Funny isn't it? Just when you want to project a sense of calm, capable credibility into your contracting conferences, birthing in your client the overwhelming desire to ask you to do more, regardless of cost, this grade-A idiot walks through the door.
Here's the facts. Everyone gets worried every now and then. All of us. We get little anxieties, little neuroses that make us jittery. Some of us wash our hands a little too much. Some of us can't handle the idea of small talk after work with our colleague contemporary co-workers for fear that they might end up talking like the jocks and prom queens back at high school. Some of us avoid elevators where heavy-set greek women have already entered (don't ask... Just don't ask...).
But we don't break the cardinal rule: You do not, repeat NOT display weakness to a client. Even if they are dumb and rich. Especially if they are dumb and rich...
And the most amazing thing is that this idiot is usually involved somehow in change management, you know, that part of a project where you have to be able to walk a mile or two in another person's shoes and truly empathise with their situations. Which is hard when you're always talking about how, like, your parents really didn't understand you and how your significant other really doesn't get that a hotel room is really, like, really like a prison cell when you're living there four nights a week.