Le' Ingrate

 A few weeks ago, I had the "joy" of serving a walk in customer. I wasn't really interested to serve her at first because she just looked really unfriendly, unfortunately for me, because my boss happened to be around that day, I really had no choice but to put on a show, so I went to talk to her.

True to my first judgement of her, she was a very haughty individual, I asked her what she was looking for and she told me she was trying to get some inspiration for her new place but was unsure what exactly she was looking for, I then introduced her to the different brands we carry and showed her one of our more affordable brands, she asks about the price for the sofa that we had on display and upon learning the price, tells me...

"That is so cheap."

...  not really sure how to feel about that, but alright, no viewing of the cheap stuff I guess, so I bring her to our main brand and to be very honest, I had nothing much to say because I didn't know what exactly she was looking for and the furniture we had on display were a lot of repeated pieces in different colors. In an attempt to keep the conversation going, I then ask her about her renovation for her place and she shares with me that it is still at the early stages and she hasn't actually found a contractor yet, and for some stupid fucking reason, I go...

"Oh, I use to be an Interior Designer, maybe you can share your floorplan with me and I can work out a space planning proposal for you!"

... the moment I said that, I instantly regretted it because I really do not want to go the extra mile for her. I requested for her phone number and was going to send her a text straightaway to give her my number, but then realized I had saved it in my personal phone instead of my work phone, so I excused myself to get my work phone to re-save her number and as was walking back with the phone to save her number, she just walks away from me, I thought maybe she just wanted to go and look at the other furniture, so I keyed her number in, wrote her name and as I was going to find her, I see her just walking out of the store.

Didn't say any goodbye, not a single word of thanks, she just walked out the store. I was so bloody confused, so I went to double check with my colleague if the customer who just left the store was the one I was talking to and they all told me that she is.

Like what the fuck? We haven't even completed our conversation yet and you just walk out.

I really did not want to drop her a text after that, but figured since I already told her I would, and she is the customer and knows where I work, I should in case she decides to complaint about me, so I did and she sends her floorplan over to me, she did drop a thanks in the message so there is that.

The floorplan she send was one of those shitty as fuck, low resolution type that she got off those property websites with the huge ass watermark, so it was pretty much useless and I had to go to the official developer website to get a better quality one. One of the many floorplans that I hated getting as an Interior Designer.

The amount of time I spend drawing out the plan in Autocad and then planning out the space was about a week, whilst it was nice to be doing space planning again, when I think about who I am doing it for, it just felt like such a waste of time because I was very sure this customer was probably going to take the proposal and never return again, she just looked like that type.

I send her the proposal a week after we met, she actually thanks me once again, which surprised me and then ask me to also collate the photos of the furniture I am proposing for her, I told her I will do it by the end of the day, no response to that. Prepare the images and actually send it to her 5 hours later, no word of thanks for that as well.

It really doesn't kill you to say "Thanks" multiple times a day, especially if it is a complimentary service you are not paying anything for. Show some gratitude!

Anyway, this ingrate doesn't bother to get back to me at all for an entire week, no updates of any kind, so I decided to drop her a text today and ask if she has any feedback, not because I actually wanted any actual feedback, I just wanted to remind her that I exist. She simply replies back about an hour later with...

"The scale doesn't look right"

... no you freeloading ingrate, you should have started the message with...

"THANKS FOR TAKING TIME TIME TO PREPARE THE PROPOSAL FOR ME BUT....."

... and then highlight the issue you have with the proposal I prepared for you FOR FREE! I know I was the one who offered to do the proposal, but any decent human would show some form of gratitude first before they point out the issues, holy fuck when I read her reply, I was so irritated I left her at read for probably an hour. 

GROSS! 

I eventually replied back and told her the scale is correct, and then question her about why she thinks it's off, she doesn't respond because of her qualities as an ingrate, but I think she thinks the scale is off  because the furniture looks too big in her space, but what the ingrate doesn't realize is that the furniture isn't the problem, the problem is the size of her house, it's too small for the furniture we sell.

This haughty ingrate came into the store flaunting her wealth and then it turns out she can't fit the furniture we sell in her house.

Anyways, if she doesn't bother to reply, I also won't be bothering to follow up anymore since I have never wanted to engage with her in the first place. If my boss ask me about it, at least I can share with him that I did my part and in fact even went above and beyond by preparing a proposal for her, I highly doubt he will take the customer's side.

I hope her renovation goes to shit, her pipes burst, her marble crack and everything that she buys ends up being defective, since she is so rich but can't fit any of our furniture in her house, she should have no problem paying to get those items fixed or just buy a new house altogether. This really isn't about her being rich or not, majority of the people of her race are just like that in general, super entitled, usually like to request for the most expensive things but don't actually have the budget, (as far as my experience as an ID goes), a lot of my ex-colleagues agrees with me, my past clients who work in the service line agrees with me, even my current boss has shared with me of the horrible experiences he has had with them and even told me they are not worth the sales because of how difficult they can get once the delivery has been made, like complaining about the smallest imperfections and than demanding an exchange or a refund.

Not going to indicate the race, iykyk. 

Dead as a fish...

I am quite an introverted person, so when I first engage with a customer, I try to be more extroverted to make the customers feel more comfortable, but if you not going to be returning the same energy that I am putting out,  then you can fuck off because I really cannot put the same level of energy out every time we meet and only be getting the bare minimum response from your side. 

I finally ran into a customer that I really connect with at work a few days back and it just brought me back to the days when I was doing Interior Design and would meet clients that I just cannot click with. 

The customers in question were a couple, at first, it was just the husband who came in, he sat at the sofas we had displayed at the front of the showroom and then started walking around a little, a few minutes later, his wife enters the showroom and joins him, they then walk back to the front of the showroom to test out the fabric sofa together and usually when I see them actually testing out the sofa and discussing amongst themselves, it usually means they are likely not just window shopping, so I decided to approach them to ask them if they needed help.

The husband was quite receptive, so I asked him if he had any furniture he was looking for and he told me he wanted to get a few sofas to fill up his space, along with a dining table, I decided to walk with them through the entire showroom to see if anything catches their fancy and I started the tour by bringing them towards a leather version of the sofa they had been seating on earlier for them to compare the difference, I suggested for them to sit on the sofa to test out the difference and this was when it got really uncomfortable for me.

Only the husband decided to try out the sofa, the wife on the other hand just stood beside the sofa, completely expressionless and I honestly didn't know what the fuck I was suppose to do with her, but I figured since the wife wasn't going to sit down, I will just talk to the husband and ask him about the comfort level of the sofa, usually, a normal customer will express that the leather is more comfortable and then I can start sharing the brands array of leather selection, but sadly, this customer wasn't normal because he didn't have much to say, and when I brought up about the array of leathers he could select from, the flow of the conversation just started to feel a bit forced, because it was like I was just dumping information that he didn't care for on him. 

This awkwardness lasted pretty much throughout the entire walkthrough, me asking them to test the sofas, the wife not actually sitting down to test them, but looking distracted and staring into space while the husband sits down for a while, barely shares any sort of feedback to me. I felt like I was talking to myself the entire time, at one point, the wife just decides to wander off on her own and just sits down on an armchair that was towards the back of the showroom, so the husband quickly walks through the first half of the showroom, pats on the sofas that he was passing by and I just tagged along behind him, once in while sharing with him the name of the sofa and what not, but also hoping he would start asking me questions because me spewing out information he probably doesn't care or wasn't reacting to was starting to get really awkward.

He eventually catches up with his wife and sits on the armchair across her, when the wife was around, I just didn't feel comfortable saying anything because I knew she was not going to respond, so I backed away a little and just observed them quietly, which was really fucking weird, the husband then decides to get up and walks further into the Showroom, I followed the husband because I ain't going to be entertaining the dead fish of a wife and watch her meld into the sofa as she stared into space, she was ignoring me the entire time I was doing the walkthrough, so she can rot on the armchair for all I care. 

Usually when a couple comes in, even if one of them is not speaking, they will at least show some sort of reaction by nodding their head or smiling, but this dead fish of a wife literally didn't do any of that, she was like one of those MMO Pets you can get that other people cannot interact with, like it's there but you can't do anything more than seeing it follow it's master around at the back.

Anyways, things didn't improve from there because it started to get very difficult to maintain a conversation with the husband, so I just stopped trying and walked through the remaining Showroom areas with him quietly, he didn't ask anything, just sat on the different sofas for 5 seconds, get up and then move into the next area. 

After his brisk walking session, he decides to walk the showroom another round, and this time, I maintained a wider distance from him, he catches up with his wife and they start talking amongst themselves, at this point, I got a little annoyed at the whole situation because I honestly can't stand the wife anymore, and since the husband wasn't asking any questions and they clearly were not interested in a guided tour, I decided to just fuck all and went back to my laptop and do my work, because why fucking bother?  

After a few minutes, I could see from my peripheral vision that they were heading out and I just couldn't be bothered to even acknowledge them. I would usually say goodbye to customers that I have attended to, but with them, I just didn't want to purely out of spite for the wife. 

First Sales. Fucked it up.

Today was my first weekend in the company Showroom and the weekend crowd somehow feels more approachable than the weekday crowds.

I was also able to close my first sales today, it was one of those in the right place, at the right time sort of situations and not a customer that I actually worked hard to follow up and finally clinched type. The customers knww what they wanted and they simply needed a sales person to confirm the purchase for them, I happen to be the sales person who was there so they came to me.

They got a study table and a chair for their daughter, the combined amount was about $6000, which is fucking nuts for just a table and chair. All the furniture in my own bedroom combined, along with my desktop set up, cost less than the table and chair, and the clients actually got it for their daughter so nonchalantly. I will never be able to understand the way rich people spend their money.

Anyways, I got one of my senior colleague to help me prepare the invoice and everything went great, I felt accomplished that I was finally able to close my first sales and happily went to grab my late lunch right after saying goodbye to the customers, everything was well and dandy and I was in a terrific mood, got my lunch and as I was on my way back to the Showroom to eat it, my colleague sends me a picture of the chair I had sold and asked me if I had quoted the client the correct item.

I told him the picture was the item the customer wanted, but if I had indicated and sold the wrong product in the invoice and he just went...

"Yes"

... I sold them the wrong fucking chair.

I sold them the green chair thinking it was the same as the orange chair. It's fucking not the same

I fucked my first Sales up and underquoted the item, this what was I had been bloody afraid of when I first join the company and saw the price list, I knew the items were going to be bloody expensive and if I underquoted an item, it could potentially lead to a loss of a few thousand dollars.

This isn't one of those things whereby I can absorb the additional charges like I usually would when I miscalculated my Renovation Quotations, I am earning a fixed salary, so if I fuck up and undersell an item, especially items from the store that sells luxury high end furniture, I am pretty much fucked.

My colleague then started calculating the pricing for me and told me to give the customer a call to let them know I had underquoted them, and that they will need to top up the additional amount, he calculated that they would need to top up about an additional $400 and I assume that was probably to cover the chair's cost price. If we were to calculate based on the selling price, I had underquoted $1,200 for the chair, against their $6000, it really is quite a bit of money.

I knew the customers weren't going to take this very well, but it had to be done, so I called the wife and naturally, she wasn't very happy, her tone was completely different from when I first met her earlier that day and I felt like shit to have to make that call, she kept talking to her husband while she was on the phone and after some time, just passed the phone to her husband and had him deal with me.

I tried to explain that the price had been misquoted and I will need them to do a top up, I really hated telling them that because if I were in their position, I would be pissed off as well, the husband than tells me that they have already made full payment and that if this was the agreed amount, the company should honor the price, he then goes on to question if this is how a company of my caliber works and the thing is, I completely agreed with him because it is not right to suddenly have them do a top up, if I could absorb the cost, I really would, but I can't because I am not making any commission from the sales, so there really isn't anyway for me to absorb the cost unless I request to have it taken out from my salary.

The initial call didn't really go anywhere, the customers just didn't want to pay, so I told my colleague that they will probably not pay up, and he tells me...

"Actually what they paid should be able to cover the cost, I just wanted them to feel bad. The price they paid is just barely enough to cover the cost, so we probably won't be earning anything from this sales."

... and that made me feel much better. I felt horrible towards the company, but at least I didn't have to make an awkward phone call back to the customer and demand for the top up. But I didn't really understand how the customer would feel bad after that call though because I think they only got more upset that I was calling to request for a Top-Up.

I called the customer back eventually and told him we will honor the original price, he thanks me and I slowly felt my appetite coming back afterwards. Still felt quite shitty throughout the day though because I actually fucked up my first sales and made it a profit-less one, and I could sense the customer was still a little upset even after I made that call back.

My boss actually dropped by the Showroom in the evening and I just had to break the news to him about that shitty sales. He was quite taken aback and when I told him that my senior colleague had assured me the price is able to cover the cost, my boss goes...

"He doesn't know how to calculate the cost price, there are still shipping and freight cost involved. Only I actually know the actual cost price for these items."

... and I just went "oh fuck" in my head because this meant that not only was the sales a profit-less one, it was probably at a loss. My boss then contemplates for a while and tells me he will allow the mistake this one time, after which he informs me to call the customer and try to guilt trip the shit out of them, which I probably will at a later date. 

I was so grateful, it was like a weight got lifted off my shoulder because now my boss knows and he was actually really nice about it, which means I no longer have to worry about the finance department calling me to question me, and even if they do, I can just tell them the boss knows.

Anyways, after that first sales, I actually felt more comfortable talking to the customers that were coming in, even though I fucked up, it gave me a confidence boost, that an also the walk-ins were just more reactive when I go up to them, I still had a few...

'Just looking." 

... and then move away reaction from those who were just window shopping, inevitable, but there were more who were actively asking me what the prices for some of the furniture were, what other materials they could choose from and the configurations they could get, it was nice to be able to actually have conversations with the walk-ins that last for more than 5 seconds. 

I will be working tomorrow as well, so we shall see how the crowd will be like on Sundays. Hopefully as good as today so I can close more sales soon and make up for today.