When you are running your own business, one of the hardest parts is often negotiating with your customers or clients.

What would you do if your main client was severely under paying you and was treating you poorly?

That is what happened to the delivery driver in this story, but finally he was able to negotiate a much better deal.

Check it out.

Manager tried to take Delivery Man’s livelihood, makes him fear for his family’s future… Don’t worry I’ve got your back

Back in the warehouse days we had an ever growing clearance section.

Because of this the company employed a delivery driver to be solely responsible for delivering clearance items purchased by customers.

This delivery driver, let’s call him John, was amazing.

He was a veteran of the industry, had two trucks, a smaller and a larger one, did most of the heavy lifting, always took the time to chat to me.

I helped him Load up his delivery run, would bring me beer when it was an extremely hot day and knew I’d been working hard.

He had worked for a bunch of high end furniture stores but when the recession hit, and companies went belly up or cut costs, so he found himself struggling for work.

The company I worked for had a problem with delivery drivers.

It sounds like they were beyond cheap.

This was due to the fact the company was cheap and wouldn’t pay the industry rates most delivery drivers charged.

John was happy to make a few concessions for cash in hand deliveries and naturally management took advantage of that.

After a few problems in the war house, I asked John if I could get a few shifts working for him as his delivery offsider.

John immediately said yes as he had problems of his own with lazy employees.

I immediately fell in love with the work.

We would do a 4am start to get deliveries on the watch 6, and if we scheduled it correctly we could be done by 2-2.30.

I loved the physicality of it, loved being on the open road and loved swapping stories with John.

He would talk about his wife and kids and I’d make fun of his tacky scorpion tattoo.

The problems started when John would get his delivery run sheet from the store and would see the delivery prices quoted to the customer from the manager.

To give you an idea, the store would charge $95 for a local delivery.

This was with a full day of deliveries and approximately 20-30 deliveries.

John would charge slightly more as he was doing maybe 5-8 deliveries and they’d be all over as opposed to all being in a specific area.

That is crazy.

John would go in and chat to the manager and ask why a customer was only being charged $50 for a 3 seater sofa bed, going up six flights of stairs when normally it would be a $110 delivery charge and $100 for every flight of stair past the first level.

The manager would just shrug and say she reduced the delivery to close the sale.

We’d get other deliveries where we’d have to carry a ten piece sectional sofa up seven flights of stairs because the customer wouldn’t reserve an elevator or in some cases the goods wouldn’t fit in the lift.

We’d get the sofa inside, unbag it, connect the sections, take the rubbish away only for the customer to hand John $30 in cash.

It was soul crushing.

I remember getting the customer to sign off on the paperwork as John said he’d meet me back at the truck.

I grabbed the last bits of rubbish and made my way downstairs and jumped into the passenger seat.

John was trying not to look at me as he’d been crying.

I asked if he was okay and he kind of broke down a little and confided in me that he was struggling with bills and that the company I worked for was his only decent paying job.

He said that he was getting screwed over by the manager and that he might have to sell his trucks to pay his bills.

My heart went out for this guy.

He was becoming a fast friend and genuinely loved his job.

I began to hatch a plan based on my inside knowledge of the manager, the area manager, the General Manager and the company in general.

I took John to a small bar and bought us a few drinks.

We sat in a booth and I began to lay out my plan for revenge.

Yeah, a customer doesn’t get to set the prices.

I asked John why he didn’t give the Manager a price list and charge more for his deliveries.

John – if I do that, the manager said that they’d drop me as their driver and find someone cheaper

I laughed

Me – Call her now and quit.

I explained that we had seen the run sheet for tomorrow… we had a massive run… 10 deliveries and we already knew the Manager had quoted ridiculously cheap prices… like $20 a delivery.

John wasn’t sure.

Me – look, any other contract driver would charge $200 minimum per delivery.

There’s no way another driver will touch this company.

John got on the phone, called The Manager (put her on speaker) and quit right then and there.

The Manager, as expected talked a big game, she said they’d be better off without John and that he just lost his biggest contract.

John hung up looking sick and panicked.

I reassured him it’d be ok. I checked my watch the store closed at 5pm it was currently 1 pm.

I promised John by 4pm he’d get a call back from the Manager.

This all seems pretty reasonable.

In the meantime we set about creating a new list of demands that if they were to employ John they’d do the following-

• charge a pre set price, given to them by John
• pay for Johns off sider and gas
• for any difficult deliveries, balcony lifts, fire escape deliveries they’d charge an additional fee
• that if they wanted to terminate John they’d have to give him the appropriate notice

Sure enough, at 4.30 John’s phone rings. Would you look at that, it’s the Manager.

John answer and puts the phone on speaker.

The Manager, in a much more polite tone says that if John will do the delivery tomorrow she’ll offer him a $50 gift card for the store .

I hang up the call.

John looks at me in disbelief. I tell him when she calls back you lay out your demands and that’s that.

She needs him more than he needs her.

Five minutes later his phone rings again, it’s the Manager. John answers and puts her on speaker phone.

The Manager starts her spiel but John cuts her off.

John begins listing the problems he’s having with the company.

At first he’s nervous but then the months of being screwed over kick in and he lays down the law like a champion.

The Manager laughs off Johns request and I encourage John to relay the next bit of information to Manager.

John – you know as well as I do no other contract company / contract driver would get out of bed for less than $250 a delivery for what you’re proposing.

You either sign off on my demands or good luck tomorrow.

Manager – Fine fine do the delivery tomorrow and then we can—

John – no. I’m coming down there now. You’ll sign off on everything, then we will load the truck up tonight and finish the delivery tomorrow.

He hangs up.

We go to the store and the Manager looks mad.

This manager is a piece of work.

She keeps complaining that John has her between a rock and a hard place and that John is extorting her.

I can’t help but point out that I’m sure Johns kids would like to eat tomorrow.

John slaps the new contract he’s written up by hand in the truck and says Sign it.

The Manager signs it and John backs his truck into the warehouse.

We notice as per usual it’s sofa beds, glass coffee tables, the heaviest items this company sells.

The Manager walks out to the warehouse and smirks as we struggle to load the extremely heavy goods into the truck.

As we finish the Manager has a few snarky parting words

Manager – John, with this new contract, just so we are clear, you have to fulfill the delivery no matter what?

Me – no matter what huh?

Manager – even if the customer isn’t home, I expect you to make sure the goods are there, I don’t want any goods coming back to the warehouse.

John – you got it

It was a glorious delivery day the next day. 80% of customers goods wouldn’t fit because the Manager didn’t explain to the customers that they had to measure their door frames.

We had customers screaming at us, abusing us, saying it was unfair they had to now pay more than $20, and how dare we charge them more.

We just laughed and complied with the Managers directive.

We left every piece of furniture at the property.

He won’t have any deliveries in the future at this rate.

Some in the hallways Others in the middle of doorways Some we just left at the front door as some customers refused to accept the delivery as they didn’t want to pay us any money at all.

For the nice ones who had cash ready and were happy to pay us for our obvious efforts, we went that extra mile to get the goods in and make sure they had the best delivery experience possible.

While he certainly deserved a fair wage, it sounds like he took some of this out on the end customers, which isn’t right.

Take a look at what some of the people in the comments had to say.

This person doesn’t understand how they pay structure worked.

It doesn’t make sense to me either.

It does seem a little weird.

Yeah, I feel bad for John.

This guy was getting taken advantage of.

But he wasn’t about to let it go on.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.