I would leave the house at 10.30 am in the morning and only be done with my last site at 6.00 pm in the evening, the office closes at 8.30 pm, so when I actually travel back to the office from my last site, I will most likely reach at around 7.00 pm, a little pointless for me to report to the office, just to stay there for 90 minutes, an hour of which will probably be spend eating my dinner slowly, so for the past week, I just didn't bother prepping myself to go to the office, I will only bring my project files and leave my laptop at home because that thing weighs too much.
Well today was a little different, I thought today was the day I would report to the office after my first appointment in the afternoon, I wasn't planning to drop by any of my site today because I already did the day before, there isn't anything happening that I haven't already seen, so I decided to bring along my laptop when I left the house this morning.
Like I have shared in my previous post, today was the day sly fox would be dropping by his site to take a look at the defects, and I was anticipating a bunch of text messages from him, I would have loved to be at the site with him and his wife for the inspection, but alas, I had an appointment in the afternoon and I didn't feel like there was any point for me to drop by the site after, so I settled for anticipating his text messages during my appointment.
I will say, the clients for the appointment I had today are a nice couple, but I am really really not interested in their project because of how far it is from my home, it took me 90 minutes to reach there today and the project brief is quite dull, it is more repairing work than actual designing work and I honestly hate projects like this, the end product normally ends up looking very underwhelming and there isn't any sense of accomplishment when projects like this are completed because the transformation isn't huge, that fugly living room from the stone age that the clients didn't want to renovate is still there, the horrible tiles from the early 18th century that line the walls of the toilet is still there when you enter, no matter how amazing you may have renovated the kitchen and the bedrooms, it will get bogged down by the fugliness of the existing areas that were left untouched.
But they wanted to meet with me, so I accede to their request and went to their place.
I feel very confident talking to them because I have done a similar project in the past before, I am equipped with the knowledge to answer a majority of their questions, and they are just nice people so talking to them is really easy. The first hour went by really well, the husband asked me a lot of questions and I was able to answer all of them rather confidently, he shared his concerns with me and I tried my best to assure him that although most of his concerns are valid, they are not anything to be too worried about, blah blah blah.... and then my phone started buzzing with text messages.
It wasn't sly fox but my other client, he was at his site to retrieve some deliveries and he noticed there were some issues with the ongoing works, I ignored the text at first, but then the messages kept coming in and from the notification bar, the last text I saw was...
"???"
....which got me a little worried, to spam ??? after a barrage of text, something must be wrong and and he is trying to relay the urgency of the situation to me, so I grabbed my phone while the appointment was going on and take a look at the text, it wasn't really an emergency, so I quickly replied back, to assure him that the issues he spotted will be fixed, but because I was in the middle of an appointment as I was texting him, the messages might have come off as a little nonchalant, and he wrote back, telling me...
"The point is that your contractors should be careful and not damage our place, there was hardly any work done in this portion of the apartment and the condition is so bad."
... I really couldn't reply back to his message because it was just not professional to be doing that in the middle of a consultation with another client. His regular style of messaging is normally very courteous and friendly, so I could definitely sense that he was a little bit upset.
And as his messages were coming in, sly fox also started to sent me a bunch of photos, and sly fox has already gone past the point of coming across as friendly over the Whatsapp chat when he is pointing out an issue he has with his place, in the past, when there is an issue, he is very passive about it, and really friendly, but nowadays, zero fucks is give, if something isn't done well, he makes sure to let me know via text message, there isn't any semblance of friendliness in them, they are just straight to the point and comes across as demanding almost all the time...
"Hello, where did the light bulb for the lights go? Never keep all throw away is it???"
"Why my hood cannot turn on? Your side throw away the manual, how am I suppose to know how to use the hood then?"
"This touch up not done properly, get your guy to come down and do again!"
... as compared to in the past, when he would instead write them in a friendlier and calmer way...
"Hi Tim, do you know what happen to the bulbs, we can't seem to find them, did your guys accidentally throw them away?"
"The hood doesn't seem to be working as well, and the manual is missing. is there an issue with it?"
"I think might have to trouble your contractors to come down and do some touching up again."
Of course, since the influx of messages were happening during my appointment, they were pretty much ignored for the duration of my appointment, and I honestly couldn't focus on the fucking appointment because my biggest concern was to reply to the multitude of messages I was receiving from my other clients.
It was so distracting, I wanted the appointment to end as soon as possible, so every time the client ask me...
"So do you have anything that you need to clarify with me?"
... it's just a straight nope, even if there is and I am sure there are aplenty, I can't think straight right now, so no, because I don't want to clarify anything with you, I want to clarify things with my 2 other clients who are just dinging my phone all day long with their text messages.
When the appointment finally ended, I felt like I could finally breath again, and the first thing I did
was to message the first client who distracted me during my appointment, the final message he had send me was "Thanks". The message before that, that he send, was most likely marked as "read" because I had left the chat open during the appointment, so to him, it might have seemed like I had read his text and chose not to reply to it.
I quickly apologize for not responding sooner, explained my situation and also apologized for how my previous message may have came across as nonchalant, he was quick to brush it off and just told me it was fine, as long as I could fix the problem he brought up, everything was fine.
When it came to sly fox, I read his text, but I chose not to reply straightaway because he is such an exhausting problem to deal with, I really don't give a shit if he sees that I have read his messages but never replied to them, if you are going to sound so demanding via the text messages, then I will also not feel obligated to want to offer you a better service, simple as that.
I eventually did give him a call and the tone he used when he was talking to me was completely different from the way he texted, he was really calm, we had a good 10 minute chat and ran through all the issues he brought up in the chat, I explained to him what happened with some of his items and he was quick to tell me it was alright, that they weren't an issue blah blah blah and honestly, the chat went really well, he put me on loudspeaker and I also spoke to the wife, we had a really friendly conversation and we ended the call on a good note, the text messages he send after were also a lot friendlier and calmer as well.
It's like some Jekyll and Hyde shit going on and it is quite unsettling because who knows, next week he might send me an angry text again, demanding me to send my contractor down because something was done very badly.
This is one of the many aspects of the job that I do not enjoy, the unpredictability of a client. I may get a client who is a dream to work with this month, but who knows, 3 months from now, I might get a client who is the personification of evil. Every client is different, never have I met a client who reminds me of another, they always come with their own set of issues and I really don't like being presented with a new set of problems to deal with every time. I mean it is a great learning experience, but holy fucking shit is it exhausting to deal with every single time.
Oh, and I didn't go to the office again today because surprise surprise, I ended up going to sly fox site to take a look at the situation, wasn't able to have my lunch until 4.30 pm as well because of the afternoon appointment , haven't had lunch at a proper time since the start of the week because of all the sites I have to visit.
I brought my bloody laptop out with me today thinking I would be going to the office but I just ended up lugging around that additional 2 kg of dead weight in my bag for shit, my shoulders were killing me when I was standing in the train, throw in the bloody heat from the afternoon Sun as I walked to his site, I was lucky I wasn't wearing my black polo tee because I would have smelled like a dirty gym sock and polluted the air around me.
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