Wish they would terminate....

Now that all my clients on hand have finally gotten the keys to their house, I have officially zero projects holding me back from leaving the job.


Honestly, I am not really sure what I will do once I complete all my projects on hand and finally leave my job, I might stay in the company a little longer until I figure it out, won't actively seek new projects to run but if a simple and quick one comes along, maybe I will consider and if I am able to find a new job after clinching the new projects, I will just pass that project on to someone else to run.



Speaking of passing on projects, I am really really tempted to pass one of my "about to start" project to another colleague to run, I am willing to forgo all the commission I will get from that project, that is how much I wish to get rid of it.



I got my hands on that project around the middle of last year and I actually met the customers at the beginning of my career, didn't really have a very good impression of them then and during the stage when they were planning to actually sign the contract with me, I also didn't really appreciate how unresponsive they were when it came to replying to my text messages, it is really quite frustrating.



A few days ago, the husband asked me if I could quote on them on the cost of certain additional items he wanted to add to his renovation, so I did, and he didn't bother to respond to my text, just left it as "read" and then nothing. Normally when a client ask me how much certain items cost, they will at least respond with a...

"Okay! Thanks!"

or

"Noted!"

... to acknowledge that they have receive my message, I mean that is basic courtesy. But with him, doesn't bother to reply until he needs to ask me about something else, so he literally replied that message I send to him days ago today with...

"Haha, okay, will confirm when we meet tomorrow around 2pm?"

... and the wife is also equally unresponsive, which is bloody horrible.




At the start, when they finally told me they got their keys, I was actually feeling a bit excited to finally start their project, because it seemed easy, there wasn't any permits I had to apply, the house came with the flooring already done, so my job is actually quite straightforward compared to the other projects I have done so far, but then the husband suddenly messaged me one day, requesting for further discounts because he felt that I was selling certain items at too high of a price.




I am earning jack shit from his project, so whatever I could charge higher, I charged higher, but even so, my profit margin is still extremely low, so when he requested for more discount, that really rubbed me the wrong way.




The reason why his contract was so low was because as I have said before, he was one of my earlier customers, so when those quotes were prepared, I still wasn't familiar with the prices of a lot of the items yet, as such, a lot of the renovation works were charged at either a really low price or below cost price. The fact that he had the audacity to actually request for even more discount despite the already low overall quote was what really pissed me off and almost instantaneously made me lose interest in his project.




With my other projects, my clients have never requested for further discounts after they have already signed the contract, unless it is discount for additional items they have requested. Once you sign on the dotted line, that means you have already agreed to the prices reflected in the quotation, so don't ask for anymore additional discounts after that, it just makes you look really cheap.




And another reason why I am not interested in the project is because it is fucking far, I just went to Google the directions and it is going to take me 90 minutes to travel there tomorrow to see them open the doors to their new home, 90 minutes there, 90 minutes back, that means a single trip back and forth is going to take me 3 fucking hours, and 90 minutes is for smooth traffic conditions, so fuck my life, I am really not earning enough commission for their project to go through this shit.



Their project is the reason why I am still in this job, I had contemplated to leave many times in the past, but every time when I want to, I remember the verbal agreement I made with the husband, that I will not leave the company until their project is done. When I made that agreement, I was under the impression that he will be getting his keys in 3 months time, not a whole freaking year later.




Do I wish for this project to go smoothly? Fuck Yes!
Do I think this project will go smoothly Fuck No!




I think it will be a shit show to run. I just do not have a good feeling about it, I can already imagine the amount of text messages I will be receiving from them once the project starts, enlightening me of how shitty of a job my contractor is doing, I can already imagine myself complaining about them to my colleagues and possibly losing sleep because of the problems they will be presenting me.



Tomorrow, I will be able to witness first hand how anal they truly are because tomorrow, they will be checking for defects and I think the husband is going to be extremely anal.

Bitchoso!

I got really sick yesterday, so I had to take a break from work today. Haven't gotten sick in a really long time and I have almost forgotten how shitty it is to be sick.



I was still fine in the morning, was still able to go to a site meeting with my client, had a beef bowl at Yoshina for lunch after the site meeting, but the moment I came home, my body start heating up, my whole body started to ache and my throat started to really hurt. I collapsed on my bed at 8.00pm, attempted to sleep but couldn't because I was aching everywhere, my body couldn't decide if it was too cold or too warm, my nose was constantly blocked, I had a fucking headache the entire night and a truckload of phlegm in my throat.



I also had this weird imagery of my body being separated into different patches, and this is going to sound really weird because I was half awake the entire time.



So my body had different patches, like it was split up into different continents on a map, and every time I felt too cold over one patch of my body, maybe at my knee area, I would imagine that patch of body purchasing a bunch of blankets or something to cover that area up to make it feel warm again, and then when another patch of my body feels cold, I would imagine that patch purchasing a bunch of blankets to make that area feel warm again, and then the warmth would be temporary, so they will purchase get new blankets to make it feel warm again, it was really weird, like the different parts of my body felt almost disconnected to each other.



I was struggling to fall asleep because of how uncomfortable I was the entire night, but I did eventually fall asleep and thankfully, woke up not feeling like shit anymore. I still had a sore throat but at least I wasn't having a fever anymore, but still decided not to go to work because I was feeling very lethargic.




Anyways, I recently came across a blog online while I was doing some random google search on my own company, and I chanced upon this particular blogger who was blogging about her renovation journey.



The post I came across, because I had googled my own company out of boredom one day, was a post dedicated to her search for an Interior Designer for her home, it was probably written late last year and apparently, she visited 15 different Interior Design firms and one of them was my company.



15 Interior Design firms, that is insane, whenever I ask my own customers how many firms they have visited, they would tell me...

"We went to about 4 to 6 firms."

and some would even tell me...

"We only visited your design firm, we are a bit too lazy to go search for others, we read good reviews online, so we came."

... and anytime I share with them the idea of visiting upwards to 10 different firms, most of them would have the same response, which would be...

"That is crazy, we don't have the time nor the energy to shortlist so many different firms, it's very tiring."

So, yeah, the blogger apparently visited 15 different design firms, spread out across a 2 week span, and one of the firm happened to be my company, and when she was writing about my company and the designer she met with, I vaguely remembered seeing her in my company's showroom. She talks about how the designer from my company was great, but the design proposal wasn't what she wanted, so she didn't pick him, and then goes on to share with her readers her final decision, which was an Interior Design firm that had zero customer reviews online, but had a plethora of online articles showcasing their works.



So being the excited new homeowner that she was, she giddily wrote about how she was confident she had made the right decision and spoiler alert, it wasn't the right decision.




When I came across her blog, she had already started her renovation and apparently, it had been going on for way longer than she had anticipated, so on her freshest post, it was a post that was dedicated to lambasting the interior design firm.



I don't really know exactly what happened prior to the renovation that caused such a disdain between her and her Interior Designer, but the post starts off with her sharing screenshots of a whatsapp conversation she and her husband were having with the interior designer, and it was regarding the defect checks, and this was supposedly the third or fourth round of defects rectification.




Apparently she had send a bunch of photos of the many defects the house had and then the Interior Designers response was simply...

"Are there anymore to add to the list? Let me know the finalize list of defects tomorrow so I can arrange for the workers to drop by."

... a completely normal response, we would prefer to have the full list of defects so we can settle everything at one go, but for some reason, that totally normal response triggered the client and she wrote this composition length reply, calling out the designer for not doing his job, questioning him on his lack of initiative to spot the defects for them, and then go on about how even her friends and family find the workmanship of renovation to be really bad.



So the designer calls the client out for being unfair to him and I don't really have anything to add here because apparently, the rectification work has been going on for a long time, is the client being too anal or is the designer being too nonchalant, I don't know, but the exchange goes on for quite a while and eventually, the designer's response was...

"No point explaining to you anymore."

... when the client asks him why he thinks she is being unfair to him, which I thought was hilarious because that client must have been a hot topic for the company, they were probably referred to as the clients from hell, no way the designer isn't going to bitch about them to his colleagues, I know my colleagues and I do that all the time just to let off steam because we can't say it to our clients' faces.



So essentially, the post ends with the client calling the interior designer out for his "defensive replies", among many other cons, and from reading through the text messages between the client and the designer, I honestly didn't sense any sort of defensive reply the client was talking about, all the hostility was coming from the client, the designer was simply requesting for a full list of defects and as well as more time to complete the defects.


Imagine writing to a person...

"Hey, can you give me the list of items I need to get from the supermarket?"

and then be responded with....

"The list? The list is on the fridge, why didn't you take it with you before you left the house? You are a full grown adult, this isn't the first time you have gone to the supermarket yourself to get groceries.  I wrote the full list of items down once and now you want me to write them for you again? I just told Mum that you forgot to bring the list with you and you know what ? She was so disappointed at how forgetful you are, even Ah Pa is shaking his head right now, please have some sense of responsibility next time."

I can totally understand why the designer replied "no point explaining to you anymore", he must have been fuming and exhuausted from being unable to express his annoyance towards the clients.




And then in the next post, she shares more text conversation between her husband and the designer, the husband was pissed as well and the text he wrote were definitely filled with a lot of hostility.  Although I have to side with the client on this because it seems as though the designer definitely did commit some mistake and the clients were clearly unhappy about it. I am not exactly sure what happened because it was a lot of words and no pictures for better understanding so yeah.

Boo! Bad Designer, Bad Bad Designer.

Well, the third post about the Interior Designer is when it becomes crystal clear that the client is now being extremely bias towards the him.



The post subheading is....

"More from the ridiculous ID"

... and I thought...

"Wow, what did the ID do to piss off the clients again?"

The contractors forgot to peel off the protection sticker from the window panels.


You know that little film you have on your new phone that you would normally peel off before you power it up, imagine that on the window.


Contractor forgot to peel it off, hey, not too hard to peel it off myself right?


Apparently not because the client made such a big deal about it, messaged the interior designer, asking him why the protection stickers were still on, and when the designer responded with...

"It is meant to protect the powder coating on the frame during the renovation, I will get my side to peel it off for you this coming weekend."

... she called that reply defensive.

What are you talking about? What is defensive about his reply, he was simply explaining why the sticker was there, sure his contractor forgot to peel it off but there is no need to dedicate an entire post to blast him because of it, you have a pair of hands, you can do it yourself. 

The fact that the designer has to send a contractor down over the weekend just to peel off the stickers for her, a simple task she could do herself in probably 10 minutes,  I mean that is really quite ridiculous, and then she calls the designer out for his lack of apology, which is kinda weak because after she responds back to his reply with a chunky message, which was literally her going...

"Why you never peel off? Why do you need me to bring it up to you before you send someone to peel off? The sticker on my window look very ugly, if the sticker was meant to stay on, then I wouldn't have to pick a powder coat for my frame in the first place."

... he apologized.

Because she was fucking crazy, and she calls that response a rebuttal, no bitch, that is not a rebuttal, that is you being loco crazy, and she ends her post with...

"Why so defensive?"

BITCH, the designer isn't being defensive about anything, what the fuck are you on about? She is like fucking delusional, everything the designer writes, she just automatically assumes it is said in a defensive tone, he could literally be quoting a play by William Shakespeare and she'd be...

"Wow, why are you so defensive? Stop being so defensive."

Well, from her latest post, it seems as though she is about to get into a legal battle with the Interior Design Company because she is not willing to pay the last payment, which I guess is in her rights because she deems the house to still be full of defects, but they are mainly planning to sue her for sullying the company's name with her blog post. 

It would be interesting to see how the whole fiasco develops, but I think she is a bit crazy, I mean her first two post lambasting the designer had some sort of validation to it, but the third one kinda felt like she was grasping at straws. 

It's like me going ape shit crazy at a server in a high class restaurant because he didn't lay a napkin on my lap.