[woofa.express]

Making my working life easier.

Unprincipled and/or deceitful people. I’ve dealt with them as I’m sure we all have. Here is the case which established a principle I adopted and maintained.
In 1984 I built a house using old hand made bricks. An enterprising fellow had bought the remains of an old and historic homestead that had burnt to the ground some years before and salvaged these bricks. I bought them from him. The price was $300 per 1,000 with an additional 10% given to accommodate broken or poor quality. But he didn't deliver the quantity he wanted to be paid for. Well the deal seemed to have changed and I felt he had cheated on the number delivered. I paid the amount the brickie had billed me for plus leftovers and put the money into a trust account.Well he called me a thief and took me to court. The legal fellows representing myself and him intimidated me and said it would be better for me to pay as compared to fight and face a large legal bill. They called that commercial realism. Well I took their advice, paid and drove home. I was bitter. I made the decision that in the future I would deal only with people I was comfortable with.
I did so and I have never had a dispute since. I also applied that to people I worked for. I simply told them they were difficult and I had a competitor that would do their work. I was telling this to an operator in northern NSW. Sometime later he told me how easier his business was since they too had adopted my practise. I later sold my business to my friendly competitor and he told me how easy my clients were to work for. I told him the difficult ones were sent down the road and became his clients.

People I employed couldn’t take the working hours so I fixed that too. I employed only people who had come off farms or had worked on farms. Bingo. No further problems.

I had a contractor who did my aeroplane maintenance and repairs. I could make an agreement with him, even shake hands on the deal that would be chucked out the window if he later decided it didn’t suit him. This fellow lost his biggest customer when I hired my own mechanic. He couldn’t understand why I gave him the flick.

You see, we need not hire or work for or do business with difficult people. Pictures, 1 chase difficult or untrustworthy people from your life and 2, you'll be happy.
It is worth saying I have learned, and not by further experience, a court is a place of settlement not justice.