One of the hazards of vending high end systems is dealing with clients who have a rock star attitude.

I’ve mentioned before that it’s been my experience dealing with both luxury goods and high end home AV installations that the clients with the highest net worth are the ones who are the most normal, reasonable and well-mannered while at the same time the clients who were the most pretentious, and most in need of adult babysitting services were the ones who were only slightly wealthy, but wanted the world to think they were much richer than they were.

More annoying than that were local-level celebrities. During my years in retail I found myself catering to more than a few of them.

Regardless of the reason for their local celebrity status the common denominator to them all was their expectation that they shouldn’t have to pay full price: that there was some sort of celebrity discount program.

I will say that the one exception to the rule were hockey players, probably because NHL players are very well paid. When you’re getting paid millions to chase a puck down the ice for sixty minutes what’s ten or twenty grand for a kickass home stereo and big screen TV?

Conversely, I can’t really blame football players in the Canadian Football League for being penny-pinchers. Unlike their comrades down south in the NFL, the average salary of a CFL player is only $83,010. In that light their frugality is understandable.

The local celebrities who always displayed the greatest sense of entitlement however were TV personalities such as local news anchors.

One instance years ago was when I was being haggled with over a $3000 camcorder by a TV news anchor. She happened to be wearing a leather jacket with the ITV logo (changed in the years since to CTV) embossed on the back.

Of course, it was inevitable that she played the celebrity card: “C’mon, you can do better for me on the price. Do you know who I am?”

Totally straight-faced, I responded, “Oh, you work for ITV? Are you in production or editing or something?”

She didn’t like that very much but eventually she pulled out her gold card and paid.

Working as a sales designer in home AV wasn’t nearly as bad as retail when it came to dealing with local legends-in-their-own-minds. I did eventually develop a couple of filters to weed out potential problem clients.

The first was increasing the size of our design retainer. After all, if someone is going to balk at a $3000 initial retainer, they’re never going to play ball on a six figure installation.

The second filter was my response whenever somebody opened their negotiations with “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, but despite that I’m willing to do business with you anyway.”