Take the ACHE (Asshole Client from Hell Exam)
I’ve
written about dealing with asshole customers and clients here quite a bit,
including the NAP (No Asshole Policy) at the van Aartrijk Group, asshole management in the
wine industry, the use of “asshole taxes” for clients from hell, the UK-based consulting firm
that used evidence-based asshole
pricing, the challenges that doctors
have dealing with asshole patients, and along related lines, I developed The Flying Arse (a self-test
for asshole passengers). I was recently reminded
about the damage that nasty clients do by an email from a discouraged manager
at a professional services firm. He lamented: “These
jerky people (whom I encounter ad nauseam at the highest levels in all Fortune
50 companies) sap the life out of our employees and make creating a
sustainable, culturally viable environment difficult. They are also poisonous
to innovation.”
This pain expressed in his note helped me realize that, just as a lot of
people (over 135,000) have found the ARSE test (Asshole Rating Self-Exam) useful (and
entertaining), it might also be helpful to have a tool to assess whether or not
a client is a certified asshole. So,
with some great help from the people at Electric Pulp and some great feedback from
Mark Fortier and Diego Rodriguez, I
developed the 20 question Asshole
Client from Hell Exam (ACHE).
Consider a few sample items:
My stomach churns whenever I have to email, meet, or talk on the phone with this client
When my client starts turning on the charm, then I really start worrying. It usually means that at an unreasonable request is coming.
They keep asking me to do extra work, but don’t want to pay for it.
If I am ever crazy enough to work for this client again, I will charge A LOT more money to compensate for the stress and aggravation (i.e., I will charge “assholes taxes.”)
Take
the ACHE at http://yourclientfromhell.com/.
You can use it to help decide if it is
worth continuing to work with a current client or if you want to charge them
“asshole taxes.” You can use it as an “asshole
screen” for future clients – send it to others who have worked with them to
find out if they are a client from hell. And if you are a client, and feel like most
lawyers, management consultant, designers, accountants, and IT consultants that
you hire are complete idiots, you find
yourself being gruff with them, and you find that fewer and fewer of them want
to work with you –- and those that do keep raising their rates beyond reason –-
you might take the ACHE as a self-test. And you might get some of the people you’ve
worked with to complete the ACHE to get some feedback about what it is like to
work with you (if they feel safe enough to give you accurate feedback – you may
have unwittingly taught them to only give you good news).
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