Something extremely embarrassing happened to me last week (one in the long list of embarrassing moments that peppers my life I’m afraid!).

I have this rather difficult client at work, a demanding man to whose chain of stores we supply some of our proprietary cosmetics. He expects not just great service, but exceptional service, and on the two or three occasions we both personally met, he came off as a brusque critical man. The fact that he is also about six foot three, built like a wrestler and shoots piercing thunderous looks from beneath stern black brows also probably makes me exaggerate the “lean, mean” image I have of him in my mind.

Anyway for the last couple of weeks we have been having a series of disasters on this account, with late deliveries, misplaced documents, errors on the invoices and so on. So things were really tense. I dropped a note to my second-in-command Clara asking her for a status report on the pending deliveries and unfortunately added a line saying “urgent response required as this client is, as you know, unusually picky.” Clara responded with a detailed schedule. I was in the middle of some other issue when her response came and in absentmindedness, instead of cutting and pasting only this part and forwarding it to “Mr. Lean Mean” I forwarded the entire email chain! And not just to him, but to his Purchasing manager, his Accounts Division and to my Supplies division!

In a little while there was a panicked call from Clara. She had been on a call to the client and when he had seen my email and read the part about “unusually picky” he cut the line. I was red from head to toe in sheer embarrassment and called the client quickly but his secretary said he was “busy” and would “reply to my email” shortly.

I was thinking “ok there goes that account, I’ve lost it now.” Soon enough an email did come, berating us for our “unprofessionalism” and demanding all deliveries be completed by the end of the week and the accounting discrepancies be resolved. There was a hidden threat of “or else” included. At the end of the response there was a one-liner which said “And I strongly take exception to being described as ‘unusually picky’ when all I require is proper service.” That hit me harder than anything else.

This sent me into a tailspin of guilt – he was perfectly right. Our organization had given him bad service, I had almost called him names and copied it to his subordinates and he hadn’t cancelled our orders! I set to work on correcting all the pending problems and I’m happy to say we did this within the day, including giving his store some free credit to make up for the bad experiences. I sent him a bunch of flowers and a note tendering my apologies. There was no response for a couple of days and he refused to accept my calls, making me still wallow in the throes of guilt.

Eventually there was a call. A suave voice identified itself as “Mr. Lean Mean” and thanked me for resolving everything quickly. There was a pause and then, like a bolt from the blue, just when I thought the call was over, he asked “If you’re not doing anything this Saturday, would you be free to meet for dinner?” And before I knew what I was saying I said “yes.” Now I get to spend the rest of the week worrying about not embarrassing myself during my upcoming date!