If a client isn't holding up their end of a contract with you it doesn't suddenly make it okay to start lying to them to get what you want.
What happens when the client finds out that you invented a fake person to pressure them into paying you? What happens when word gets out in your industry that you are a liar who will stoop to deceiving your customers if you're not getting what you want?
There are few, if any, things more important in business than your name and your reputation. I would much rather take the loss on the contract and move on than risk being seen as untrustworthy.
Establishing a fictional name in order to separate concerns is not lying unless you are prepared to assert that Marion Morrison, Samuel Clemens and Brian Hugh Warner are lying when they do the same.
These are indeed incendiary words, and they were used to make a point, but certainly not to make a personal attack, so I apologize if it came off that way.
My point in using language like this was to illustrate how others may perceive you and your business if word of the "Virtual Tony" gambit got out. It's not fun to see things like this written about you, and it can kill your business.
In my experience there are two kinds of clients that don't pay on time: clients that genuinely want to pay but can't for a legit reason, and clients that have no intention of paying you and will do anything to weasel out of it.
It's the latter that could really use the "Virtual Tony" against you if it ever came to light. These are bad people anyway, and by doing something dishonest in return you are just giving them more ammunition to get away with it.
Did you happen to catch the case of Carl Herold on Reddit a month or so ago? He had a deal go south with a client and the guy smeared him all over the internet and almost ruined his business. [1]
In that case, Carl was in the right and still had all kinds of harm done to him because of a disgruntled client. Imagine if Carl had pulled the "Virtual Tony" on this guy. I'm guessing Reddit wouldn't have jumped to his aid to help him out because they would've seen him as dishonest.
To your point, you are certainly justified in following up with a client if you're not getting paid. And I certainly think there's validity to the idea that a third party, good cop/bad cop relationship could help things turn out better for everyone in the end.
What I totally disagree with is making that person up and impersonating him or her to your client. It's a bad road to go down and not worth the potentially devastating hit your reputation would take if it got out.
Once again, plenty of valid and well thought out points, and I agree with all of them.
It was your response that made me re-think the way I phrased the original article. While I know some people who have been successful using this kind of strategy for years, it's certainly not something I'd generally advocate for all of the reasons you've pointed out.
Carl certainly would have looked more dishonest in that scenario. However as I understand it, his scenario was a partnership with another company. So it may not be directly applicable to my article, which is in regards to service companies acting as vendors to other companies.
One last footnote: in my experience, there is a third kind of client that doesn't pay on time. The apathetic client. This client is often large and deals primarily with much larger companies, or has a billing department in a different country, or is unfamiliar with your company's contract.
In this situation, as others have suggested, a gentle reminder email from accounts@your-compay.com may be a good way to get attention drawn to your pending invoice without personally stepping into the middle of the transaction.
This was the main point I was trying to communicate anyway - the importance of separation between accounts and the day-to-days.
Just make an automated system that reminds clients that their bills are overdue. Then it makes sense for it to come from accounts@yourcompany.com - it's just a bot.
Really, there's nothing dishonest about sending email from accounts@yourcompany.com when you're dealing with accounts. Just happening not to mention that you're using a different email address for that isn't a big deal.
I'm left handed and find it extremely awkward to hold the phone in a manner that would cause the problem. I understand that if you do hold the phone the "wrong" way then this would be a huge issue for you, but my gut still tells me that this isn't really such a big deal in terms of sheer numbers.
I'm surprised NYC landlords aren't more up in arms about this.
Me too. I run a vacation rental site and many property owners in the VR community are not happy with AirBNB.
It's not because they don't want the competition. They are all used to competing with other properties in their area. It's because they want a level playing field.
Many areas require vacation rentals to be licensed and/or charge a tax on their rental fees. These VR owners don't like competing with AirBNB room owners because the VR owners presume - rightly or wrongly - that the AirBNB room owners are not properly licensed or collecting the appropriate taxes.
I think AirBNB is a great idea and this proposed NY law goes way too far. They shouldn't be legislating innovative ideas like this out of existence. They should be finding ways to equitably welcome the AirBNB model into the existing fold.
Perhaps, but it's also a cowardly and unprofessional way to quit. Every job I have ever left I have had the decency to sit down in person and explain to my boss that I was leaving and the reasons for my departure.
My feeling is that if this person was respectful enough of my capabilities to give me a job that allowed me to provide for myself and my family, the very least I could do as a common courtesy and sign of respect would be to sit down with them and explain why I have decided to leave.
Put another way: would you consider your boss firing you via email a "chump way to fire an employee"? It's simply a matter of giving your superior the same courtesy that you would expect if the roles were reversed.
Presumably an exit interview is standard practice? I've had them at almost every job I've left. I love e-mails, because they set the tone and expectation for what you're going to talk about.
I had a friend who thought he was getting a pay cut Friday (like everybody else, who got theirs Thursday, but he was working from home) and he was let go without notice.
Except there was no exit interview possible here, because as soon as he gave notice, Calacanis told him to pack his stuff up and get out. I don't feel comfortable calling someone a "coward" in a situation like this.
This. I was worried about so many other things on my wedding day. The last thing I'd want to fret over was doing tech support for a laptop and piece of video software. Most of my groomsmen were top-notch tech guys and I wouldn't even want them to worry about it. They were there for me, my wife, and our wedding day, not to play help desk tech.
But if this was something our videographer or photographer had offered I would've jumped on it in an instant.
The advantage of having a direct-to-consumer approach is that I can see a market for non-wedding occasions, where there is no official videographer. Baby showers, graduations, retirement parties, it wouldn't surprise me if some people even wanted it for a funeral/memorial. It's a pretty neat idea.
[Edit: just thought of another one - military people posted overseas, I can see people at the family gatherings like Thanksgiving wanting to send individual video greetings]
Well, I'm not the one making the claim, and so I don't feel like proving a negative, but his shtick is pretty straightforward (for all the characters, with some variations):
1. Set up a fake interview or staged encounter.
2. Immediately confuse the interlocutor with completely unreal mannerisms/speech. People watching the movies maybe don't pick up on this because they're used to the behavior, but if Borat started talking to you, you'd immediately be thrown off center. A lot of people seem to be overly-polite and nodding because of this, and that's part of how he manipulates them. There was a guy who dressed up like Borat at the ocsars (or some award show) and Cohen was immediately in the same situation.
3. The character then either does one of two things:
3a. Says/does something extremely impolite. Examples include bringing shit to a dinner table, stripping in front of a congressman, singing fake anti-American anthems in front of a "white trash" audience, or singing about killing Jews at a redneck bar. None of this, as far as I can see, gets at any kind of "truth". When Ron Paul called him "queer" or whatever, they tried to make him into a "hater". Well, no. I would have called him worse things, and I'm pretty sure I don't hate "queers". The "Jew killing" song was set up by an hour of standup comedy by Cohen, and everyone knew it was a joke. Again, you know who's the liar in cases like that.
3b. By asking bizarre questions at fake interviews. There might be some instances where he got someone to admit something genuinely valuable, but I don't recall. It's clear he's just trying to make people look silly or trip over their tongues (Pat Buchanan talking about "Mustard gas on the BLTs") or admitting something ridiculous ("Are being racist against me because I'm black?"). I haven't seen as many of the interviews because he did that more on his British TV show, and I sure as hell don't spend my day surfing for them on youtube.
Anyway, his real purpose is to make the audience feel superior to somebody famous or somebody who represents a stereotype (whether rednecks or stuck-up UMC southerners, or Romanians, or whatever) by making those people metaphorically drop their pants in one way or another. Disagree or disagree that it's a bad thing, I don't care.
I agree. I've always thought that Baron Cohen's schtick was just a trivial and mean-spirited application of the fact that whoever edits the film has the power to make anything look like anything. But this is news to me:
The "Jew killing" song was set up by an hour of standup comedy by Cohen, and everyone knew it was a joke.
I can't say that's surprising, but it's interesting. "Throw The Jew Down The Well" is by far the funniest thing I've seen him do. (Actually, it might be the only funny thing I've seen him do, though I guess the nude wrestling scene in Borat was funny.) I can't get upset at its ghastliness because everything else about the piece is so comedically perfect. If it was a clip from a standup show, that explains it. It's funny because it makes something horrific ridiculous.
I actually find him pretty funny, but he's a total clown. What annoys me is that people think he's...important, I guess? No, he's a clown with two victims: The one on the screen and the one in the audience who doesn't realize he's a clown.
I'm too drunk right now to research it, but in the article talking about the "jew down the well" (a title that escaped me) the wife of the bar's owner was revealed as Jewish and even she got the joke.
When I talk about Sacha I am not really referring to his movies (which have all sucked pretty bad) but more his tv show, particularly his original tv show in Britain before he got famous.
Truth is revealed. Whether you are able to see it or not that is an individual reaction. You are right he is going more for comedy than any truly meaningful interview but there is stuff to be learnt there.
This is the comment where I show everyone how much I paid attention in English class by correcting the (grammar|punctuation|spelling|turn of phrase) you used in your comment while contributing nothing to the discussion at hand.
If a client isn't holding up their end of a contract with you it doesn't suddenly make it okay to start lying to them to get what you want.
What happens when the client finds out that you invented a fake person to pressure them into paying you? What happens when word gets out in your industry that you are a liar who will stoop to deceiving your customers if you're not getting what you want?
There are few, if any, things more important in business than your name and your reputation. I would much rather take the loss on the contract and move on than risk being seen as untrustworthy.