Imagine being hired to do a job, but then the person who hired you refuses to pay you. What would you do?

In this story, one freelancer was in that situation when he was hired to do some sketches for a contractor. He was really surprised and upset about the contractor’s reasoning about not paying him, but instead of pressing the issue too much, he decided to tell every other freelancer he knew not to work with this contractor.

He doesn’t know for sure if what he said is the reason the contractor later faced so many problems in his business, but he’d sure like to think that he’s responsible for the demise of the contractor’s career and marriage.

Keep reading to see how refusing to pay this freelancer snowballed into lost jobs, debt and divorce.

Contractor screws me out of $1500. Good luck finding someone else to do the work.

I got hosed by a residential construction contractor years ago. We’ll call him Mark.

I’d done three projects for Mark prior to this one and had no issues.

For this project, Mark wanted plans for a remodel and add on based off some photos and hand sketches. It was about $1500 in work which was a lot at the time.

Everything started out okay.

I delivered the first draft.

Mark was quite happy with the result and would be consulting with the client over revisions or acceptance. He said he would get back to me as soon as he had some news about the project.

Typically I would just run a tab on something like this as there is no limit on revisions and updates until the project is finalized.

Everyone understood that the meter is running when I’m working. In nearly a decade of this line of work I’d never had any problem with anyone paying.

How long is he supposed to wait?

So after delivering the first draft to Mark I waited on the revisions.

It was a pretty decent sized project for me at that time and I was looking forward to it.

I waited. And waited. And waited.

3 weeks went by. He wasn’t returning my calls so I sent him a bill.

Wait, what?

Two days later Mark called and said he didn’t get the job so wouldn’t be paying.

Whoa, we didn’t have an agreement of me getting paid if he gets paid. I get paid for my time regardless and never work on a bid arrangement.

He still refused so I told him to take a hike. Also let some other freelance CAD guys know about him. We were competitors but there was so much work we would refer projects to each other if we were overloaded.

I resigned myself to losing that money.

Time is money, as the saying goes.

It wasn’t actual money lost as all I have invested is my time.

But that’s time I could have spent working on another project that actually paid.

My time is where I make my money.

I didn’t have materials I would mark up or subs I managed. I was a one guy operation. So, yeah, it sucked.

But he heard from Mark again about another project.

6 months later Mark calls, all buddy-buddy like with me. He has a big project with a tight deadline and knows I’m the man for it. He’s laying it on thick with me, too. Like I’m a great friend he hadn’t talked to in a while, telling me I’m the best at my job, and so on.

I knew exactly where this was headed. So I played nice with him and I’m sure Mark thought it was all water under the bridge.

The next day I sent Mark a bid that was high (about 50% more than my typical rate), tacked $1500 on to it and told him I wanted it all up front.

Mark called 10 minutes later and wanted to know why the price was so high and payment required up front. Those were not the terms of our previous projects.

He had his reasons.

So I explained it to him as he seemed to be suffering from selective amnesia.

Mark starts begging me to do the project. This isn’t a bid, he claims, he actually has this project in hand. Mark also is apparently having trouble finding someone to take on this project. Apparently he’d managed to stiff all the good operators in the area so he worked his way back to me.

I told him I’d be more than happy to take on any project he had once the $1500 was paid and all further projects would be paid up front.

I never heard from him again. He didn’t get that project, either, even though he claimed it was locked up.

It wasn’t really Mark’s business.

Mark’s wife actually owned their business. It had an effeminate name and they used this “women owned construction business” as a selling point in ads and at trade shows.

I’d guess 2/3 of their clients were landed just on that piece of deception.

The wife was mainly just the face of the company and a marketing point. She wasn’t involved in the business beyond that.

So when Mark started complaining about difficulty getting subs to work with she started calling around.

It got worse for Mark.

I heard through the grapevine that she was told off several times.

Anyone who has worked with a construction subcontractor knows they can be rather blunt, to say the least. They weren’t just screwing the CAD guys. Subs in every category had been stiffed.

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A year later Mark and his wife were sued by multiple subs and customers.

Mark really screwed up a few houses, putting in the wrong flooring, getting paint schemes wrong, and so on.

OP would like to take responsibility for the downfall of this company.

They lost these court cases and tried to get out of it by filing bankruptcy.

They got a few dismissed but not all of them.

Last I heard they got divorced and he was stuck with a lot of the debt because she was able to prove she wasn’t involved in some of the decisions. But she had some debt too.

I like to think I got the ball rolling when I let some other subs know about their shady practices.

You never know. He very well might’ve gotten the ball rolling. I feel bad for the wife. She’s better off without Mark.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer who complained about an employee, not realizing they were talking to that same person.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is a good point.

A lot of women owned businesses are only owned by women in name.

One person shares a law in Texas.

Yup. It happened just like this.

Mark got what he deserved. He didn’t deserve his business or his wife. I hope his wife moves on with her life and maybe starts a business that she actually wants to run instead of putting her name on her husband’s business just so they can say it’s women owned.

The whole point of supporting businesses that are run by women is completely defeated when men put their wife’s name on their business but their wife isn’t really even involved in the business at all. Either the women who let the men in their lives use their names for their businesses need to start actually being involved in some important aspect of the business, or the rules need to be stricter about what actually qualifies as women owned. Qualifying just because of a name alone isn’t working.

But back to this particular story, hopefully the contractor learned that refusing to pay what you could mean the end of your business.