Eugene was intelligent, did good work and charged reasonable rates. He was also obnoxious (“Yeah, I’m a douchebag.”) and noisy, with a carrying voice. Worst of all, he never completed a job from start to finish. The man had a bad habit of interrupting my project to do a little work for someone else, and then popping back to my job weeks later.

That drove me crazy. Why did I keep him on? Competent contractors are hard to find in our rural community and I was busy.

I hired Eugene to rebuild the wrap-around porch and paint the exterior of the office building where Hubby and I have our psychiatric practice. He said it would only take three months. Two years in, he still hadn’t finished! Whenever I complained, he always responded with: “If I let you tie me up here, other jobs dry up.”

At the start of the third year, I warned him, “Interrupt this project one more time to work for someone else and we’re done.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

One morning the phone rang. It was Eugene. “I have to take a quick job,” he told me.”

“NO! NO! You can’t!” I howled. ”You promised!”

“Well, you didn’t pay me last week. I have to take care of myself.”

“What are you talking about!” I shouted. “I saw you yesterday. I told you I’d give you a check today. I’ve never made you wait for your money!”

After a heated back and forth, he eventually conceded he might have been “rash” to jump to that conclusion. “But I’ve committed myself to these people,” he told me, “and my decision stands.”

“You need to reschedule that job, Eugene. I came first.”

“Not going to happen. I’ll be back in two weeks.”

No, you won’t, I thought, ending the call. My throat was raw. I hadn’t felt this angry and or wasted so much energy shouting my head off since I was a teenager fighting with my mother.

Eugene had blown me off. He clearly expected me to take it.

Not going to happen, I thought.

He called a week later, “I’ll be in tomorrow.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I told him. “I’ve made other arrangements.”

(Long silence.)

“Are you firing me?”

“Yes.”

“Well. I should have had you sign a contract.”

“Yes. I wish you had. A contract would have protected me.”

(Silence.)

He came up with more lame excuses but I shut him down, with increasing confidence. The balance of power had shifted. Eugene wanted to reconcile. I didn’t.

“I thought you were satisfied with my work.”

“It’s not your work Eugene. It’s that you took another job in the middle of mine after you promised not to.”

“Well. Like I said, I can’t let other work dry up.”

“And like I said, one more time would be a deal breaker. I guess you didn’t believe me.”

“Well, I guess we just have a difference of perception.”

“No, Eugene. What we have is a difference in how we do business. I keep my word. You don’t.”

Weeks later, Hubby and I were having a nice restaurant meal brainstorming about how to find a good contractor who would finish what Eugene had started.

“I couldn’t help overhearing,” the owner of the restaurant said to us. “Want a recommendation? I have a great guy, Fred. Super reliable and fair rates. He’s great in an emergency too.”

So, I hired Fred. He finished what Eugene started, and promptly. I was thrilled.

Like in any relationship where you’re settling for less than what you really want or need, I had put up with Eugene’s douchebaggery because it seemed “easier.”  The truth was I was afraid of the unknowns that went with asserting myself, and cutting him loose. But when I finally did, look what happened. I got a dream contractor.

Have a Eugene in your life? Kick him out! You’ll feel like a boss. Not just that— you’ll be the boss. Best of all, you might get rewarded with a Fred.

( As it happens there’s a chapter about Eugene and a medical mystery in my book Practice, Practice, Practice: This Psychiatrist’s Life.)