Please bear with me this post has two parts to it and it’s very long. Could be the longest post I’ve written haha.
I got a text message from a previous client yesterday where he literally made up lies about me and about my workers. It was very painful to read because I thought I had a different relationship with this man other than what he wrote about me.
Thanks. As you know, I’m not afraid to tell you my displeasure with how things ended up. It was very clear to us that you wanted to get away from working at our house as soon as possible. You would have been able to do so had “name” not been doing the work. As you know, he spend the majority of the day, which began at 10:30-11 on the telephone. When he did work, it was for a few hours. Also, I sold him a bunch of my tools and gave him some expensive baby gear. He never followed up on paying and when I texted him about, it was ignored. That is not your issue but the way he walked off the job, was not acceptable. Equally not acceptable is the fact that the trim installed by the pantry was done wrong. I will have it fixed at my expense, but you’re not standing behind your work. You can argue that you have a gentleman ready to do it, but who knows who he is, etc. we are not comfortable having such a person in our home. Anyway, we are displeased but as Meredith reminds me, this is the nature of your work. It is a very short-sided approach. The truly successful ones are those that cultivate clients and think long term. We wish you the best and harbor no ill will, just disappointment.
I have never in my life receive such a dishonest hateful message sent to me. There is so much judgment and hate and lies I literally felt sorry for him. This is literally something from The Twilight Zone. Then I found out that the person he’s talking about tried to pay him seven different times. He said not yet let’s get done with the job first.
Here’s why this is so jacked up. The very person that he is talking about where I removed his name is the person that he called yesterday to install these doors that he fired me from. That’s messed up. As far as the trim goes that he’s talking about, he knows that I was going to replace that trim when I did the doors. And this has been made very clear several times.
What he doesn’t know is that when the doors get delivered there is $200 worth of trim that’s included with the order.
I made the decision to absorb the cost of the trim to offset him hiring somebody to replace the trim on one of the doors.
I will admit we did have several issues on the job but we worked through them all. The reason I’m sharing this it’s because I literally had to ask the Lord for help in showing restraint because I wanted to reach out and rip this guy’s freaking head off. honestly I wanted to go to his house and beat his ass. But we all know what that would have accomplished. I was hurt but I kept my cool and did not respond.
So here’s the cool side to the story when I got my estimates for the cabinet work Sunday night. I just kind of sat there a minute. I did not feel like I prayed about it but maybe more like I just kind of had a little conversation with the Lord. I said, Lord I don’t really want to do this job I really don’t want to work for this man anymore. That was pretty well the extent of it and I didn’t think about it any more after that . Then yesterday morning around 7:30 I got a text message from him that he found somebody else do the job. Now you have to understand I didn’t really feel like I was praying to God to take this job away. I thought I was just venting. It was literally a time where I thought he might not even be listening but he was.
I showed incredible restraint for not responding. But then yesterday I had an incident on the telephone with a family member and I did not show restraint and I ended up hanging up on her. And that in itself was very painful. And for that I’m very sorry.
Why do we show restraint in some areas of our life and then in other areas we don’t?
I just opened my devotion and this is what it says. Blown away I am.
Find your place of Peace even in the midst of turmoil. Be calm and collected regardless of what is going on around you. Rise above the darkness of the Earth in live as a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, says the Lord refuse to be troubled by what you hear. You belong to me, and I will protect my own.
John 14:27 peace I live with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither Let It Be Afraid
I’ll leave you with this. this man was incredibly judgmental. I don’t have to tell you that you can read it for yourself. The point is this, when you are judgemental you create your own pain literally. The very thing he’s talking about where the worker didn’t respond to his text message and ignored him was not the truth at all. The worker in question was at a wedding all weekend, very involved. He turned his phone off for the weekend so he could stay focused on his Best Friend’s Wedding. He returned the text message yesterday. I texted the client Friday and told him what was going on and that I had somebody to install the doors for Thursday and he ignored me until this morning. So the very thing that he’s mad about is the exact same thing he did to me.
You have to know the facts. the very moment you decide the reason somebody is acting the way they are, you have assigned a why to what they have done. When you assign the why and decide on your own why they are doing or acting the way that they are, you have created your own pain.
In other words you cannot get mad when you have decided why somebody is doing or acting a certain way without knowing the facts.!
That is judgement in its finest form!
Matthew 7. 1“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. 2For you will be treated as you treat others.a The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged.b
Matthew 6.6 