“The Check Is In The Mail”

“The Check Is In The Mail”
I have heard this whopper tens of thousands of times throughout my professional career and it never loses its
nauseating impact. Unfortunately, I have been forced to give this a lot of thought and it is without a doubt my all time favorite lie in business! Oh, there were others that I admired and considered: “You get this one, I’ll pay next time”…“Trust me you have nothing to worry about, I’ll take care of everything”…and of course, the ever popular “It was a mistake, I’ve never done anything like this before.”  While all worthy contenders, none compare with the exquisite sting of feeling like a complete jackass after being told “the check is in the mail.” If I had $100 for every time one of my clients told me that, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if the check was in the mail or not. I would be on my 65 foot Super yacht off the coast of St. Thomas sipping Cristal out of a scuba mask while hitting Titleists off the back deck into the clear blue water of the Caribbean.

How many times have you heard that from one of your clients? They must really think that salespeople are that moronic! If you were to actually believe that, you probably also believe Elin Woods acted heroically when she smashed out all of the windows on the Escalade with a 9 iron to save Tiger from the near fatal injuries he sustained while gently rolling down his driveway and into a tree while going 3 miles per hour. And by the way, if you really are that gullible, you should also know that your wife has faked it.  You are not the best looking, smartest, or most well-endowed man she has ever been with.  You really don’t look cool wearing your sunglasses inside, you actually look like you are hiding the fact that you recently contracted pink eye.  Oh, and you are not in better shape now than you were in high school.

What makes this lie even more ridiculous is that the only people who even use snail mail anymore are Victoria Secret and bill collectors. It’s 2010 and companies offer a plethora of payments options: E-check, check by fax, Wire, ACH, credit card, Pay-Pal, Western Union, Cash, Las Vegas casino chips, and occasionally courtside Laker tickets and bribes. And if none of those work for them, they can always use a Fed-Ex account to overnight the check at your expense so it can be tracked.

So in the future, anyone considering telling someone “the check is in the mail”…Please don’t! For a change, try something a little more truthful, like: “I don’t have the money right now” or “I want a cheaper price so I’m going to continue to shop around”…or something really refreshing like  “I have no intention of ever paying you!” If you don’t have the balls to do that, at least have the common decency to come up with something a little more creative.  Something like “Over the weekend, my 64 year old accounts payable woman broke her left pinky when attempting to avoid getting trampled by a furious bovine while running with the bulls in Pamplona. She is unable to type or enter any checks right now but her cast should be off in 6 to 8 weeks.” Anything would be better than feeling like I just left the proctologist office after my annual prostate exam and he didn’t have the courtesy of using K-Y or a rubber glove!