How to Win Friends and Influence People

So we have this client that we are quite keen to impress, and that means being fairly flexible in relation to the times within which we are available for meetings and anything else they need.

The client misses a meeting with me because he's caught up in another meeting, but he has documents that need collection urgently and can I please arrange for them to be picked up from his home on Saturday, anytime from 11 am - 2 pm.

Have you ever tried getting a local courier service to do a pickup on Saturday, from 11am - 2 pm? I hope you have never had to. It's ... incredibly difficult. Especially when your request is going out on a Friday evening. After further consideration, I decide it's probably best to get this done myself. So I ask my maid if she wouldn't mind heading down to some stranger's house on Saturday afternoon to pick up some documents from his maid, for S$60 and all transportation paid. She said okay, no problem.

I head out all Saturday for various meetings, return in the evening to hear a sad sad tale of woe. I don't even know where to begin.

My maid takes a taxi to the client's house, just as I said she should. No point taking a bus or MRT and taking forever. Call a taxi, said I. Waste no time. All good, right.

The taxi driver reverses into the client's gate as he is leaving. The gate was automated - it was in the process of opening to let my maid get to the main door. Cab driver gets out. My taxi is dented. It's the gate's fault. Refuses to leave until the matter is 'resolved'.

My maid takes the documents, leaves. Taxi driver asks her to stay to be the witness. She said it is none of her business, he shouldn't have reversed into the gate, and she has to go home. Then (I really can't figure out why) she tries to save me some money by taking the bus home. Then halfway through the bus ride, she realises she still has the S$60. She gets off the bus, crosses the road, takes the bus right back to the house with the dented gate and the unhappy cab driver, gives my client's maid S$60 ("payment for the documents") and then takes the bus home.

I am left with this unhappy mental image of my client staring at the dent in his gate, with my S$60 in his hand, probably wondering what on earth is going on.

It took me 5 days to track him down, apologise for the gate (sorry, it was the taxi driver's fault) and get my S$60 back. After all, this is my maid's money, not his.