Mine: Once had a meeting with a guy that wanted to be a Starlink distributor in a developing country. His first time in country, had just arrived like 24 hours before. Knew nothing and no one. No idea why he wanted to talk to me, but, whatever…
Wanted to have his “business partner” in on the meeting, and called some douche that talked for 5 solid minutes about how he could see the Cape Kennedy launch tower from his window and whatever else about how amazing he was and so tied in to Elon and all this BS. Called long distance on a real phone line to the States. Not WhatsApp, not even a VOIP or Wifi calling call. I watched him dial +1… he had a local SIM.
Turns out neither of them even knew which ministry they would need to start with to get a permit for satellite internet service. They just wanted to sell dishies in country and had no idea how to even start a business locally. Didn’t look at a single thing online before coming out. They didn’t even know about local content policies that effectively meant they needed a local business to sponsor them. I sat and searched online with the guy and showed him everything they needed to see, which was on 1 website.
This was before COVID, and the country only got Starlink 2 years ago.
A coworker I’ve worked at 3 jobs with and trained at 2 of them left the 3rd company we were at together for a better paying job doing something similar and basically taking the department from one client to hopefully several. Kid was really cocky, if you knew the concept of what we do but you were never hands on, he sounds like an expert. He’s not.
He text me one day to let me know he stole one of our longest clients. He was really smug about it, asking me if our sales guy knew yet. Bro, you worked here 3 years, you know they’re system is FUCKED and because it’s fucked they’re hard to deal with. Whatever, we’ve for more work than we can handle right now, have fun with that.
A few months go by and that client calls up my coworker for an emergency. Coworker reminds him they don’t get the client rate anymore, they should probably call old coworker. They say he’s been there three times, can’t identify the problem. My coworker goes out there, finds out they had no idea when they hired this company it was old coworker who would be their person. Turns out, they went with the new company because they didn’t want HIM back in their town 🤣 they bitched and complained about him the ENTIRE TIME my coworker was there. (He found the problem by the way, that was easy to find).
Guess someone let it slip that they had called us and he had to have a meeting with them about “violating their contract.” Where he got verbally ripped to shreds, explained to exactly how much money he cost them, that they left us to avoid him to begin with, and that we found the problem in one half an hour visit not 3 nearly all day visits. From what I heard he looked like a toddler that got caught with his hands in the cookie jar and looked like he was about to cry. So much for being a cocky dick that he stole our contract.
I left that company recently (moved across the country), I’ve been told they’ve already signed next years contract with my old company, his company doesn’t even get a chance to bid. As well as several other clients have used him for random emergencies and come back to tell my coworkers “holy fuck that place has NO IDEA what theyre doing!” Smug little shit might end up getting fired.