Otoh, I used to live next door to a builder, and I was able to over-hear his business discussions (despite a closed door), carried out via cordless phone while pacing vigorously about his back yard. Phrases that were often used were "I'll break your f**** legs" and "Look, you M*** F**** C***". There were also detailed descriptions of how one's legs might come to be broken.
Been there, done that
One of my clients was the guy who sold his construction business, took two-year (!) journey on his yacht, and then bought IT company that later became our client. Good guy, always liked him, even though his communication skills... let me put it this way: always had strong vestiges of his past.
But he was by far not the most "interesting" client I ever dealt with. Here, let me share a story, which IMHO would wrap up this discussion quite nicely.
They year was 1989, four years into
perestroyka. I was just promoted to head of "IT laboratory" (common name for an IT dept at the time in the USSR) in one of the very first private companies. One of our "salesmen" just sold two "turbo PCs" to a factory (state-owned, of course), and a day later we got a scandal on our hands -- general manager of that factory called us and demanded his money back. BTW, I put "salesmen" in quotes because just a year or so ago these were no sales to speak of (other than black market), there was essentially distribution instead of sales, so these people were just starting...
So, I had to go to that factory as a "chief technical specialist" (since that general manager's problem was... err, of technical nature) and fix it. That particular "salesman" was almost 2x older than me, but, after talking to him briefly, I figured he didn't have a clue what to do (and, much more importantly, what
not to do), so I told him to keep his mouth shut whatever happens in the meeting. I told him that, even if he wanted to ask me what time, or about weather, he would have to write that on a paper and show me that paper. We checked that he had pen and paper, and off we went.
OK, we're finally in the meeting with the general manager, listening to him going on and on about how we sold him very expensive computers that were going to break very soon, etc etc etc. You see, the Problem was that that general manager was told by his "technical specialist" that PCs with so-called "turbo processors" (10 MHz instead of usual 4.77MHz of the original IBM PCs)... wear out much more quickly. Higher CPU frequency meant faster wearing out in his mind.
I listened to him for I think no less than 5 minutes (which felt like an hour), w/o interrupting. Then, when he finally paused, I said: "Your technical specialist is exactly right, there are indeed turbo-CPUs that cause higher than normal wear. But, you see,
our turbo-CPUs were made in Germany and they <blah blah blah>. Besides, there is that [Turbo] button that can be pressed to get to normal clock speed when high performance's not needed. Besides, <blah blah blah>... "
Those PCs stayed at the factory.
Now, I'm not saying I'm a slick salesman... In fact, I'm not a salesman at all, and never worked as such. I just happen to have pretty low expectation of people -- in that I fully understand they are going to try to do what is good for them, they may not have a clue about technical side of things (at least, IT side, while they could be experts in other areas, where I know zilch). Or they just may be misled. Or there can be a ton of other reasons. More often than not, they just need to be
educated (which could mean different things in different situations) -- w/o ever hurting their feelings.
There are very few people whom I'd call naturally mean or... err, evil. Selfish, yes, that's more common. But not mean. And yet when I read photographers' accounts of their experience with the clients, one scene from Spaceballs the movie invariably comes to mind -- Dark Helmet: "I knew I was surrounded by assholes!" Well... if that's what you see on a daily basis, you should probably consider fine arts sales through agencies, but not client work... Seriously. Better for your karma.
