Thirty minutes later I was approaching the first Edmonds exit in my van and the phone rang again. She’d gotten in and she wanted to cancel. This happens all the time. It’s the reason I don’t do late-night lockouts anymore. It seems like people treat my drive like a countdown clock; once it starts the race is on and they have to get the door open before I arrive. In their minds, as long as they don’t see me, they don’t owe me anything for needlessly dragging me away from whatever I was doing during my personal time. I groused to her that I was already halfway there. She said, “Well what do you want me to do? Lock myself out again so you can come and open the door for me?” I was angry. I got off the phone with her as quickly as I could without quite hanging up on her.

Two days later my Edmonds client texted me to schedule some work. After setting that up I noticed that the address looked familiar. I found the text exchange from the canceled lockout job and confirmed that it was just a few doors down from there, seemingly in the complex that she manages. So I texted her a message about the dirty trick her tenant had played on me earlier in the week. Except that at the moment I hit the send button, I realized that I had accidentally just texted the dirty trickster and not the landlord. I panicked. I had a chaotic flurry of ideas for how to fix the mistake, mostly absurd. For a brief moment I considered hurling the phone out the window of my van as if it were a live grenade. There really was no follow-up text I could write to save face. Ultimately I settled on sending the very same text to my client. She asked which property the call had come from, making me think she might follow up with the tenant herself. So I decided to do nothing.

An hour or so later the tenant texted to tell me I’d sent the message to the wrong person. Furthermore, she explained in several numbered points why it wasn’t her fault. What did you want me to do, she asked. I treated it like an earnest question and told her in my own numbered points what I wanted:

1) exhaust all other options BEFORE calling me;

2) don’t add insult to injury by deflecting responsibility and being sarcastic;

3) offer to compensate me for the time spent, gas wasted, and miles put on my work van.

At this point she sent a string of texts that I mostly ignored as I worked on a client’s door. When I finally looked at them I saw they had sort of an interesting arc, progressing from defensiveness (it’s not MY fault the handyman locked my door while I was out); to commiseration (I work in sales and it sucks when I go out on a trip and come home empty-handed); to capitulation (OK, how much do you want?).

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to put myself in a position to lose a negotiation with this person. Also, I actually don’t feel good about demanding money from people when I haven’t performed any work, especially when they’re being conciliatory. So here’s what I said:

My favorite charity is the Polaris Project. Think about how much you would want to be paid to leave your house at a moment’s notice and drive toward some destination for 20 minutes, only to turn around and go back home. I can’t hold you to it, but you could make a donation in that amount if you see fit.

Immediately she replied that she loves this organization, which aims to halt human trafficking around the world and aid its victims here at home. Then she sent me a screenshot of a $50 donation she’d just made. Immediately my anger evaporated. I was so happy about this outcome that I matched her donation and sent her my own screenshot. She hearted the text in the way that only iPhone users can do, and it showed up funny on my Android phone. I could not have been more pleased with this exchange.

This isn’t a college application essay and the event didn’t alter the course of my life. But it did reinforce a few notions that I already believed to be true:

1) we need to tell people–frankly but civilly–when their conduct is poor;

2) there’s a lot more to most people than the brief glimpses we catch of them in the moments that our paths collide;

3) I need to be more careful with my phone.