Disabled People Can Be Business People

My little brother, Eric, was in a car accident when he was a teen-ager. It was a pretty bad situation and he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He wasn’t a quitter so together we did all kinds of things that most able-bodied people are too afraid to do. We rode bicycles, rode horses, went skiing, flew airplanes, and the list goes on and on.

We Played Hard - We Worked Hard

We were operating a successful Income Tax Preparation business at the time and things were going well. We had really nice offices, and were incredibly busy during the tax season which runs January through April. The rest of the year there was no business to speak of.

On this particular day, we had been swamped but we were beginning to wind down. I had just finished with my last client of the day and I was relieved because I needed to catch up on some work. As I finished up and bid my client good-day, the receptionist asked me if I could take my brother’s final appointment for the day as he was tied up. Of course I would do this, as part-owner I got paid no matter who did the work.

An Unplanned Customer

I went to the lobby and met a very nice lady named Joyce, explained there had been some kind of scheduling mix up and I would be helping her with her taxes today. I showed her the way to my office and we proceeded to work on her income taxes.

It was a nice encounter, but nothing out of the ordinary. As we were wrapping things up, and I was walking her to the door, I couldn’t help but notice all the staff watching her depart the building. Normally, no one would care and I thought their interest was odd. Still, I just returned to my office to finalize the day’s work.

As I toiled away at my task, I realized everyone was in my office, including Eric. “OK, what’s up?” They all started chattering and I couldn’t decipher what they were trying to tell me. So after getting them all to stop talking at once, I asked Eric the same question. He tried to evade my query but I could see right through him, something was not right here.

She Was An Old Girl Friend

He finally told me my last client of the day, the one he was supposed to see, was Joyce. “Yes, I know her name. What’s the issue here?” I loved my brother with all of my heart but there was a time when he didn’t want to be part of the family, you know that teen-aged thing. What I didn’t know was that Joyce was an old girlfriend of his and it was one relationship that hadn’t ended very well. I had never met her before that day nor seen a photo.

Apparently she made the appointment with him, not knowing he was an old flame, and he accepted the assignment without recognizing her name. She was, now married with a different last name and there are a lot of Joyce’s in the world. Eric had been recommended to her by another customer and that’s why she asked for the appointment with him, in particular. He was very good at his job.

There were no red flags on this proposed meeting. It is now time for their meeting and she walked in the door ten minutes early. Both Eric and I had security monitors in our offices so we could keep an eye on the lobby. Eric saw his client enter the building, and he panicked. Had he been able to he would have taken his bicycle and rode home.

He Hid From Her

This was not just an old girlfriend (believe me he was quite the ladies’ man and he had a lot of old baggage following him. This was the girl who was driving the car the night my brother was disabled. They had been arguing and according to the police report, the car missed a curve and appeared to be traveling at about 125 miles per hour. I think she was really mad at him over something. Their argument was never resolved.

So now, he can’t do her tax return. He felt once she saw him behind the desk one of two things would happen

1. She would walk out and we would lose the revenue

2. She would have him prepare her taxes, find some problem, then sue us

Neither of those scenarios was ideal, so he just did what any red-blooded American boy would do, he hid from her and didn’t come out until she was gone. He was such a baby!

So, I prepared her taxes. She was happy and felt I did an excellent job, but was disappointed she could meet the person who had been so highly recommended to her. I told her that perhaps she would meet him next tax season.

As luck would have it my Business Attention Deficit Disorder kicked in and we put the business up for sale. The sale was completed before the next tax season came along so we never had to see her again.

Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one.