, start the pump and set the timer so I don’t over pump while reading my book.

15 minutes later I hop out to check the water meter, 1700 gallons.

I’ll watch for the next couple minutes and shut it down.

I can’t imagine the mess this caused.

Thats when I hear the front door burst open and the woman who bought the house and had called us in yesterday is SCREAMING to shut the water down.

There is water everywhere!

What the hell are we doing!

This woman has been ignoring our calls and even ignored me at her door and now she is screaming at me.

Apparently she had called when the tank was half full instead of down below the mark showing where the 2000 gallons is.

And just disregarded all our messages and didn’t feel like talking to me when I knocked.

So, now she has 700+ gallons of water in her living room.

Boss was called out so she could scream at him.

Husband came home from work so he too could scream at us.

For reasons I guess.

They made a lot of demands about how we were going to pay to fix it.

Nope.

Boss laid down how we saw the situation.

They surely don’t need this customer.

You can keep the water free of charge just don’t call us for water anymore.

Yall are too stupid to work with.

Never heard from them again. Lol broken heart.

Oh, wow! That would be such a huge mess!

Let’s see what the people in the comments think.

This would be a source of infinite energy.

Such a simple solution.

I never knew this either.

Oh, what a mess.

She must have been sleeping or something!

Wow, you really can’t fix stupid.

You may as well not even try.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.