Tempted to ghost a toxic client but worried about burning a bridge in my small town. Anybody have a similar situation?

I do bookkeeping for small businesses in my area, and I have this one client who is a nightmare. He constantly sends me 50 emails a day, changes his mind on deadlines, and then blames me for being slow. Last week he accused me of overcharging by 0.25 an hour, which was just a typo in his spreadsheet. Part of me wants to just drop him and never look back, but my town has about 10,000 people and word gets around fast. I'm worried if I ghost him, he'll badmouth me to the chamber of commerce or something. On the flip side, his stress is making me dread my work, and I feel like I deserve better clients. Has anyone here had to fire a client in a small community, and did it cause any real damage or nah?

1 comments

1 Comment

daniel5111mo ago

Man, I gotta say I think you're overthinking this one a little lol. Like yeah word travels fast in a small town but so does common sense. If this guy is truly a nightmare to deal with, people probably already know he's a pain in the ass. I doubt the chamber of commerce is gonna blacklist you for dropping one crazy client.