Title might be melodramatic, but read on:
I’m realizing I deal with liars constantly, both individual persons and institutions.
Where I work at the bosses decided to change the supply chain management software we work with. Fine. Employees from the new software company came to train us on it. New software is noticeable worse than old software, hangs, several functions are lost, the whole process is unintuitive, the old software combined several colors to make it easier to find what we need, new software does not. It’s not only that the whole software company lied massively, trying to make us work with something that’s mostly a beta version, but the employees as well trying to convince us how great their software is. WTF? Do they believe we are stupid?
Due to a dispute with a neighbor I hired a lawyer. I was under the assumption this lawyer would be so easy to contact as a lawyer I hired years ago… I was wrong. Turns out they only offer appointments when I’m on duty, but they only told me this AFTER I signed in. Why didn’t they tell me this beforehand? Now I’m trapped on a one year contract with this lawyer, a lawyer I cannot really contact. They have a landline, but even if I call on their working hours, nobody comes. If I write an email asking if their number changed, all I get are passive aggressive answer from said secretary. It’s like all they care about is getting me to sign.
Do I accept people are like this? Do I weed people out?
If you don’t have strong consumer rights enforcement you have to do a lot of research in advance. Even then you can be hit by companies changing model later.
In B2B, if you’re in charge you need to negotiate in terms to be able to break the contract if the other side don’t deliver what they promised. If you’re just an employee, you can’t do much about your bosses making stupid decisions. They might have thought they would save money, or gotten kickbacks, and you’re stuck with the consequences.
And yes, dishonest people should be filtered out.