Cancel Cancel

When I left ID4, I had a bunch of my project files that I took home with me, and out of boredom, I decided to take them out and roughly calculate how many project I had taken up during my 4.5 years at the Interior Design Firm.

I know there isn't a lot because of how picky I am with the clients I choose to work with and how little money I had made, so over the past 4.5 years there, I calculated and realized I had only closed a total of 25 projects, that's on average about 1 project every 2 months, and the total quotation for all 25 projects is only about $700,000.00. Just for comparison, the Interior Design firm that I had interviewed for had a annual sales target of $600,000.

My average profit margin is about 15%-20%, so that means for my entirety time there, after splitting the profits with my company, I have only earned a total of between $42,000.00 to $56,000.00 worth of commission, that's very very little, I am now earning 3 times that amount monthly, so I am grateful for that, it's a lot less stressful and even though I am spending more time at work than at home like I used to with this 5 day work week schedule, I do feel more relaxed nowadays because work ends when I leave the store, and even if I have to deal with work related stuff on days I am not working, they are usually minor issues that are easily resolved with a few text messages, that being said, my current company it has it's own set of problems that I have to deal with, like a very messy company structure, and the most annoying one for me are the entitled moronic customers that anyone working in retail would face.

Speaking of which, one of my colleague recently left the company for greener pastures and all his existing customer contacts were disseminated to everyone in the store, I was unfortunately given 3 and one of them had a huge $90,000 order that was apparently facing a bit of a delay. 

I didn't bother reaching out to that particular customer ,or any of them to be honest, because according to the update written by that ex-colleague of mine in his sales report, this $90,000 customer had already been told of the delay, so I figured I didn't have to reach out until her items have actually arrive to schedule a delivery date, I just didn't see any point in reaching out to form any sort of relationship. 

My job with this customer is to just settle her incoming shipments and schedule a delivery date for it, that's it, if she decides she wants to purchase anymore items from us down the road, I will probably just direct one of my colleagues to her instead.

Anyways, a few days after I was assigned to her, she calls up my main office to complaint about a lack of follow up from the company, that complaint was then brought to my attention and it turns out, she was complaining about a lack of follow up, not because no one told her about the delay since my ex-colleague already did, but because she wanted to cancel a few items from her order and there was no one she could probably reach out to to put in that request.

Her cancelling the items now is like asking Foodpanda to cancel your delivery after the kitchen has prepared the food, the rider has collected the food and the food is en-route to your place, you can't just do that. I then told her at first we couldn't cancel the order because not only has it been fabricated for her, it is already in the cargo on the way to Singapore. She then insisted that she had already gotten a few replacement chairs because the wait had been too long for her, which is literally not our problem, and her furniture isn't technically delayed, it is still within the back order period that had been shared with her prior to her purchase.

So to use Foodpanda as an analogy again, you order Foodpanda, the app says the food will take between 45 minutes to 1 hour to reach your place, you get hungry after waiting for 45 minutes, so you go and prepare instant noodle, you get full from the instant noodle and decide you no longer want the Foodpanda order anymore, so you request to cancel it despite knowing very well that the food is on the way to your place and will reach after a slight 10 minutes delay.

Whose fault is it? 

YOURS! 

You know food is coming, in fact, it is already on the way, common sense would dictate that you have some snacks like potato chips to try and tide you over until your meal reaches your place, just small items that will satiate your hunger but not make you full. 

If your dumbass immediately goes to a bowl of instant noodle, then you are a fucking moron for not being able to plan ahead properly. 

I don't know what the fuck this customer's train of thought is, you already place a huge deposit for chairs that are worth hundreds and thousands of dollars, if you need a replacement while you wait for those to arrive, maybe get a cheap IKEA one first that you can easily discard or giveaway to friends and family when your expensive designers pieces come! Like I really don't understand how her mind works. 

Anyways, this customer's order was a bit more complex because she ordered 2 different brands from us, one was arriving on time and the other was going to have about a 2 week delay. At first I didn't want to let her cancel the items because it's not a very good move to make to allow customers to last minute cancel their order because they are so impatient, I was contemplating about telling her that her item is still within the stipulated back order time frame but if I pull that card on her, she can UNO Reverse that logic back at me and insist that she will cancel the pieces from the other brand that is actually delayed. 

So after thinking about it and discussing it with my supervisor, we decided that we could actually display the pieces she wanted to cancel in the Showroom, it was about $4000 worth of chairs, which is a relatively paltry amount against her $90,000 invoice.

Letting her cancel $4,000 worth of chairs to make her happy is better than having her demand we refund her for $40,000 worth of furniture from the other brand that got delayed.

Anyways, she was quite happy about it.  She then requests for me to get her items delivered to her place as soon as possible once it arrives, so I kept that in mind.

A few days later, half of her item finally arrives in Singapore, so I reach out to her to arrange for the final payment to be made so I can start to schedule a delivery for her, told her I had blocked out a date for her first but can only confirm the delivery once the final payment has been made, and her reply to my message was...

"Actually I would also like to cancel a few coffee tables from the order."

...FUCK YOU!

You give them an inch and they take a mile.

I will say however that we desperately needed coffee tables in the Showroom because we are severely lacking those, so my supervisor and I were actually more than happy to let her cancel those orders, but FUCK YOU nonetheless. 

Anyways, I let her cancel the order for the coffee tables and then proceed to reiterate that she will have to schedule the payment soon in order for us to commit to the delivery date I had blocked out for her, she just kept replying with "OK", but doesn't actually process the payment. 

Not really sure when she would actually process it, but I had to send her a gentle reminder today that if she doesn't make payment by today, then her delivery date will be postponed, and she just replied with "OK", don't reply with an "OK", a better response would be a screenshot of the bank transfer. 

Catch Up with Clients

Went to my ID4 client's home a few days back for a very belated housewarming visit and it was really nice to actually follow through on the invite.

This was one of the last 2 projects I was handling before I left ID4 and the very last one that I actually handed over officially due to multiple delays from my tiler. 

The project started in May last year and it was officially handed over in March this year, it took 10 months for the project to be officially completed and the client was super patient throughout this 10 months, so I was extremely grateful towards her and her husband for being very understanding. The house became livable back in August because a bulk of the work had been done by then, so actually the additional 6 months after that is just a lot of minor touch up works that was delayed because of manpower issue in the construction industry in general, the main delay is because of my tiler, if I was still with ID4 and am still running projects, I would have stopped using him completely, took months to schedule his workers to do the touch up and can't even get the touch up right the first time, he had to schedule them down multiple times, and it would always be a month or two in between visits. I felt so bad for my client because I usually had to leave her with zero updates for months on end and she doesn't even rush me for updates because she knew I was working at my new place.

So I am very grateful towards her and getting her and her husband a housewarming gift has always been something I had wanted to do for a while now.

I knew I wanted to splurge a little on their gift, so I got them a gift set from Bacha Coffee, super fancy coffee that came with a super nice packaging, the gift amounted to about $120 and it was money that I was very happy to spend.

When I visited their place after not having been there since probably September of last year, I have to admit they did a really good job with the furniture they got, the colours are complimentary to the carpentry and paint colours, nothing felt out of place, I didn't see any particular piece that was an eyesore. Having the space fully furnished did make the apartment feel much smaller though, but it's still sizeable compared to the newer apartments in the market now. 

I was very happy with how the space turned out, my clients seemed quite happy as well and the wife actually cooked a proper breakfast for me when I went there, after the meal, they gifted me something as well and the wife insisted I take some of the Bacha coffee home for myself because the gift set had 2 cannisters of ground coffee along with some chocolate and honey, I kept telling her to keep it for herself because it's a set but she kept insisting and so I took one cannister home for myself. The coffee is alright, I am not much of a coffee connoisseur so I will probably just stick to Nescafe once I finish up the Bacha. 

Very happy I was able to have that little catch up session with them and it feels nice that this is how my  end of the Journey as an Interior Designer in ID4 is. It had it's moments, but when I look back at my old post, I can at least feel proud that I was able to come as far as I did after multiple failed attempts at trying to make it work in the past at ID1, ID2 and ID3. Do I want to return back to the Interior Design industry? As a designer, Yes, as a Project Manager, fuck no. 

Super Selfish

So that colleague of mine who questioned my VM capabilities has strike again and this time, she isn't criticizing me for not doing a good job, but she is really showing how selfish and greedy she is as an individual, and kinda highlights why my boss decided to scrap the commission scheme when he started hiring the newer sales team (aside from trying to save money that is).

 So just some background before I get into what happened.

About 3 months after I join my current company, my boss decided to make me a "brand expert" for this particular customized wardrobe brand from Italy that we carried, the previous VM who was still with the company at that point was also a "brand expert" for it. Brand experts doesn't really mean we are experts of the brand, it's more like a title that was given to us because there is a software that had to be used in order to configure the wardrobe, and since the previous VM and I were probably the only ones competent enough to learn the software, we were made the "brand experts" that and also mainly due to our working experience in the Interior Design industry. 

So whilst the previous VM was still working at the company, if anyone from the sales team had a customer who was interested in the Wardrobe System, they will pull the previous VM into the project and he would talk to the clients to get their needs and prepare the drawings for them, since I was new at that time, I was never really pulled into such projects,  sometimes however, my colleagues will pull me into conversations they are having with their clients about the brand, and when there are questions that my colleagues do not have answers to, they will pull me and and have their clients direct those questions me, questions I don't always have answers to because I was literally only made the brand expert less than a month ago and have only been in the company for 4 to 5 months at that point, compared to most of my colleagues who have been in the company far longer than me, some even having been around for more than a decade, so if anything, I should be the one asking them. 

It's really quite ridiculous how they think that just because I was assigned as the brand expert, I would suddenly be an expert at everything related to the brand. It's just a freaking title, and most of the time, I would just be stuck in this awkward position of not really knowing how to answer the customers.

Anyways, after the previous VM left, I became the only brand expert and that's when my colleagues started approaching me to help them with the drawings. I have no problem with using the software, it's relatively easy to learn, not the most intuitive, pretty buggy actually, using it just makes me wish I was using Sketch Up.

I digress...

So this particular colleague of mine who had criticized my VM skills, whom I shall just refer to as Anne, approached me and told me that she has a client who is interested to do the custom wardrobe, she sends me the floorplan and starts sharing with me what the client is looking at, which is essentially just her telling me...

"They actually have no idea what they want, so you just propose first."

... basically sharing fuck all, can't even get their needs properly, she then informs me the client wants to do a sliding door and ask me if we had that option, so I tell her we do, but then the client only wants to do a portion of the wardrobe as a sliding glass door, which we can't do because we don't do glass sliding doors, she forwards me a picture of what the client had send her as an example of a sliding door as well as the overall message she was having with them. 

I look at the message and I find out that the client isn't talking about doing a sliding wardrobe door, the client is talking about planning to do a sliding glass door to separate her room and that sliding door will open towards the wardrobe, so what the client is asking is for us to leave a gap between the wardrobe for the sliding door! Like it's bloody written fucking clearly in the message the client send her, it's drawn on her plan, they even have a fucking picture of the sliding door attached they are looking to do attached, so I have no fucking idea how she could misinterpret it as the client wanting to do a sliding wardrobe door, I tell that to her, she then laughs it off and I just can't believe how dense she is. 

Anyways, I complete the drawings a few days later and she proceeds to arrange a meeting with the clients,, I sat in with her during her meeting with the clients, and as I was talking to them about the wardrobe and introducing the materials to them, she suddenly disappears from the store, she just went MIA and I ended up talking to the client for a good 30 to 45 minutes on my own, when she finally came back, she apologized and said she had a family emergency she had to attend to, my 30 to 45 minutes with the clients enabled me to click with them more than she did and it was kinda weird because every time she spoke to them, the husband would kinda look at me for my input.

So the client leaves after we were done and I updated Anne about what I had discussed with her client with regards to the wardrobe, she then ask me what I think of the client and I told her I think the potential to proceed is there but that we should probably only discuss the wardrobe again when the place is ready, so we can do a site visit and take measurements, to which she goes...

"The house isn't ready yet, so you want them to wait? Wouldn't that be too late then? I just want to close this sales soon, they already came by 2 months ago, now that they are here, I want to quickly get them to confirm the order."

... I then tell her that it's probably not a good idea to do that because there is a lot of risk involved if we don't do a site measurement and she just brushes it off, so I also didn't bother much after because we are still at the early stages of discussion, the project probably won't be confirmed so soon.

A few days pass and I update the drawings for her, she sends the drawings to her client and ask me if I am available the following week to meet her client, I then ask her if they were going to confirm the wardrobe and she said they are very interested and it's very likely, so I reiterated to her once again about the risk and she once again brushes it off, focusing just purely on closing the sales. The client however decides to postpone the meeting, so today at work, I decided to ask her again when the meeting with the client will happen, she says probably this week when I am around so I can sit in and pretty much do all the work, I then decided to advise her again ...

" I don't think we should confirm with the customer so quickly, we measure the walls for his wardrobe first then we get the customer to confirm the sales."

... to which she replies with a rhetorical...

"Measure what wall? The house is not even ready yet, what wall do you want to measure."

When she said that to me, she was also sort of expecting me to give her an answer, it's like one of those questions that people ask just to piss you off because they know you know the answer to it and want you to say it out loud to make you feel stupid, so I got very annoyed and I said to her...

"You are asking me? They are your customer! You should know!"

... and she just laughs it off and goes...

"No lah, I mean their house is not ready yet, how to measure?"

... which is my exact fucking point, you want to do a customized wardrobe that will be tucked into a wall niche, you will need to have the exact measurements of the wall, which we do not have because the house is not ready yet, and you want the customer to confirm the order? Are you fucking dense, or just a greedy individual who wants to get your share of the commission as quickly as possible? If the measurement is wrong, not only will the customer have to wait another 5 months for the amended wardrobe to be fabricated and shipped over from Italy, our company will probably also end up incurring a loss because we will definitely have to replace the client's wardrobe and absorb the cost! 

I mean the level of selfishness she exhibits is insane, no doubt if she gets the order confirmed and the wardrobe ends up not fitting the space when it arrives, she is going to throw me under the bus and put the blame on me because I was the one who did the drawings for the project, because that's the kind of person she is, I was warned about her by my supervisor pretty much during my first week into the job.

But I will make my stance very clear to her client as well as to her, that I am only in charge of doing the drawings based on the measurements that I got from the floorplan, that anything beyond that will not be within my responsibility anymore and any and all issues pertaining to the delivery and installation will be directed to my colleague Anne.

That means if anything fucks up, go and fuck her up.

Just to add on since I am ranting about her.

She has this habit of reserving furniture pieces in our store indefinitely for her customers and when the customer doesn't get back to her, she doesn't bother to follow up and check if they are still interested and what ends up happening is the pieces is just left on reserved for her customers.

I had another colleague who had a customer who was interested in this particular armchair that had been reserved for Anne's customer, and when Anne saw that the reservation had been swapped for someone else, she had the audacity to say to that colleague...

"You reserved for you client? Did you know I reserve that armchair for my client?" 

... a chair she had already reserved for 2 fucking months with zero updates, she thinks the entire store belongs to her. 

Not the smartest...

So the competency level of the sales team in my store is somehow going from bad to worst over the last few months.

Almost all the sales staff there lacks a sense of urgency or responsibility when it comes to getting things done, the moment they have clinch the sales, they just have a hands off approach to everything that happens after.

Earlier this afternoon, one of my colleague's client had a last minute request to have the delivery timing for one of his customers' item be pushed back, but instead of calling the delivery team to personally check and get confirmation if the reschedule is possible, my colleague just drops a text to one of the delivery guy without even bothering to make sure the delivery guy read the message. 

The delivery team ended up making a wasted trip to the client's house when they are not home, and when the delivery team ask my colleague what happened, his response was... 

"I already messaged one of your guys to let him know!"

... well, the problem with that is not just the fact that my colleague didn't make sure the delivery guy he had messaged had acknowledge the reschedule, the problem is that the delivery guy he message is not even in Singapore anymore, he has gone back him to India! 

This isn't the first time this kind of issue has happened with this colleague of mine, previously he sold a sofa that was actually meant to be put up for a Warehouse Sales event, what he should have done after closing the sales was to immediately tell the Warehouse team to reserve that piece for his client. Anyone with even a semblance of responsibility would call the person in charge of the warehouse to verbally disseminate the information and then follow it up with an email or a written message of what had been discussed with the details of the sofa along with all the product code, just so there is a black and white record.

What my colleague did however is simply send an email with a message that simply reads...

"I have sold this sofa, please take note."

 

...and then attaches the invoice to the email. Didn't bother to double check if the email had been read and action had been taken to ensure that the sofa had been reserved for his client. Not surprisingly, that sofa ended up getting sold during the Warehouse Sales and he got reprimanded by the customer for it, even got into an argument with the Warehouse Manager because of it.

You'd think after that, he would actually get his shit together and wise up, but nope. 

I honestly didn't have any problems with this particular colleague of mine until something he did to me a few days back.

Background of what happened.

He was attending to a customer who had entered the store to take a look at the furniture pieces we had, and during the conversation, the customer told him that she was a developer and wanted to furnish a landed property Showroom. Since my colleague isn't able to handle projects that requires Space Planning because he is a purely just a Salesman through and through, he decided to enlist me for my help. 

I have made it very clear to everyone in the team that I wasn't going to take do Design Proposals for their projects as it is not part of my jobscope, but because this colleague of mine had been very helpful to me in the past, I decided to just do him a favor and prepare a quick proposal for his client.

The proposal was completed within 3 days and I pretty much did EVERYTHING for him, this included furniture selection, space planning proposal, furniture detail down to the measurements and even the price break-down, this meant that he didn't even have to do any quotation because all the details are already in my proposal. He thanks me for the document and sends it to the client, that's all he had to do, forward my proposal to the client.

About 2 days later, the client get backs to him and request for some changes to be made, she wanted to change a few furniture pieces and so he was asking me if the new furniture the client was requesting would fit in the space, since I hadn't seen the updated floorplan yet, I told him I wasn't sure. He then asks me if I needed to update the floorplan for him or if he could just send the information of the new furniture to his client.

I told him I will update the floorplan for him just to be sure that the new pieces will fit. He forwards me the new drawings and then leaves me to do my work. On that very same day, my boss also suddenly bombards me with a new project that was quite extensive and also had a very tight deadline, so I decided to prioritize that first and  put my colleague's proposal on hold since that project didn't have any deadline that I was aware of.

I was so busy that entire day that I actually ended up working OT for 30 minutes, I wasn't able to complete my boss's project proposal but I knew I wasn't going to stay back any longer, so as I said my goodbyes to my everyone in the store, and as I was leaving, that colleague of mine suddenly asks me...

"You leaving already? Where is my drawing?"

... and I got a bit surprised, I thought he was joking with me at first, so I told him I was rushing the boss's proposal the entire day and didn't have any time to do his, to which he replies...

"The boss's proposal? That one can do later!"

...  I told him that our boss's proposal has a deadline and his didn't because he didn't give me any, and at this point, I still thought he was just saying all that in jest until he goes..

"But you told me you will do my drawings for me, I was waiting for your drawings, that's why I haven't reach out to my client yet! "

... I was shocked. He was showing a bit of annoyance at me because I didn't do his proposal that very day and I just couldn't properly process what was happening, I told him to give me a few days and he then respond to that with...

"By Wednesday possible?" *which is about 2 days later because I am off the next day.*

... so I ask him to give me until Thursday because even though I know I can do it within an hour, I wasn't going to let you give me a deadline for a proposal I am helping you to do. He then told me he wasn't working on Thursday, so I just gave like a playful *tsk* at him, I didn't really want to express my annoyance fully even though I believe I have every right to, and my supervisor steps in told my colleague that I will be able to do it quickly before asking me how long I need.

I decided after that to just agree to the Wednesday deadline begrudgingly and left the store. 

I completed the proposal on Wednesday, pass it to my colleague, he was grateful for it, sends it to the developer and when I followed up with him a few days later to ask if the developer got back to him, his reply was...

"They never reply, but I will follow up again with them soon."

... fucking irritating. 

Anyways, he messaged me earlier asking if he can a coffee table that is currently on the Showroom floor, I told him I can't release any of the coffee tables because we are low in stock, that if he sells that table then it will ruin the showroom settings.

He then replies to me with a picture of another coffee table and asks me if that applies to that coffee table as well.