Inefficient Day

 I did a site visit to one of my clients new place today and this site visit was meant to be a defect inspection.

The original plan was to meet at 2pm, so I left the house at about 12.30pm because it was located all the way towards the Punggol area, the apartment was located a fair distant away from the nearest LRT and it was just not a convenient location.  

I managed to reach the place at about 1.45pm and my goal then was to head to the apartment, do maybe an hour of defect inspection, and then leave for a late lunch at about 3pm because it was a weekend and I figured 3pm is an odd enough timing for the lunch crowd to dissipate, all I had before that was leftover bag of caramel corn puffs for breakfast and a cup of milk coffee, so I wasn't exactly full.

As I entered the carpark and was heading towards the apartment, my client messages me and tells me he will be there soon, that we can go up together, and he arrives like 5 minutes later at the lift lobby and I notice he wasn't with his wife, so I asked him where she was and if she was going to come later, to which he said she was still stuck at work but will head over soon. My assumption at that point was that she was probably going to be late for maybe 30 minutes, that she was already done with work and was on her way over, that I can still leave at 3pm and actually have my lunch.

So we took the lift together and reach the apartment, my client invites me into the place, he goes and turns on the aircon, ask me if I had anything else for the afternoon, I told him I was free the entire day and we start walking around the entire space to observe the space, as I was busy measuring the areas where the carpentry would be at, he was busy measuring the rooms and then coming over and asking me for advice on how big of a bed he can buy, how much space he has left if he gets this furniture, how much space he needs to leave if he gets that furniture, and we ended up talking for quite a bit, occasional we would actually look for defects here and there but we did eventually spend most of the time just discussing about the space planning for his loose items.

I hadn't realized how much time had passed until I finally looked at my phone and it was already almost 4pm, so I asked him if his wife was coming anytime soon, to which he told me she will be reaching a bit later, at this point I was already feeling a bit hungry and thirsty, so as I was talking to him, I was also packing my bag to sort of give him the hint that I wanted to leave soon, but he didn't really get it and kept pulling me to other areas of the apartment and talked about more space planning stuff, at one point, I started to realize that he didn't really want me to go because he didn't want to wait alone, he wanted someone to accompany him, so I begrudgingly agreed and just entertained him until his wife came.  

The wife came at 5pm. 

I had been talking to the husband for 3 hours before the wife finally came with her parents and THANKFULLY, they brought bottles of water up and a puff pastry for me.

Initially I was a bit hesitant to take the pastry because it didn't look like it was bought for me and they were only offering the food to me to be nice, like how sometimes I offer to help my colleague buy lunch out of courtesy and hope they would say No, but then they say "Oh, I don't mind" and then I just feel burdened with the task. Same with the puff pastry, so when the wife initially offered me one, I told her I was alright even though I was fucking starving.

We did a walkthrough of the space with the wife and her parents, had more discussion about the space planning, their Dad offered his own take on how the space should be planned and I like the Dad, he is super easy going with all the defects that I had spotted earlier and told my clients that those areas they can just leave it because the issues aren't major, if all my clients were as easygoing as the Dad, my job would be so much easier, but anyways the Dad offered his own advice and we ended up removing a few of the carpentry pieces, much to my dismay because that means less profit for me, he offered some valid advice, but there were some that were also a bit iffy that I didn't really want to go against because I didn't want him to think I was disagreeing with everything he was saying, after that was done, both the husband and wife urges me to take one puff pastry, so I finally took the puff pastry and wolfed it down like a starving African child.

At this point, both of them tells me that if I had to go, I could leave because technically my job was already done, but I stayed until I finished my puff pastry and FINALLY left the place at 5.45pm! I spend 3 hours and 45 minutes at the place and only maybe 1.5 hours doing any actual work related stuff, the rest of the time I was pretty much entertaining the husband until the wife arrived. 

I was still feeling peckish after the puff pastry, so I had my dinner after that at the nearby shopping center and thankfully, Mos Burger was relatively empty, so I had my dinner and headed home and by the time I came out from the MRT Station, it was already dark and when I think of how early I had left home today and how late I am reaching home, it just felt like my time was so horribly spend because it's not like I had visited multiple sites today, I only visited one and it took up my entire day, like the level of productivity today just felt like shit.

 Anyways, after I got home, the husband send me a text thanking me for dropping by and apologizing for making me stay so long, which was a nice gesture. I can appreciate a customer who actually respects and feels bad when they know have have taken up too much of my time. 

Good news is I am pretty free tomorrow, so hopefully my day off won't be interrupted by any work related messages from my clients and sub-cons. A short mental break would be nice.