About a month and a half ago, I was looking at a particular name in my day’s schedule. She had only been a client for a few months and she didn’t have a standing appointment. She’d never asked for one, and her work schedule was kinda hit or miss, so I never suggested one.

On that particular day, I was fretting about what we were going to do about scheduling her next appointment before she left because I was super crazy busy and didn’t have an opening for six weeks. But I fit her in.

While I was worrying about how I was going to get her next appointment scheduled, she was busy not showing up to that appointment. Five minutes late and I was nervous. Ten minutes late and I was carefully looking at my schedule for the day to see if I could allow her another five minutes. Fifteen minutes late and I pulled out the phone and sent her a text that said she had missed her appointment. There was no way I’d be able to finish her service in the remaining time.

The text was pretty basic: “You missed your appointment...hope everything is OK...contact me to reschedule...” blah blah blah. Mind you, I was super easy-going about it. I made absolutely no mention of that pesky little “The Art of Nailz reserves the right to charge for missed appointments” policy.

She’d been a good client thus far and I like to give everyone one get-out-of-jail-free card, y’know?

So she walks in 20 minutes after her appointment was supposed to begin. I explain that I cannot do her nails because she is too late. She offers her explanation of what kept her and I try to be sympathetic. There is absolutely no point in tearing her story into shreds — it doesn’t matter why she’s late, it matters that there is simply not enough time to complete her service.

She wants to know what she’s supposed to do. I explain I don’t have an opening for six weeks, but she says she wants to go ahead book for that day (which happens to be today) and in the meantime, I refer her to a friend.

Several weeks go by. I’d pretty much forgotten about her and her missed appointment when I get a text from my friend to ask if I’d referred the client in question to her. *gulp* “Why yes, yes I did. Why? Did she spend her time with you griping about me?”

LOL. Why yes. Yes she did.

So last night, when I checked my schedule for today before heading to bed, I noticed said client’s name down for this afternoon.

I checked my text and voice messages. Nope. No message from her. She would have gotten her reminder text from the online booking system yesterday afternoon.

I looked at her name and I smirked to myself. I wished I’d had someone to bet against me, because I knew she wouldn’t be here today.

My neighbor, the massage therapist, was shocked that the client really didn’t bother to show. No call. No text. Nada.

I have an image in my head of my former client looking at her text reminder yesterday and thinking, “I’ll show her! I won’t show up.”

I hope she has an image in her head today of me waiting 10 minutes and then shrugging and saying to myself, “Yup. Called that one. Guess I get to go to Starbucks.”