Things were ticking right along for your Ms. Cleanslate. I have been doing some subcontract work and had five clients through one particular company. Was doing the same type of work for each. None of the clients are at all tech-savvy, so there was a bunch of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth every time that we added a new task to the mix.
Finally, though, everything was humming along smoothly. Or… so I thought. In the span of 2 days, four of the five clients asked to be assigned to someone else. Not one of them had indicated any unhappiness to me, but apparently they unloaded a litany of complaints (I am not privvy to what, exactly, the complaints were, just that they were all related to my “subpar communication skills.”)
Yet, not ONE of these people ever communicated anything to me. They never said “hey, could we…” or even “hey, why aren’t we…” And it turns out something I thought was a completely optional service…was something that is an integral part of things and something that, apparently, the clients had asked about months ago (which was never communicated to me by either the company owner OR any of the clients).
I went to log into the work queue website to do the next task for the one who had NOT asked to be reassigned. Hmmm, my login doesn’t work. I contact the owner of the company. No response.
Twenty-four hours pass and I finally get an email. The upshot of which was that everything is going to shit for this person and having all my clients bail at once has been overwhelming and just added to the stress. I ask about the login again and get told ‘oops’ but it’s 2 days later now and the login hasn’t been fixed. So, I asked if I even still have the one client. No response.
I’ve reached out via email, instant message and via social media. No response. Yet, I see him posting away happily on Social Media.
So, at this point I am going on the assumption that I’m “done” with this particular company. Which is fine. Because my goal for 2016 was to dump all of my subcontract work. It’s too much like working corporate jobs.
Understand that I don’t think/feel/suffer the delusion that I am perfect. But, when I contact clients and get two-and-three word responses and then get told that I have lousy communication skills, I’m not sure that the onus is all on me. When I contact the company owner and simply want to know if the contract is terminated and I still don’t have an answer several days later? I’m done.
Yes, there are poor communication skills happening here. No, the skills in question aren’t (or shouldn’t be) mine alone.