In business, there’s no doubt you’ll have to deal with difficult people at one time or another in some fashion.

So, what would you do if a difficult colleague from your past suddenly reappeared as a client and started causing problems all over again?

In today’s story, someone deals with this exact situation.

Here’s how it all played out.

I got someone fired TWICE

So I’ve been working in advertising for about 8 years now.

Back in my old agency, we hired someone new to handle digital for a couple of small-time clients as she was new to the industry; let’s call her EC (Evil Crap).

She didn’t last long as she had attitude problems and would regularly make major mistakes and repeat them.

So after 6 months, I told her that it’s not going to work out, but that we thank her for being with us (basically no hard feelings.)

I never burn bridges, and I was still kinda junior in my middle management career.

He was in for a surprise.

A couple of years later, I left that agency and started doing my own thing.

I then settled as Head of Digital at a new agency that had a small client (SC) but one that had a big global name.

Their retainer was pretty low, and I had told the Managing Director (MD) that it wasn’t a client worth keeping if they wouldn’t increase their retainer by at least 15%.

But my agency insisted that they’re a good name to keep. Whatever, I didn’t invest too much time into it.

A few weeks later, the client hired a new digital manager, and it turned out to be EC.

She gave me this smirk during our first meeting.

I’m not new in the industry, so I don’t really take it too seriously, but she tries to make life **** for my employees.

Constant angry emails, and unrealistic expectations.

She’s still her problematic self.

But in my face, she was always nice. She would even send me private WhatsApp messages thanking me for the good work, but she would also send huge criticisms via email with her boss CC’d.

She thought that just because she was my client, I was scared or something.

Anyway fast forward a couple of months, and she sends an email to the MD, whom I directly report to, and says that I haven’t given any care to the account, and that there are too many things going wrong; that I should be adding value to the account.

I tell my boss that they only pay for 2 hours per month of my time, and that I’m giving them 1 day a week, more than generous, and that she is being unreasonable with her demands.

Honestly she’s kinda a r/choosingbeggar but that’s another story.

The boss wants to see what’s going on for himself.

Anyway, my boss asks to be looped into emails moving forward, ******* me off, but whatever.

After 3 days he sees how ridiculous its getting and says to me “I’ve had this account for 12 years, I’m not about to let EC ruin it. Do what you can to take her down.”

I comply. She didn’t take into account that our contract ended in exactly 1 month from the moment I got the green light to screw her over.

And if she didn’t have an agency to take over the account, she would definitely be under serious scrutiny from her management.

Her boss had no idea how much time I’ve put into the account, and how much time the team has invested, so I make sure I keep timesheets, records, and rounds of feedback she’s given.

Her agency didn’t expect this.

We had an agency review meeting 3 days before contract extension, and I present the 2019/20 strategy and contract with a 130% increase in the retainer.

Her and her boss freak out and are like what? No way! How could you even present that?!

I showed her boss all emails and WhatsApp conversations confirming what she wants to be delivered for the year and said that we won’t take them on as clients if they’re not willing to pay what’s worth.

I even slipped in some of the nasty WhatsApp messages she sent to my employees, where she said, at one point, “Take it up with your boss if you don’t like it.”

His boss started second-guessing the decision.

My MD started to freak out after the meeting and told me that he didn’t expect me to do that.

He was so nervous that he was about to lose an account that isn’t even 5% of the company’s revenue.

2 days later, they asked if we’d be willing to take the same retainer for less work, as the demands made by EC were not beneficial to the company, and they had let her go 4 months after hiring her.

He’s waiting to meet her again.

We agree and move on.

Ideally, we would have ended the relationship, and I would’ve freed time to win new businesses, but that didn’t happen.

I’ve since quit this job, hoping to find EC somewhere else because the third time’s the charm xD.

Yikes! People like that are the worst.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit have to say about these types of people.

According to this person, she tried for revenge and failed.

Yes, she probably will be looking for him in the future.

This person thinks she wanted to post on Reddit about him – too funny.

Here’s someone who may have been involved in this story.

She did it to herself both times!

Maybe one day she’ll learn how to work well with others.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.