Just thought I'd throw out a "real life" example of something a consultant should NOT do. To most of us common sense would prevail, but sometimes a person gets caught up in the moment. A fried of mine (a C++ consultant) was complaining to me about loosing a short-term, high dollar contact (70K) because of his mouth. After hearing his story I just had to say "So, do you always bite the hand that feeds you?"

So Mr. Consultant was "doing lunch" to finalize the contract and schedule with his shiny new client, happy because he was seeing dollar signs in his near future. He told me this client went off on a rant with complaints about previous consultants, getting rather long winded and nasty over the whole thing. During the course of the conversation Mr. Consultant throws in a few stories of his own about some of his previous clients. He said the lunch ended cordially. The next morning however, Mr. Shiny New Client's secretary calls and says "we have decided to hire another consultant". Well, since the contract had not yet been signed Mr. Consultant had nothing to hold them to. Later he found out, from an acquaintance within the company, that Mr. Almost Client was "livid" over Mr. Consultant's behavior concerning his previous clients, "I'd hate to hear what he will say about us after he gets our money" was the quote the 'informant' heard.

Just proves that smiling and nodding one's head is sometimes a much better reaction than opening one's mouth!

(BTW, this is not one of those "a friend of mine" stories that really means "me", if I did something like this I'd probably be changing careers right about now! <g> )