Missed Meeting and more Unrealistic Budget Buggers

I was suppose to attend a company lunch today at my company's showroom, but hadn't realize that the timing was brought forward by an hour, so I guess I am not gonna bother heading down now.



My problem with the change in timing is that it was never reiterated again after it was brought up once, the flow of the message went like this....

Random Topic A 

Random Topic A

Random Topic A

Change in Meeting Time Update 

(It was a reply message to an earlier message but I thought it was a reply to Random Topic A, so I skipped it)

Random Topic B

Attendance Check for who will be attending the Lunch after the meeting. 

(The change in timing was not reiterated in the attendance check message)

Attendance Check 

Attendance Check

.

.

.

.

.

.

Attendance Check 

... and then fast forward to today, I just notice that the timing got changed to 1pm after my colleague posted in the group chat that the meeting/lunch was starting soon at 12 noon. 

Since I am probably the only one who seemed to have missed out the timing, it is my fault for not keeping a close eye on the chat, but the way the change in timing was so casually brought up and never reiterated again also really threw me off, and the lack of any reminders to reiterate the change in timing a day before the meeting date really did not help. 

Anyways, my boss is actually at the showroom today to conduct the meeting, so I am probably gonna be blacklisted for not showing up, I wouldn't mind getting blacklisted from customer leads for a while, I could really use a short break from having to deal with shitty leads.

I got one a few days back that had an unrealistic budget, nice lady, we chatted on the phone, but her budget for her renovation can only stretch so far and it barely covers 40% of what she wanted to do, so I emailed her the quote and then my boss calls me up and tells me to follow up with the client a bit more tightly because this lady had a lot of potential as she was my boss's family friend.



Honestly thought it was a bit pointless to follow up too closely.

1. She is my boss's family friend, not mine, so I am not gonna give her any family friend discount because, well, she isn't my family friend and I don't know her personally.

2. I am not paid a monthly salary by my boss, so I am not obligated to give her any sort of huge discount, my earning is fully reliant on commission, if I feel like the commission I will end up getting is not worth my time and effort, then I am going to drop her as a client. 

3. There would literally be no commission because as I have stated, her budget can't even cover half of the renovation works, if I took on the project, it will be as good as me paying for her renovation, which brings me back to point number 1, she ain't my family friend, so why should I ? 

I told my boss that her budget is way too low and unrealistic, but he kept pushing for me to follow up closely, to offer her suggestions on what she can remove from her requirements to reduce the cost, to give her an overall discount at the end to make the contract amount more appealing and then to just call her "right now" and speak to her.

Right Now = 1pm on a Monday afternoon. 

She is working "right now" and he wants me to just call her whilst she is in the middle of work, it was a bit weird, he wasn't offering me any realistic advice and it just sounded like he wanted me to do hard sell to clinch the project, which is not something I am good at or even want to attempt to do because hard selling will just make the clients feel like they have been pressured to sign the contract and this would just lead to a lot of problems later on during the renovation. 

If a client came back to me on their own, chances are they like me as a person and we have good chemistry, working with such clients is a lot better because they will be understanding when a problem arises, since they did not feel pressured to engage me, if something goes wrong, they won't think that I am trying to cheat them off their hard earned money and they will probably not nitpick as much. I am a socially awkward individual, if the other party and I don't click, then every meeting that we have will be awkward because I also won't feel comfortable starting a conversation with them.

If I had attended the meeting today, my boss would have probably asked me about this particular client, but alas, I see no point in heading down for the meeting and lunch now since the meeting is already over (as of me writing up to this stage of this post). The lunch was just something I would have partake in since I was already going to be there for the meeting, so I gotta Grab Food instead now I suppose.

I also got another lead a few days back with an even more unrealistic budget, so that is another waste of time I will have to deal with in the coming days when we meet in my office for a face to face consultation, this new client has yet to respond back to my message to double confirm the appointment, I really hope it is not gonna be another ingrate like Ros. I mean looking at the budget she has set aside, the meeting we will be having next week will very likely be the only one we ever have.



She has requested for a full renovation works - Estimated Cost should be anywhere between $40,000 to $50,000 for the basic stuff.


Her budget she has set aside is $15,000 - $20,000



Getting this kind once or twice, it's fine, but I have been getting leads like this for so many months now, it is irritating, do they not know how to do any sort of  research online before they set the budget? It is so far off the mark it's just ridiculous!


I believe these clients uses the website Qanvast to get connected with the interior designers, Qanvast has a shit ton of project with the renovation cost for them to look at....

Between $50,000 - $120,000

Between $68,000 - $150,000

....this is the renovation cost range for an apartment of that client's size, between $50,000 - $150,000, such a simple research that can be done within a matter of seconds and she puts her budget as $15,000 - $20,000.

And the annoying thing is it is not just this customer, almost all the leads I have been getting from my company have the same problem, just this blatant lack of research for their budget, they focus so much on what they want for their space but then don't double check if they actually have the money to afford all their wants.



I feel like the websites that provides all this leads should also adopt the responsibility of educating the owners on the correct budget they should be setting aside for their renovation because companies actually pay these renovation portals for the leads.


These leads are not cheap but they are garbage. 

New Project, New Pimples

I have been enjoying a relatively acne free face for the past 3 months, but it seems like that has come to an end because right now, there are quite a few popping up and I am not sure if it is because of the mask I have been wearing or just the stress that is coming from the start of a new project.



It feels like it has been such a long time since I did any project management and I am honestly really worried about how smooth the renovation will be, my clients for that new project lives only a few minutes away from their new apartment, so I might be getting a lot of text messages in the evenings when they actually do drop by to check up on the progress every now and then, and because I am not staying even remotely close to the project site, I might not drop by as often as I would like to.





I was suppose to drop by the site last Thursday to stick a few renovation permits, but the afternoon heat was way too much to handle and the one hour journey required to reach there from home was such a turn off that I kept on procrastinating until I finally went down on Saturday and it was mainly because I had to go to the office that day anyway so might as well take that detour.





The permits were pasted, spoke to a few neighbors as well to give them a bit of heads up and headed back to the office at around 12 noon, which was surprisingly early because I was expecting to reach the office much later.




Now my concern is whether or not my sub-con actually remembers that I have scheduled work with him for this Wednesday, I booked a slot with him about half a month back, so it has been a while and I am not sure if he actually puts the date down in his calendar or not or he just relies on memory, I did drop him a text to confirm a few days back but he hasn't responded, so I will probably text him again tomorrow just to double confirm.



My client also texted me earlier today telling me they wanted to open their "Electrical and Water Account", but deleted the message like less than a minute later, I was busy doing a No.2 in the toiler so I only manage to read the message through the notification bar before it updated itself and became "this message was deleted"




For the renovation to actually proceed, we will need electricity and of course water when the tiling comes in, so it is a bit disconcerting that the wife is telling me they are planning to open their "Electrical and Water Account" 2 days before the renovation is suppose to start. You really shouldn't be telling me that you are planning to open an account, it should have been done much earlier to ensure that there is water and electricity before the renovation starts.




This is just one of those things that I would have never thought would be necessary to inform a client before the start of the renovation because it should be common sense, it's like that time when I had to deal with my other client Emily who thought the carpentry renovation works I was going to do for her was going to be a quick and quiet affair , but upon realizing it was going to a renovation level installation, got angry, actually stopped my guys from working and then blame me for not telling her it was going to be a renovation, the level of common sense that she was lacking has not been beaten by any of my other clients I have worked with so far ,yet, and I am hoping it stays that way.





But with the current client, the fact that the message was deleted so quickly means that I was never really meant to read it, so I am going to assume that they got it settled already and when my guy goes up on Wendesday, I won't be having any issues with the electricity and water.

Fingers crossed everything goes well.



My last project that I did for my friend went super smoothly, so I am super worried that this one might not and might end up becoming a Sly Fox and Antoinette level kind of bothersome as the universe's way of balancing things out, fuck, I have become so superstitious after I stared working in this industry.



Please, I do not want to give this couple a nickname for the blog.

Low EQ

My new project will officially be starting next week and I don't know how mentally ready I am to go back into project management mode.

Ever since construction work could start again, the only projects I have been touching are the ones that are either already done and only needed minor touching up, or the project that I am helping my friend run. My friend is pretty chill with the renovation, so it has been extremely smooth sailing for me, for her it was a bit of a bitch because the pandemic delayed her project, which could have been completed within 4 weeks, for 3 months, luckily it is done and I assume she is generally quite satisfied with the renovation so thumbs up there.

Anyways, I have also been getting a steady stream of not so great leads lately, nothing new there, most of them clients do not have the habit of responding to messages, which is a bit annoying, I mean you are the one who requested for interior designers to reach out to you, at least have the decency to respond to our messages even if you are not interested. 

Ros has also responded and I really can't be bothered to be very friendly in the messages, she took a bloody long time to respond initially, the first exchange after my last chat with her about sending me her requirements, took her 2 days to reply and after I respond to that, she took another 3 days to follow up and she actually messaged me at 11.30pm out of the blue for that, which annoyed me, so I ended up muting her conversation for 8 hours because I did not want to deal with her buzzing my phone up. 

I guess if it was another customer I wouldn't so so annoyed, but because she was so inconsiderate during our first exchange, like not replying to my initial message to confirm the appointment and then bailing on our meeting last minute, I was and am a little more touchy with her, especially because I also don't really sense any sort of gratitude from her end during our exchanges, there isn't any thanks in the messages, she doesn't start new conversations with "Hi Tim", just always go straight to her request, it is little things like this that really makes the difference, so my impression of her isn't great, it always feels like she is giving me an order when I am talking to her.



I have since prepared a quote and send it to her, even drop her a text message to let her know I have emailed it to her and she doesn't bother to drop a simple "Thanks", she reads the message because I see it get blue ticked, and then a few hours later sends me a message asking me to resend the quote to the exact same email I had just send to hours prior, once again, no word of thanks, and when I have send it over and inform her via text, doesn't bother to respond.  No fucking clue why she requested for it to be resend unless she deleted it by accident, but even if she did, she should have been able to retrieve if from the bin so my guess is she probably got a few quotes from a few Interior Designers, saw mine, didn't want to bother with me and deleted it permanently, realize she should have kept mine so she can compare the prices, and then requested for a resend.



I highly doubt she will reach out again because I did charge her a bit higher than normal, like I would with clients I do not like, I was talking to my colleague about her and he just told me that people like Ros just have really low EQ, I personally think she is just an ingrate.





Speaking of things that are disgusting.



Whilst on 9Gag last night, I came across a post that had a list of numbers and next to those numbers were description that went....

"Legendary"

"Amazing"

"Burn in Hell, should not exist."

... I kinda had a feeling I knew what those numbers represent, so I went to the comment section and saw someone lisitng down one particular number and wrote...

" *number* wasn't so bad, it isn't fapping material but I thought the story was really good and shows the dark side of human nature"

... so I copied the number down out of sheer curiosity, open an incognito tab on my phone and slap those numbers in with the word hentai at the end. I mean I knew it was either hentai or Japanese porn, but what I had failed to realize was that that particular number in the original post had the words "Burn in Hell, should not exist" written beside it and when I actually ended up on the website, which popped up as the very first result on Google, I wished I had skipped that bloody post on 9 Gag.




I wrote the entire plot in this post but decided to delete it because it is fucking sick. The fact that someone could actually think of it as a plot line really shows how fucked up that person actually is, like it is actually so fucking disturbing I do not feel comfortable writing down the synopsis in this blog. 

Random Musings

I got myself a new project obtained a few weeks back!

The job hunt has once again ended in utter failure, IKEA emailed back a few days back telling me I did not get the position, this was many many months AFTER I applied for the position. I legitimately do not know what their requirements are because I feel like I do have the sales and interior design experience required for the job.

Anyways, IKEA was a bust and has always been every time I tried to apply for it.

The other jobs I have applied for, I guess I am too under qualified to even be considered, I might end up looking for an Interior Stylist position at a furniture job just so I can still be in the same industry but not have the same level of responsibility I have now, it's not fun to be at the beck and call of a client for months on end during a renovation project, an Interior Stylist work just feels a lot more simpler in terms of overall responsibility and have a shorter timeline, I introduce the furniture, the layout, we have those items delivered and placed accordingly and then I am done, any after sales service will be dealt with by the after sales team. I am actually considering applying for a company called BoConcept again, applied for it a few years back, went for the interview but screwed that up because I was an idiot, maybe once this new project is over, which will probably be till the end of the year, I will apply for more stylist positions again.



I have also just finished meeting a new client earlier and it was not good, from the start the husband already gave me a bad impression, he was generally quite unfriendly and not approachable, the wife was nicer but that is when I compare her next to her husband. The consultation itself was just a mess, one of my managerial level colleague actually requested for one of the newbie to sit in with me during, but luckily I did not agree to it because it would have been such a bad example of how a design consultation should go.




The clients wanted to do very little renovation works, only redoing the kitchen cabinets and honestly speaking, there isn't much to discuss when the work needed to be done is so simple and straightforward, I also didn't click with them so there wasn't any additional conversation happening in between to create a more friendly atmosphere between us, it was mostly just a lot of awkward silences, me waiting for them to ask me anything related to the renovation, if they were unsure of anything that needed clarification. It lasted less than 30 minutes and they were out of the door after that, didn't even bother to send them out, just had them walk out themselves.

I also came across this video on Facebook and thought it was quite refreshing to see. I definitely vibe more with the guy because he is a lot more real with his response, his is the kind of response I would share with my interior design colleagues whereas the girls' response is what I will share with my clients when I am feeling comfortable enough around them to be a bit more candid.

Reschedule is the new Cancel

A few days ago, my company gave me a new client lead and this particular client, who I shall call Ros, had made an appointment for 2pm today.



Yesterday afternoon, I decided to send Ros a reminder via text that she has an appointment with me today at 2pm, I have made it a habit to do this because most of the time, clients who arrange an appointment many days in advance have the tendency to not follow through with the meeting and actually cancel without even bothering to actually let my office or myself know, the few that I got within the past month, I would reach out and after reaching out to double confirm the appointment the day before, they would always cancel and say they are busy or have something else on so they cannot make it and then request to reschedule at a later date but don't actually give me a date.




Anyway, I texted Ros the reminder and she reads it but doesn't reply, so I wasn't sure whether she was actually coming or not because some clients don't bother responding once they have decided they weren't interested anymore, like actual pieces of shit who thinks their time is more important than ours actually exist.




I made the mental preparation that she wasn't going to come today but decided in the off chance that she does, I will just go to the office to wait, I will treat my visit to the office as a chit chat session with my colleagues who were there that day.



So I leave my house at 12 noon today and reach the interchange at Toa Payoh at about 12.45, walked around a bit to kill some time, got myself a bowl of glutinous rice ball from Mr Bean and as I started walking towards the interchange to wait for my bus, my phone buzzes and it's a message from Ros that reads...

"Sorry, I think I have to reschedule, my medical appointment got delayed. Maybe I can give you a call instead?"

... even though I was already mentally prepared for her to not show up, I can't help but feel just a little bit irritated by this kind of last minute cancellation.



I didn't really want to entertain her at this point so I took a while before replying back and was of course really cordial about it, I told her to just send me her floorplan as well as her requirements and I will try and work a quotation around those requirements, I didn't want to have a phone call with her because honestly speaking, not worth my saliva. She responds about 2 hours later that she has the floor plan on hand and will take a picture of it for me, I hate when a client takes a shitty photo of a floor plan for me.

An example of a shitty floor plan

The scale is off and the floor plan is skewed, trying to fix it in photoshop is gonna take a while and I just don't want to waste my fucking time putting so much effort on this client.



Ros has an unrealistic budget as well, so that is like the cherry on top of this steaming pile of shit, an overall waste of everybody's time, except Ros because she didn't even show up, didn't even bother to text me until an hour before our meeting time to cancel reschedule, (UPDATE) it is already the next day and she hasn't send over her floorplan yet, not that I am complaining about it because that means I don't have to give any fucks about it.