It Was "Like A Huge Asshole Nest"

Last week, I wrote a post describing “Evidence-Based Asshole Pricing” used by a U.K, consulting firm, where they had conducted careful analysis of project costs and concluded that:

We've therefore abandoned the old pricing altogether and simply have a list of difficult customers who get charged more.  Before the No Asshole Rule become widely known, we were calling this Asshole Pricing. It isn't just a tax, a surcharge on the regular price; the entirety of the price quoted is driven by Asshole considerations.

That post provoked a email from a project manager at a different European consulting firm, who told me a story about the damage done and costs created by working with an asshole client. I have organized the story into short “chapters” changed a few names to protect the innocent and guilty, edited a couple sentences for clarity, but this is what he sent to me, and in his own words (His words are in blue text):

The Job

We are IT Consultants and recently implemented a rework of the information system of a large European company.  We had heard that they were a tough client, and knew it would be hard, not THAT hard. 

The Client’s Asshole Moves

We got everything and more from our client that you depicted in The No Asshole Rule, Consider some examples: 

• Clients routinely arriving 30 minutes late at workshops, yelling to get summarized everything that was said, and objecting to any decision that was made before they arrived.

• People putting down our work every day, arguing day after day that we were just unskilled, writing directly to our managers.

• Bad faith, lies, threats, physical threats, non-factual garbage in every meeting, report, email (that would be sent to anyone then).

• Assholes hiring assholes. 

• Internal conflicts within the client organization that we were trying to serve -- between the operational pole, the marketing, the IT branch, and us in the middle; we constantly paid both financial and emotional costs because they were late or took contradictory decisions – and refused to admit that we ever to blame.

• They were constantly spying on their employees who are answering phone calls all day to check if they're OK with their customers. We became convinced they were using these tools with us.

• Some people from the customer's crew came to us ask for stupid things all day long, which slowed our work and distracted us –- and then led us to be blamed by other people in the client organization.

Effects on the Team

• More illnesses on our team than usual, or people asking to work at home rather than at the customer's place, me included

• Our own managers in their comfortable offices were even bullshitted into believing we were bad at what we were doing, no matter how successful were our previous missions

• We began to become assholes ourselves, which didn't improve the situation

It was like a huge asshole nest. After being insulted in the middle of an exec meeting, one of us left and never came back. The core of the crew made up of the three remaining ones was enriched by two project directors that were flying too high, and a dozen of the developers. On top of us, the pressure went down, still below us, the pressure went up, all the more as our development crew was mostly made of rookies who had never thought IT would be sick like this and who lost motivation really fast.

How the Consulting Team Helped Itself

Our experience, our professionalism and our charisma, all put together, saved us and the project

• One of us was a pro of project management and emotional disengagement who would always highlight the customer's errors and support his two teammates. He was the strongest at trapping the customer at its own game, always repeating to himself like a mantra "it's not my company it's not my money."

• I was the one able to laugh at anything, but I was always surprising these guys at being unmerciful. I was writing and recording anything, asking for dates, always asking to write and control every meeting minutes. I surely looked like the paranoid one but it saved us many times too. Small victories.

• · I was also the development team leader and was supporting and training the rookies. I was trying to make them report all the pressure on me/us so that they could still work efficiently instead of resigning overnight.

• · The third guy was the weaker in terms of professionalism but he was strong at finding the non-certified assholes, the few ones that were simply infected, and he could "turn them into something good" by repeatedly inviting them to have a coffee with us or setup some dinner, etc. And they would remain on our side then.

• · Like you wrote, we were one way or another giving a shelter to each other, regarding our own abilities, in order to workaround and circumvent the asshole nest.

 The Key Moment

There was one big issue still: we were working at the same floor as all the assholes, including the CEO in a separate office, and it was causing lots of "interferences" in our work on top of that "sick daily atmosphere".

One day, one of the customer's project managers really pushed me in front of everyone, and I had to deal with him using a "calculated anger". It was the perfect opportunity to take my computer with me and move to the open-space upstairs which I had noticed was almost empty, without fearing any retaliation. All my team mates followed me the next day! We had managed to "say no", to "retreat" in a proper way.

From that day we stopped being infected, being assholes ourselves, and the main word became "NO" to anything they would ask/do/breathe that was not part of our contract. It was like digging oneself out of a tomb, not the end of the story, yet a great step.

Postscript

This correspondent also sent a second mail giving me permission to use his story, and adding two interesting facts about the experience:

 The asshole I mentioned who was always late and would object with any decision taken in a meeting left the firm last Friday. The 3 of us former-teammates bought a copy of your book and sent his gift wrapped!

I estimated that this project cost my company close to 1 million euros. I'm not even talking about the shortfall of the customer itself. The project has not yet reached the acceptance stage.

Our correspondent also added some wise reflection about this 18 month experience, which I think provides useful guidance for others who have survived, as he put it, "a huge asshole nest.”

You're right, they're everywhere. Now -with the experience- I realized being only negative would only make me tired -or worse, depressed, or even worse- with my work. So I'm trying to get past this and "squeeze some good out of the bad", no matter how subjective these phrases may be.

I think that blending this vivid story about the financial and emotional costs generated by an asshole client with the more detached and systematic analysis that I posted earlier on asshole-based pricing provides quite a one-two punch; Together they make a strong case  for charging nasty clients asshole taxes, doing asshole based pricing, and when possible avoiding – or walking away – from projects dominated by such demeaning and demanding creeps. Indeed, my correspondent also suggested that his colleagues who worked on the project continue to face pressure and criticism from the senior management at both his firm and the client firm –- so another cost of working with assholes is that they can damage your reputation and career no matter how much of yourself and your skills that you sacrifice for them.

Comments

[Rob Millard]

'Asshole pricing' is a perfectly logical concept from an economic perspective, too. Such clients cost more to serve. One expects a certain profit margin on one's services. Therefore, it is perfectly logical to adjust the fees charged to such "higher cost / lower margin" clients to that the margin achieved is the same as with one's better clients. If this means that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' directs them away from the firm, then that saves having to fire them! Rob.

[BillB]

Reading this reminds me of one of the worst customers I've worked with in my role in a software vendor's consulting group. And I realize another risk of dealing with assholes: they may well decide to dishonestly screw you over.

One of our customers continually squeezed needed hours out of Statements of Work so that it would be impossible to accomplish their projects on time, they'd get free hours from us, and then yes, they made unreasonable demands for scope creep while we were on site.

But the worst of it was when we realized they were only licensed for 1/3 the number of users in their system. First they denied it and had us hire external auditors to verify. Then when the auditors agreed they were out of compliance, the company said, "Then go ahead and sue us."

They ought to pay us about $1 million in license fees. But I think we just cut off our relationship with them.

I suppose integrity and respect are more common among non-asshole, and I suppose dishonesty and perfidiousness are more common among assholes. So although an asshole tax may compensate you for the difficulty of dealing with someone, it's can't necessarily protect you when they step outside the expected bounds of the relationship and are dishonest in a big way.

[Daniel Cooke]

So many wrongs by the client here, but this caught my attention:

"Our own managers...believing we were bad at what we were doing, no matter how successful were our previous missions"

Dealing with this caliber of client can't be good for making positive impressions on the people you work for. I wonder what are some approaches to preventing this fallout could be?

DGC