Just had an unexpected call
Many years ago I was called out to a new customer's house. He'd bought a laptop with Windows Vista pre-installed. This was a Toshiba, and you'd expect - despite all the shortcomings - that Vista would be OK. Tier 1 manufacturer, drivers all tested and up-to-date*.
No. Not good enough. Customer had downgraded to XP with a pirated ISO, despite there being no downgrade path at the Toshiba support website. IOW, no XP drivers for this machine, and of course it was vomiting errors and BSODs almost every day. This wasn't during the transitional period, it was well after Vista was introduced.
"Fix it", he said. I told him that I could try, but as there was no official downgrade path, I couldn't guarantee a positive result. He insisted, so off I went looking for drivers at realtek, intel, etc, and tried it with those. It seemed to work, and was stable for a day or so.
Then I had another call. Angry, this time. It had fucked up again, it was all my fault, and he wouldn't be paying my bill until I fixed it. 760
I told him he could either pay my bill, and I would come and have another look at it, or he could find someone else to deal with it. You can guess the outcome. Not to worry, life goes on.
Today, years later, he called me acting like we'd never met, and he wants me to come and deal with some new problems. Initially, I agreed and made an appointment - but what I think I'll do is send him a text:
"Mr <PERSON>, I thought your name sounded familiar, so I went looking in my records. It seems that our last encounter resulted in a breakdown of professional trust. I don't think it's in my best interests to deal with you again. Best wishes, ol-gormsby"
Too harsh? I really don't want to see him again, but it would be unprofessional to just ghost him. I'm not sure how else to say "no".
*I've even got an old Vista Toshiba in storage, traded in by a customer. I fire it up once in a while and it's fine. I'll probably never ever use it again, but it works, and doesn't throw BSODs.
UPDATE: I sent the text and put my phone in flight mode until CoB. Within 30 seconds of 5pm I had a text reply claiming "I don't remember. What was it about?" which I proceeded to ignore. And 20 minutes later a phone call which I also proceeded to ignore. Firing customers is fun! 760