When its good to be the boss

Sometimes its good when you're the boss of your own small business.

The times when you get to tell tiresome custoemrs that they don't count are the best.

I had someone ring me this morning, and I'd been expecting her call, to complain that I hadn't sent the three employee ID cards that she'd ordered last week even though she'd stressed in the email just HOW IMPORTANT they were to her organisation.

We print "swipe cards" as part of our business, usually they have a logo and they are individually numbered and usually customers are ordering anything from 20 to 500 of the things, we just set the parameters on the computer and let the thing run off as many as we need.

And then occasionally we get pain in the arse customers who want employee photos putting on the cards, which isn't too much of a pain in the arse if they wany say 20 or 50 doing and the photos are stored in a database, again we set the parameters and let the computer run.

But this customer orders photo cards one at a time, sometimes just one a month sometimes three per week, but all individually, which means setting the whole thing up just for one card to run off - ok its not a massive pain in the arse but it still breaks you off from doing something more constructive and for £2.95 per card this customer is hardly going to make us millionaires anytime soon - so we tend to wait until they have two or three to do so that it makes the invoicing worthwhile, because of course they need billing on their 30 day account which then never gets paid for 60 days - you should by now be agreeing with me - pain in the arse.

So she rang this morning and asked for the company manager, I always love this bit because more often than not they are ringing to complain about me, she asked my name, I told her, she just said "oh", she asked again if I was the manager, I told her I owned the business, she paused and then with a deep breath let fly with her complaint - it was taking far too long to return these photo cards etc etc etc, I didn't really listen to the rest.

She finished with "...can you tell me why you take so long to return them ?"

I replied that an order for one single card wasn't really going to capture our attention or make its way to the top of the priority list, she was stunned into silence.

But stunned just for a few seconds before letting fly with another litany of complaint all voiced without the need to inhale, basically she was disgusted with my attitude and couldn't believe what I had just told her.

I reminded her that she had asked for a reason and that I had very reasonably told the truth and not tried to bullshit her, she didn't have to like the truth but there it was anyway, her one card custom wasn't really all that important to us, bear with us, we'll see to it when we have nothing else prioritised.

She put the phone down in a right temper and I'm sitting here now waiting for her boss to ring so that I can tell him exactly the same thing over again, the funny thing is that I'd printed the cards five minutes before she rang but I wasn't going to tell her that, I love it when customers lose it over teeny weeny little things and I have the freedom of choice as to whether I give a damn or not.