Professional Relationships 101

I had to explain this to a client this morning.

Client: "I got you a pie"

Me: "I can't accept that"

Client "But its from McDonalds. McDonalds pie, I got it for you"

Me: "I can't accept a gift from a client. I have to keep a professional relationship with each client and accepting your gift would show favoritism"

Client: "You ain't my friend? I thought we was friends"

Me: "We have a professional relationship. I am not your friend."

Client: "Its professional buiznez. That's all you is, professional buiznez"

 

I feel like now is a good time to share with everyone the fact that about a month and a half after I started working in this industry (April 2008) I got to work one day and was minding my own business. A few hours later a flower delivery came to the office. The flowers were for me…I wasn't dating anyone, hadn't had a recent breakup or anything so I had no idea who they were from. I opened the card and all it said was "we don't get to work together too often but I really enjoy spending the time we do together." That's it unsigned…I went about my day, finally on my way home I noticed an order number on the envelope so I called the flower shop and persuaded the person to give me the name of the person who placed the order. Long story short, a client who was living in a homeless shelter sent me flowers. I obviously left the flowers at the office and let them die on top of a filing cabinet and ended up throwing the vase out a while later. Talk about freaky to have a homeless client as a "secret admirer."

 

Next random thing –

Sitting at my office doing some case notes and a man just walks in (I've never seen him before), stands in front of my desk, raises his arms like he were flexing. I give him a look like "umm hi?" points to his shirt that says "UNITY before chaos" on it and smiles, turns around and walks out. No idea what that was about.