Today would mark my second week at work and I have not yet been fired, so that is great, I would need to last for another week before I can consider this my longest Interior Design job I've held since 2013 after I ORD from the army.
I still don't really consider myself as an Interior Designer because I haven't really spoken to any of my own clients yet, I did manage to speak to a few customers during the company event over the weekends and I think I am quite lucky to have been able to interact with the friendlier ones.
But I do find a lot of customers are really quite clueless when it comes to how this job actually works, they have no idea how the designers actually get paid and how much profit they actually get from a project. I have worked out the numbers and I can say that on average, if a project cost $10,000, the designers will probably only get $1000 from it, with experienced designers being able to get probably twice that amount, they would have to manage a site for 6-8 weeks on average for a single project and all they will get from that 1 to 2 months worth of work would be a measly $1000.
It's even more ridiculous when a customer informs the designer they want to hire their own contractors to handle their project and still expects the designer to actually manage the site for that 1 to 2 months.
I actually saw one such moron leaving a 1 star review on the company's Facebook page because he wanted to use his own contractors and no one in the company was interested to handle his project for him.
Fuck You! Almost all Interior Design project's profit margin comes from the Interior Designer's list of sub-contractors, if you come up to a designer and tell them you want to use your own contractors, that is as good as telling the Interior Designer to work for you for free, of course no one is going to give you the time of day. Fucking Dumbass, he even has the audacity to say...
"This gives me the feeling that this reno firm only cares about the total figures."
... no shit Sherlock, this is a job, people are working here to earn a living, this is not a fucking soup kitchen, of course the amount of profit they get at the end of the day is going to determine if you are worth the time and effort.
Just yesterday, the company's Facebook page received 2 new 1 Star reviews from 2 unsatisfied customers, they are a couple so it's not 2 separate cases, and the review was directed towards a 3 month old designer in the company who had missed an appointment with the couple due to some miscommunication, which is really unnerving for me as a newcomer, at least the husband had the decency to keep the designer's identity anonymous, but the wife just didn't give a fuck, she actually went to name the designer in a composition length review, talking about her unpleasant experience with the company, sullying the designer's reputation because of an honest mistake, and now thanks to her scathing review, the designer will probably have a very hard time looking for new customers in the future.
I'm actually going to be given customer leads on Wednesday and I'm really hoping I don't end up getting this kinds of customer as my first case because really, I don't need that kind of demoralization, but it's kind of exciting that I will be getting my first leads, it means I can finally slowly start removing my training boots.
Update : I just found out the reason why the designer "missed" the appointment, it's because the clients didn't confirm with her at all when she scheduled the appointment with them. You don't get the right to come on Facebook and start ranting about the designer's lack of professionalism when you and your husband don't even the basic common sense to confirm the appointment in the first place, come over unannounced and then get pissed off when the designer isn't there to serve you.
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