When you seek access to a customer’s premises, you have to know your basic legal rights, particularly those that are designed to protect your own well-being. There is no situation where you are required to put your personal safety at risk or compromise your integrity.
The difficult part of this deal is recognizing a potentially bad situation before stumbling into it and what questions to ask your customer without needlessly insulting them. A cooperative customer is an asset that you don’t intentionally throw away.
So what do you do with an uncooperative customer? You put on your ‘Bush Lawyer’ hat!
I was working in an ‘exclusive’ suburb of the city. Two story mansions, big properties, views of the harbor and the mandatory luxury cars on show in the driveway. The property with the faulty phone was an older style house with an overgrown garden but it did have two BMW’s in the driveway. Entry to the front of the house consisted of two doors – a wrought iron grill with a heavy wooden door behind. On either side of the front door were opaque glass panels. Looking through the left panel, I could make out the misty outline of a telephone.
I started getting a bad feeling when I noticed the absence of a door bell and the grill was locked. I pulled out my trusty screwdriver, reversed it and through the grill used the handle to knock on the front door and waited.
Eventually I heard the tell-tale click of the wooden door being unbolted and opened, revealing a well-dressed woman scowling at me.
“What do you want”?
“I’m here to repair your phone”.
“Use the tradesman’s entrance down the side of the house and take your shoes off before entering”.
“Is that the faulty phone behind you”?
“Of course it is”.
“Would it not be easier and quicker if I use this entrance”?
“No. Go down the side of the house”.
I turned my back on her and walked to the side of the house and attempted to turn left. I stopped short as I came face to face with a big Golden Orb Weaver spider hanging in her web. As I stepped back, I realized that the side of the house was overgrown with bushes and there were spiders and their webs everywhere. No human being had ever walked this terrible path to the tradesman’s entrance!
In a rage, I marched back to the now locked front door and tried to relax by thinking about the implications of trying to get access to the phone, my legal rights and what the next steps should be.
As I was contemplating the ‘go forward’ strategy, the front door opened revealing the same lady staring at me perplexed. She was concerned that I was looking rather ‘pallid’ and ‘sick’. I almost apologized for not being able to get to the tradesman’s entrance but I did warn her of the spiders, ticks and snakes that had taken up residence. She expected me to go and get some help in clearing out the side of her house but it was with genuine regret that I told her that my company was not qualified to carry out this work on her property and she would need professionals.
At this news, she went stony on me again and insisted on speaking to ‘the supervisor’. I told her I was ‘the supervisor’, so she could talk to me, which she refused. I gave her my card and told her when she was ready to get the phone fixed, please give me a call.
A few days later, I got a call from the man of the house who asked me to come straight over and he would meet me at the front door. As I was driving, I subconsciously started preparing myself for a confrontation. Getting to the tradesman’s entrance and taking my shoes off both contravened Occupational Health and Safety Law, so I knew I was well within my rights to refuse both requests.
As things turned out there were no confrontations, in fact we came quickly to the conclusion that the phone was the problem and I simply replaced it without setting a foot inside the house. Just goes to show how far a little bit of cooperation can go - the Bush Lawyer (me) and the real Solicitor (him) were not required in this deal.
I always thought people like that were fictitious characters in a comedy farce. Wow, there really are such creatures out there?
I never even heard there was such a thing as "The Tradesman Entrance". I think if I were to tell anyone that, they'd just fall over laughing right at my feet!
In America the tradesman entrance was referred to as the servant's entrance. Still used in some of the grander homes, it's really quite passe.
I think perhaps that woman was suffering from illusions of grandeur. You'd think they'd at least have a gardener if they truly had money. Anyway you cut it - she was rude.
