One of the thing about running a newsagents is that we have a certain clientelle that require their money to be collected from them. These are invariably the elderly who can no longer sprint down to the shops and I have given the role of cash collector to my grey-haired mother, who is very good at dealing with that generation of people. Plus it certainly beats having a 6′ bloke knocking at your door asking for money, which might come across as a little intimidating.
Anyway, we have a book of customers who have their money collected on a fortnightly basis and one of these customers has been a little problematic. The first time my mother visited the person took the receipt ticket and said that they would come down to the shop and pay. OK. No problem there. However, when she’s returned they’ve claimed to have paid the bill because they have the receipt ticket (the one they nabbed on her first visit). We discussed the issue in the shop and it was obvioust that this customer was going to be difficult, so I asked my mother not to go back there again. She had other ideas though and wanted to know when the lady named on the receipt was actually going to be at home and would try to get the money direct from her. When she arrived at the address, the porch door was open so she stepped inside and rang the doorbell. The man of the house appeared and all seemed normal, him telling my mother that his wife would be home at 6pm. Then all hell broke loose with the guy accusing my mother of trespassing and him physically pushing her (with her a slight woman at 62-years-old and 5 foot nothing) out of the porch.
So when I heard about this I stopped their newspapers and vowed that they’d not get anymore. No one assaults my mother over an unpaid bill and gets away with it. On Saturday, I expected them to arrive and the woman (who was never at home) did and I didn’t like her tone one bit when she began complaining and running down my mother. Of course, I stood there and did my concerned shopkeeper bit. You know, you nod your head, you agree and you let the customer think they they are right even though you know that they are lying through their teeth. I said that we’d clear the bill as a mark of good faith and leave it at that. But that wasn’t enough, the woman was threatening to involve the police as my mother had trespassed on their property and then there was the usual sob story: her husband is disabled and has angina and what if he’d had a heart attack. They also crowed that if it had been a man and not a woman, the husband would have hit them. Nice people…I don’t think.
You can always tell a bullshitter because they will rely on any disability as an advantage to get the higher ground. So I stood there and listened and told them to involve the police because if the incident was that serious it should be investigated…yadda…yadda…yadda, because that’s what you do when you deal with bullshitters, you bullshit them back. And so I got them calmed down and to leave the shop. With me nearly £20 down on the business and mother facing police action for “tresspassing”.
Well it turns out that these people used to run up bills of over £90 with the previous owners and was put on the collection round because of their tardiness at paying. Well that’s one customer I won’t have to worry about anymore. Luckily, for us, for every customer that cancels their papers (and there have been a couple for various reasons, mainly moving house) we’ve had three more sign up: so I see it as good riddance to bad rubbish. The problem though, when dealing with the public, is that while 99% of folk are honest, genuine decent folk, there’s that one percent that will try and fuck you up. I’ve put this one down to experience.
Meanwhile, someone wrote me a big cheque and it bounced all the way home from the bank. When confronted with the unpaid cheque, those concerned where the opposite, unconcerned. I’m very wary of people who don’t know how to pay their own way. One chance has been used up, I shan’t let it happen again.

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