Thursday, March 22, 2012

I cleaned

Well I was half right about how yesterday would play and the rest was full of those random events which changed the direction of the day. Fairy early in the day I got  an order for two pieces that will need to be made which means all that remaking is again on the back burner. Rather than plant that grape vine I wanted to, I was finally led to the last straw that made me want to clean the damn house. You are likely aware that I have far too many cats. The one mitigating factor that makes this a liveable situation is that I have a fairly decent sized house for them to sprawl out in. This does not apparently matter as shedding season begins though. In fact the larger house just means more surfaces for the fur to coat. I just couldn't take the fur anymore and spent most of the day cleaning floors. What's sad is there are still plenty of rooms left to clean and I am far too sick of cleaning to get to them now.

Aside from the order that needs making I had one other customer conversation which inspired me to talk about the one thing I tend to dread from customers, the custom design job. Now, back when I first started selling my wares, I was desperate for sales. So much so that I would accept jobs I didn't really want to do and usually ended up charging far too little for the extra amount of work as well. While it could be said that I am still desperate for customers on occasion, experience has taught me when it's a good thing to say no. Custom orders that consist of color changes, embellishment changes, length and even some small substitutions or additions to designs are all fine and dandy. The issue arises when someone wants you to design something new or change an existing design in a significant way. See these kind of requests are the kind of thing I would rather get as suggestions. What's the difference? Well, if someone suggests that it might be nice if a design was one way or another, then if I agree when I have time, I design something for the shop that might sell to others as well. If someone buys a listing and wants some "new" design, I have to guess what the new, currently non existent design might cost, then I have to rush to design it since I'm working on their dime. Since I'm stressed I'll probably take longer designing with more mistakes and the result will be a piece only that customer will ever see that they will have likely paid way too little for leaving me annoyed and burnt out. This is why I don't design on demand, rant complete.

So I have that order to make and if by some miracle I finish that, I've still got pieces in the queue to remake. We've also got a school book fair to attend later today and there is always the schooling. Yes, I am already tired just thinking about it, but I still have to do it all.

1 comment:

Sharon D. said...

Same here 2 cats one with very long white hair who likes to lay on the back of a forest green chair. Has to be cleaned every other day.