The time we were screamed at during a client presentation

I’m a big believer in giving people the benefit of the doubt. When a person is upset about an action from one of their peers, their first reaction should be to find out why it happened. Expect that your partner had the best intentions and either made a mistake or had a reason for doing what they did. Those that immediately resort to yelling and screaming instead of giving the benefit of the doubt to their partner, well, they don’t last very long at my company.

It’s unacceptable for me to behave that way. It’s unacceptable behavior from my co-workers. And it’s unacceptable behavior from customers. Life is too short.

There was a time in 2002 that DP and I, our 5^th employee at Spunlogic and easily one of the top five people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with, were at a client’s office for a review of the website the team had been working on for months. All indications were that the meeting would be a review of our progress to date and a discussion of any last minute changes that needed to be made before launch.

We had been working mostly with the marketing staff but this meeting was with the CEO and his head of marketing. It was our first meeting with the CEO and we were eager to show off the new site. We had sent over an email the day before with the link to the new site for him to review.

As he walked into the small conference room, with his head of marketing on the side closest to the door and DP and I on the other side facing them, I could immediately sense something was wrong. Perhaps it was the hostile way he entered. Or the redness in his face. Or the yelling we had heard outside the conference room minutes before he entered.

There is really never a reason to scream at someone. Unless maybe at a Lakers game.

“I’m not going to mince words. I can’t believe how irresponsible your agency is. You should be ashamed that we’re paying you for this work! We’ve lost several months and have to start all over because your agency is so incompetent! There is no way we’re paying for this s$#tty work and I’m going to sue you for what we have already paid.”

Then he stormed out of the conference room, leaving me, DP and his co-worker sitting there, mouths wide open, completely shocked. DP was visibly shaking, most likely wanting to beat the guy down in a Royce Gracie Jiu-Jitzu move.

I didn’t know what to do other than try to calm DP down and ask the marketing lady what had just happened. I was too young and early in my career to do the right thing. I should taken DP and left immediately. No matter what the situation, you shouldn’t allow people to treat you that way.

But I wasn’t experienced enough to know how to handle the situation. Fortunately, five minutes later the CEO walked in and said he apologized. Seems someone had sent him the wrong link. Instead of looking at what we had been working on, he was looking at the existing site that was still live. In other words, the same site that we were hired to redesign.

We awkwardly laughed it off and had the meeting we intended to have. We finished the project. They never paid the final bill, not because they were mad but most likely because they were a poorly run company with a leader that can’t control his emotions. I’m sure most everyone at that company wished they worked somewhere else.

The lessen I learned from that was to only work with good people, either internally or externally. I’ve since parted ways with clients many times that treated my staff poorly, often far later than I should have. Life is far too short.