It is not easy to deal with homo sapiens. Each and everyone of them has a different character, weaknesses and strengths. As an online store owner, I have to deal with customers and suppliers everyday. Some of these customers and suppliers are sent from heaven and some are sent from below to haunt me, but oh why?? On some days, some customers will make my day with their compliments. On some bad days, some of them can really squish my already not-so-pleasant day to the point that I feel like crying and giving up. Some customers make full use of their ‘customer is KING’ right to squeeze out every ounce of patience and sanity from me, albeit they are only ordering a piece of apparel that costs less than RM40 from me. Some are plain arrogant.
Just a few days ago, I had to bite the bullet and ‘compensate’ a customer who claimed that 2 items were missing in the parcel which I had passed to her more than 2 months ago!! Yup, you read me right – 2 freaking long months ago. I can reject her claim at point blank as it is more than 60 days ago that she collected the parcel from me. Hello, is there any online store or departmental store in this world that would entertain such a crap?? You tell me! You can read more about this customer from my other blog. For the sake of my online store’s name, I compensated her, albeit I am 99.9% sure her order was in order and nothing was missing in the parcel. It was her words against mine. My only mistake was that for this customer, I did not ask her to open up the parcel to check the items when I passed to her. I would normally ask my customers who wish to collect their stuff from me to check their parcel in front of me but on that day, I was too busy and I did not ask her to check. You see, because of 5 minutes saved, I lost even more time, money and sanity!
Today, I have to bear the wrath of yet another fussy and arrogant customer. Dealing with fussy customers need time and tact and I have no time ever since the part-time maid whom I have relied on so much quit work a month ago due to health reason. All these things happening lately have gotten me into some serious thinking for the past few days. I am thinking if it is a call from Him above for me to take a short break now to see what is more important in my life. I always believe that things happen for a reason. The circumstances of the situation that I am facing now is such that I am rendered with not much choice but to choose either one — 1) to hire a full-time maid so that I can continue working from home like I used to OR 2) take a break and be a full-time mum and do nothing but to spend more quality time with my kids and not to mention spend more time on doing house work.
Hiring a full-time Indon or Pinoy maid would require an upfront big lump sum of about RM17k (you read it right, it is seventeen thousand bucks), which is the current market rate and the rate is expected to escalate in time to come. And there is no guarantee that the maid will make my life easier. She could be my new added stress!
I am at a cross-road now. TOUGH decision to make but I have to make it real quick as the stress of handling both my business and house work is taking a serious toll on me, mentally and physically.
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