Do You Know Who I Am?

Was at a clients today, making my annual visit, it's one of those clients that doesn't really need any proactive work from its accountant, it's in a niche market where the product just needs the occasional public awareness campaign and it takes care of itself. Of course it could do with making more money to invest in new products but that is the same the world over for small manufacturing companies.

Anyway there's always something going on and the MD is one of those people who gets frustrated that the world can't see his vision quite the same way he can. Without giving anything away he's an inventor originally and some of the things he has worked on are now household names. His wife is the public face and voice of the company and she could talk the hind legs off anything that has four legs and is one of those women for whom ten minutes is preferable to five when it comes to explaining anything. So today as we chatted about how things were going, where the company could and should be going she told me of a phone call she received last week from one of our Olympians. He apparently asked if he could have one of their products for free, when she explained that it wasn't company policy to do that and that if they did everybody would be phoning up asking for a freebie and if that happened how would they make money, when he uttered those immortal words, "You do know who I am, don't you?"

Now that was a mistake, on so many levels. This lady has competed for her country in international championships, she takes photographs of international sports personalities as a sort of sideline to her work - a bit like Bryan Adams taking photographs of pop royalty thanks to his position in the music world - and she responded with one of the best put downs I think I have heard for ages, she said, "Do you know who I am? If you don't I suggest that you take yourself down to the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (name of world famous sporting arena deleted to protect my client) and have a look at the photographs on the wall.