I made an appointment to get a quote from an IT company on setting up a new office. We agreed on 3pm on-site one day the following week. Excellent! I had shortlisted some likely suspects and emailed and telephoned three companies to see if there was ‘a fit’.
This is a lot more work than I usually do to procure a service or buy a product. I’m a see the house one day,
buy it the next kind of girl.
But IT is serious.
Having reliable equipment connections and virtual back-up is to business what breathing is to bodies.
And it’s expensive, temperamental and the people you pay to help you with it speak another language.
Talk of setting up a new network and decisions between wireless and wired causes me as much stress as choosing the right outfit to make just the right impression.
Anyway, my research suggested that I had found ‘the one’ and I anticipated our meeting like the first date it was.
I also very neatly set up my day’s appointments around that 3 o’clock commitment and scheduled half an hour for my first tryst with the IT guy.
At 3.10 he was not here. So I called to make sure there wasn’t a problem.
His boss told me he had been ‘meaning’ to call me for 15 minutes but had been too busy, but my guy was well on his way. ‘Be there soon’.
And he was 15 minutes later at 3.25, five minutes before I was scheduled to leave.
He scowled at me when I said he had five minutes only, as I had to go. Couldn’t believe it! I explained that he did have 30 minutes for his ‘everything’s going to be wonderful’ seduction but he had spend most of it getting here.
Another grimace. (The sort that suggested it was all my fault).
I was so-o-o-o-o-o disappointed. I had made up my mind; wasn’t even going to get another quote. Just get them out, see what they thought, and get on with it. They were ‘the one’.
Most first dates which start poorly end poorly, and alas this was one of them.
This was obvious to my guy’s boss so he called the next day to apologise and ask for a second date.
I’m a sucker for a good line well delivered so was happy to be apologised to.
But the apology was followed by an explanation that as a ‘service business’ they couldn’t always get to their appointments on time.
I said that’s fine (although I run a service business and we run on-time) so don’t make on the hour appointments. If they’d said they’d see me between 3 and 3.30 that would be great and I would have organised my day from there.
But they didn’t.
Now I’m in the market for a new IT company. Again. And drained from the emotional energy I put in the thinking I had found ‘the one’.
If you are a soloist who runs a business that provides a service to people, meet your commitments to them.
It’s so simple. The green light on a first date could lead to who knows what?
“ If you are a soloist who runs a business that provides a service to people, meet your commitments to them. ”
Karen Morath of M Power consults, trains, speaks and coaches in public relations, personal effectiveness, life balance and all things empowering.
