So I work for this medium-sized company. We have some salespeople who are bastards. Always want something for free, never want to pay for anything... which is pretty ironic since they more than most people should understand that there is truly no such thing as a free lunch. But then again, a lot of salespeople enjoy trying to fuck others over to get their lunch for free...

One guy, he wants me to customize Outlook to do CRM stuff. He's a jerk, he's just too cheap to pay for one of any number of retail products that does EXACTLY what he wants and he wants in-house support instead of having to call an 800 number. Basically, he wants to be able to dial me up at 2am when his cobbled-together thing goes south.

No can do, I tell him. The company doesn't want us working on stuff gratis for salespeople that they should be buying themselves. But here are several suggestions for different retail programs that do exactly what you want...

Guy blows a gasket, says all he hears from me is 'no', that I'm not doing anything for him. Basically, pissed that I won't do what he wants for free.

Ummm.... well, when you don't want to pay for anything, what sort of answer do you expect?

Funny thing is that had he just been nice, I would have offered to him FOR FREE the project I had just done on my own time that does exactly what he wants. For free. But since I had done it on my own time and not at the behest of my employer, I'm under no obligation to tell him shit. So I don't.

I think there is a lesson to be learned here: if you're just nice to people, they will do nice things for you in return. When you act like an asshole, people decide they have better things to do than to do favors for you.

This guy could have saved himself probably $1000 or so... if he had just been nice.

You reap what you sow.