The Practitioner: Bending over backwards for golf

EVERY YEAR I take a month out of my busy post April calendar to organise the work’s Corporate Golf Day. It sounds grander that it actually is, after all it’s basically a rabble of clients, contacts, friends, and sometimes even family members, out for a free round of golf, dinner, and a free bar.

You might think it’s an easy task organising such an event, but let me correct you; it’s a bloody nightmare. I obviously ask the important clients first, well those that I know play golf anyway, and then when they say no, I work my way down the food chain in order to make up the numbers.

Problems start to arise when important clients who said no initially then phone up a week before the event to say that they can make it after all. They have no idea that I have already filled their place with a £125 a year self assessment client whom I now have to disappoint. Telling the important client that they can’t play isn’t an option, so I have to tell Mr Self Assessment that ‘something has come up’ and his place is no longer available. Not an easy task I tell you.

Thank god for email! It is much easier to hide behind a keyboard when delivering bad news, than speaking to someone at the end of a phone. He’ll forgive me. If he doesn’t, then it’s only £125 per year. I did offer to take him and his wife out for dinner to compensate for messing him around but he’s not emailed me back yet. It doesn’t look good…… Maybe next year I should put some small print on the invites stating that ‘last minute acceptances may result in your place being offered to someone else’ or something to that effect. In truth though I should also probably write a footnote saying ‘…if you’re fees are above £5,000 per annum, then you can accept right up to the last minute and I will still bend over backwards to accommodate you’.