I receive an angry phone call in the morning from a lady who has been trying to get through to someone, anyone, about an unpaid invoice. Finally she gets through to me (helpfully, almost all extensions in the answering system go straight to voicemail or dead extensions). It turns out to be Basil’s accountant. (Basil is our contract programmer.)

Apparently an invoice from 4 months ago is still unpaid, and the accountant has been trying to collect it for months and keeps getting the runaround from Riddler or just no answer/reply. She is furious. I tell Riddler.

Riddler responds to me via email. “Yeah, Basil didn’t really do a great job so I’m not so sure about paying him. I think he could have done it better so we’re going to talk about the price.”

So, a contract was agreed upon, a price was established, Basil did the work and the work was live, being used by our company for a duration of 4 months. Riddler decided that even though he was getting full benefit of the work, he didn’t want to pay. What the hell kind of business model is that? Why would any contractor continue to do work with somebody under those conditions, and doesn’t Riddler realize that telling me this is going to make me lose even more respect for him?