Customers

This has been an odd week for me.
I have  been confused about what day it is each and every day.
I swore this morning when Rick said it was Thursday that it was Wednesday.

Thirty minutes ago I took a break, left my office and went downstairs for some fruit and to refill my glass of ice water.
I filled the glass with ice, even cut a lemon, and then grabbed some raspberries and strawberries and went back to my office carrying my glass of water.
I sit down at my desk and immediately the phone rings. Good I think, perfect timing.

After the call I grab a couple of raspberries and with my other hand grab my glass of what I think is water. Nope! I forgot to pour water into my glass of ice with a nice slice of lemon.
See what I mean?
Is this the beginning of dementia? Alzheimers?

I've also had some real pieces of work while at work.
Honestly I don't know how working with the public will allow me to like people ever again.
They don't make it easy let me tell you.

Then this morning we got an online review that I found pretty funny.
I find it funny not because he said nice things, no that was nice.
But the reasons he gave the amount of stars he did give us.

This man drove me crazy. Called 3 times a day for an education.
At one point I told him that we may not be a good fit for him because he was making decisions based on price instead of product and end result. Sometimes difficult people are better to walk away from.
The one company I knew he was referring to we have to fix their work on a daily basis and we also know about a law suit but of course I can not share that information with customers. If he was going to choose them because they were cheaper so be it.
They'll come back to us in the end sadly enough.  
Besides Rick says, he doesn't discount his quality of work nor his price.
We aren't the most expensive in town, there are a lot of those, we aren't the cheapest though either. We lie somewhere in the middle.

This man was tenancious as a pit bull, he kept calling with more questions and I kept answering him with my pleasant professional demeanor (that's Peg she's nice, Margaret and Peggy are bitches!) and then I'd hang up and swear like a sailor. (Yes, in a work environment I can be a bit Sybil like.)
He wrote emails on weekends asking me more questions.
I was on vacation and I got two voicemails from him.
More questions....It took him that long to decide. 
But he is now happy and that's all that matters I suppose.
Well that and his check cleared.

I wanted you to read his review but if I give you the link it will show you too much of my personal information as well as this man's. I know, I know, we're all friends here but I think it's best I just copy and post his review. For some reason the stars would not copy. He gave us 4 out of 5. I also want to point out that we tried to convince him to make this bathtub white and enter the 21st century but neither he nor his wife would hear of it.

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C. S.'s Review
City Name, VA

National Tub and Tile Inc
9/13/2011 Rick Hxxxxs is the Michelangelo of tub refinishing!
Here's the story. Old bathtub with a big chip out of it and a ruined finish. 1970s avocado color. I called three companies. Three different processes to re-do a tub and widely varying prices. In the end I chose NTT for the dumbest of reasons: they actually have an office manager (helpful Peggy) who answers the phone, shares info, and schedules the work. The other two companies appear to be one guy with a cell phone and intermittent coms. One guy was $65 less, but I couldn't get him to return my calls when I needed him.

Rick came out Saturday for a few minutes just to check out the tub and see if he could match the color. He was back this afternoon to do the work. (Peggy alerted us that he was running late.)

OK, so Rick prepares the tub, takes out the old caulking, recaulks, and then spends a huge amount of time matching the color exactly. What was good enough for my wife and me wasn't good enough for Rick. It had to be exact.

When he finally got the perfect match, he got to work. The job looks terrific. You can't tell where the gouge was. The color matches perfectly. The tub looks better than the rest of our house. We are inviting company over just to come see the refinished tub.

Why no fifth star? I'll add it in five years if the tub looks as good then as it does now.

Hey, other tub refinishers. Time to hire some office staff. It will help your business and it will help the economy.

Bad reason for not giving us the 5th star I think since this will look brand new for at least 18-20 years and probably many more than that. But hey since this past week has been mostly cranky ass hats this was a nice change of pace. 

Speaking of ass hats this one guy called us telling us he lost his sense of taste because of the smell of having his bathroom tiles and tub reglazed.
He asked if anyone ever told me that before.
No, I'd remember that one.
Seriously lost his sense of taste?
Now we have had people get hysterical about the fumes and smells and ask if they can leave while this is being done. Then when it's actually done they say, "Oh that wasn't so bad or I thought it would be worse"
The problem is they read outdated info on the web and are convinced they know everything about this topic. I explain how things are done today but you know how it is they believe what they want to believe or a friend who had it done 25 yrs ago when things were so different.

So no, never has anyone gotten upset about the smell after the work was completed nor has anyone lost any of their senses.
Possibly just their sense.