I think my client is going to sack me over some leaked gossip. Help!

Dear Aunty B,

I have just been put in a bad position with a client by one of my staff.

My client gave one of my staff members a lift home after a trade show as he lived nearby to her. While she was buying petrol, my staff member found something in the car that was very compromising to my client’s private life.

He then came back to work and told our employees what he found and it has found its way back to the client’s staff and as I have just learnt, to the client who is furious.

The client unusually has scheduled a meeting with me in a week’s time and I have no idea what I should say! I can’t even imagine talking to her about what he found as she is a very formal, private woman in her mid-50s!

I am in my 30s and I have to admit to you Aunty when my guy told me what he found in the her car I laughed because it completely changed how I viewed the chick. I am not laughing now as it looks like I am going to lose a key account.

Any ideas Aunty? I do not want to lose this client!

Please answer urgently,
WA

Dear Please answer urgently,

Bugger off. I don’t feel like helping you at all!

Actually, you have made me so cross I will in fact tell you what I think. I am putting this stuff up squarely on your shoulders. Your employee has behaved disgracefully. He is a snoop and a gossip. He is unprofessional and has no concept or privacy. He has probably caused a lot of pain for your client. And I have no doubt that the reason for the week’s delay is so your client can calm down before she sacks you (that’s what I would do).

As for you, grow up. It is your culture that even gave him the idea he could snoop and then spread malicious gossip. And what did you do when he told about your client’s private life? Instead of picking the junior up by the scruff of the neck and kicking his butt, yelling at him to grow up and act like a professional or he is out the door and threatening him with death if he so much as breathed a word of it to anyone, you laughed! And what are you doing calling her a chick? She is not a fowl running around a chook yard.

You have lost this client unless there is a miracle so start looking for other business. And all you can do is grovel, apologise and tell her that staff have been warned never to repeat the gossip again.

You need to really think about what type of culture you want to develop as at the moment you are going to trash your reputation in the marketplace if you keep up these practices.

Be smart,
Your Aunty B

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