I think this pretty accurately describes my diplomatic approach. I HAVE no diplomacy. Christopher possesses all the diplomatic genes for the two of us. When neighbours (since moved) used our lawn to dispose of their empty beer bottles, yes, Christoper was the one to say - well now....we don't
know that they are
their bottles... and I'm sure they didn't
throw them over the fence (in the middle of our yard?!?) .....perhaps they just dropped them and didn't
mean to....
I on the other hand, I wanted to put them in a container and pop them back quietly and discreetly over the fence - I thought that was quite a calm and reasonable response to the situation....
I'm afraid I most probably take the same approach to business - potentially disastrous, yes, I know, but thus far no problems....HOWEVER.... I won't say I haven't been tempted at times... Yesterday, for example, I was trolling leisurely through the Alchemy section on Etsy - for those of you not in the know, this is a section on Etsy (one of the online communities that I sell through) where customers can request custom made items and specify such things as colour, materials, design, a deadline for the item(s) to be made by and price. One of these such alchemy requests caught my eye in particular - it was tempting. VERY tempting. About as deliciously tempting as an ice cold banana blue berry smoothie on a 37 C degree 99% humidity day - OKAY - granted not ALL of you like blue berry smoothies, or smoothies at all for that matter - just sub in!
What was this deliciously tempting request you ask? .......Someone..... had placed a request to have something made for them for $1US. They stated that they wanted to see what they could get someone to make for them for ONE DOLLAR. What can I get? Can I get something for ONE DOLLAR? ONE DOLLAR?!?!? Hmmmmmmm.....my initial gut reaction was to respond - yes. Yes, you can. You may have the lint from my pocket for ONE DOLLAR - but you will have to pay for the P&P. I seriously considered entering a bid on this request so that I could offer up my precious pocket lint.
Then another thought occurred to me I could put in a bid - Yes! This FABULOUS custom made a-line hooded coat with bell-shaped sleeves is YOURS for just ONE DOLLAR!!! It's the postage that is the killer! Would you believe.......$215.37 ????!!!!!!!!!!
It was EVER so tempting......
Another thing I've come to notice over time, yet another situation where my "running with scissors" style diplomacy wouldn't go over so well I fear is with the dreaded non-paying customer....Hasn't reallly been a problem for me but I've noticed that particularly online there seems to be a problem with this for a lot of people for some reason - people seem to think they can "purchase" an item - put it in their virtual basket, proceed through check out, yank it virtually from your store and then...just not pay for it - or that it's ok to pay for it say in a few days time or perhaps a week. I just don't get it. Why? Why would people do this?! It's like that giant squirrel spending up large on Cadbury Nutbreak bars and hiding them in the dishwasher - WHY!??!?!?! Perhaps an ad similar to the anti video/dvd pirating one needs to be made as an attempt to deter people from this kind of shopping mentality - You wouldn't go and take something from a shop and then come back and pay for it in a week???!?!?!!!! - I'm thinking this isn't going to be particularly effective though - about as effective as trying to get Andrew to see the pointlessness of arguing for the sake of arguing - comprende usted?
Luckily, my subtle diplomatic skills have devised what I believe could be a highly effective solution. I propose utilising the "notes to customer" feature at the end of the check out process to add a wordy long-winded list of "small print" shall we say, with sections, titles and subtitles and decimal points (for "easy" customer reference after the fact)! In amongst all this superfluous wordiness there should definitely be a paragraph or perhaps just a few negligible sentences worded more or less along these lines " blah blah blah blah in the case of non-payment....blah blah blah blah blah committed to pay or forfeit first born child and/or pound of flesh blah blah blah blah blah blah" ....would certainly keep people on their toes....
.....and surely points for incorporating Classic Lit. ....?
