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Owning a business doesn’t mean customers get to treat you however they want.

That’s what this pet sitter came to terms with with after agreeing to take care of one customer’s cats over the weekend while also running a busy dog daycare.

Since he has separate business and personal phone numbers, he asks every customer to contact him through the business line.

But, one Sunday morning, the cat owner started calling and texting his personal phone while he was still taking care of the dogs. Before long, the customer accused him of not caring about the cats and even threatened to call the sheriff because he was running about an hour behind.

The argument only got worse from there, and eventually the pet sitter hung up after the customer started yelling at him.

Now he can’t help but wonder if he handled the situation the wrong way.

Read on to see what you think about the whole thing.

AITA: For fighting a customer?

My job is running my own doggie daycare and boarding business. It’s a job I’ve spent 12 years doing.

From time to time, I will take house calls. Mostly, they’re for cats that need to be attended to, and I try to make every effort I can to treat the house calls the same way I do the dogs that are staying at my place.

I also have two phone lines: a personal line and a business line. Both are capable of social media posting and text messaging. I have a policy about not doing business on my personal phone. I will take calls and texts during business hours on the business line only.

It all started on a Sunday morning.

This weekend, I’m taking care of this guy’s horde of cats. He has four adult cats, and one of those cats has kittens. The kittens are at the age where their eyes are open, and they can move around and meow.

The deal was that I would visit the cats two times a day, and I would text when I was coming and when I was leaving. I also have a house full of dogs to take care of. The dogs take priority because the cats still have access to the litter box, and the visit times are more flexible. The dogs need to be let outside unless you want them going inside their own kennels.

I usually work the Sunday morning shift by myself because I’m not open for customers that morning. Most of my employees are churchgoers, and I am not. I let my employees go to church, have their after-church meals, and I take care of the animals.

At this point, the guy had already violated the policy.

I start taking care of the animals at 7:30. It takes an hour to make sure they get a chance to pee, poop, clean up any mess they make, and make sure they have clean water and food.

I’m not even halfway through with the dogs when, all of a sudden, I start getting texts and phone calls on my personal line from the cat owner. I ignored them.

After the dogs are taken care of, I check my business phone. Cat man has called there too, and he says that if I don’t call back soon, he is going to call the sheriff. He was also saying how I need to honor my commitment and take care of his cats, etc.

He’s already violated the “no business on my personal phone” rule several times, despite me warning him several times. He also accused me of not caring about his cats and only doing the bare minimum.

And then the guy started getting really ridiculous.

I was done.

I don’t like being micromanaged, I don’t like someone riding my tail, and I sure as heck won’t stand for having the sheriff called on me just because I won’t answer all his phone calls and texts. So, I called him and asked if there was anyone else who could take care of his cats. He said no. He then started shouting at me, and I hung up on him.

He said he was going to leave me a bad review, call my parents (I am a 37-year-old man, and he is much older than me), and so forth. I have enough respect for myself not to let anyone talk to me like that.

It was just so frustrating. I was one hour late. The cats still had plenty of water, plenty of food, and their litter boxes had a little bit of waste in them. They were fine.

AITA?

Yikes! The customer needs to get a grip.

Let’s see what the people at Reddit think about impatient customers.

According to this comment, he should’ve called the client.

Here’s someone who wants to know what he was reporting to the sheriff.

This reader doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

He probably knew becausue they guy is supposed to call.

There were much better ways to handle this.

For starters, the pet sitter should’ve called the customer and let him know he was running behind.

That one phone call probably would’ve prevented this whole argument.

However, at the same time, the pet owner really needed to calm down. Things happen, especially when someone is taking care of a whole building full of animals instead of just one house.

In the end, they both learned an important lesson: A little communication and patience can keep a small problem from turning into a much bigger one.