Just an opportunity to vent and gloat. Ever have those accounts where there is one person, who happens to oversee your company's duties, and the two of ya just don't get along? Of course, maybe if I wasn't so dang hard headed. It really is irritating, though, when your "overseer" has no clue as to what they are talking about yet they continually tell you what you should and shouldn't do, use, etc. Kinda like when they made a new addition to the building and she gave you instructions on how to take care of the hard floor areas and told you to be sure and read them. Then she advises you that the floor has already been waxed by the contractor. So you look at these great instructions for the VCT and discover she has given you instructions for the ceramic tile! lol Anyway, she's been trying to push us out for 3 years and has finally succeeded. Honestly, I was right tickled when I found out. Just so happens my son attends the school that is part of the account, so I was hanging in their for the headmaster. Okay, okay..I'm gonna get to the point. I went in last night (30th) to encap the carpet in the school at no charge just to help the school out. Imagine my surprise when I walked in and noticed the carpet was a mess! It was obvious that it hadn't been vacuumed since we did it on our last night which was Dec. 15th. I also noticed that famous VCT hadn't been swept or mopped in days! I took a peek in the janitorial closet and was further shocked! There was a vacuum in the closet that I might use to vacuum a walk in closet, but certainly not an 8000 square foot building! Next to that was a mop bucket filled with..gasp....stinky bleachy water with a mop still sitting inside it! Well, now, this certainly got my curiosity up, so I headed to the large bathrooms with that ceramic tile. I remember telling my wife when we lost the account "I hope these people don't bleach those ceramic tile floors". (I had cleaned one of these bathrooms to show the account just how clean their dirty floors could be and that they actually needed it. Of course my contact person never passed on quotes or other info to the approriate sources as I later found out). The one I had cleaned last spring actually turned out to show that the dark grout was really a very nice light gray grout. Anyway, as I checked out the bathroom floor now "cleaned" by the new service, I quickly saw that the tile had a distinctive haze over it and the lovely gray grout was in fact turning white! I'm almost done so bear with the story! I went on my merry way and I gotta admit I was kinda chuckling a bit. As I turned on the light in the kitchen where the blue (I repeat, blue) VCT is located, I found the door where the new service had emptied their bleach filled bucket outside by noticing the distinctive white spots in the blue VCT. Oh well, I guess I'll get some more joy outta this, when the contact calls in "her handpicked" carpet cleaner to clean the rest of the carpet and then can't figure out why the carpet I cleaned looks so much better! Sorry to be so long winded, but I just had to get it out! I guess it wouldn't be so bad if 80 to 90 percent of the people who attend services at this account hadn't always told us how happy they were with our services and were shocked to find out we'd been replaced. Obviously, though I did get some joy, joy, joy!
Have a great 2005! I certainly will!!

Kevin, I know the feeling. Mostly we keep on good terms with our clients, but there are some who are....sorta special.

We had one contract furniture showroom we serviced for about 5 years. We outlasted 8 different managers. Then one day we got canned, due to a brother in law in the business.

Not for quality, but for Bubba the brother in law.

The lesson here is obvious. Never take on any business in which the management of the company might fire it's contact person and replace that contact person with the type of person who might have a brother in law in the same field as you. Now I live by that rule, of course...

Yeh, it's funny. On our janitorial end, we average very few complaints. However, I would get 5 or 6 a month from her! lol I hadn't gotten any for about the last 6 months, so I figured she was writing up complaints, never giving 'em to us, then telling her superiors we weren't responding. Sounds kinda farfetched, but I know her m.o. Yeh, I'm kinda griping about it, but all in all, it's a headache I'm glad to see go. Just wanted to share my "vindication".

We just Quit a account I've had for over 2 years. Always a pit, thier maintanance guy never fixed anything we told him about, they had a habit of switching door codes an forgetting to tell us. Oh, and usualy paid 60-90 days late.

Darn I'll miss that account, lol. Somtimes ya just gotta say enough is enough.

Brian