Is the Customer ALWAYS Right?

When they accuse you—maybe falsely

This story is a hard experience for me. I am upset at both myself and my customer, and his customer. I typed the heading on this report a week ago. It used to read When They Accuse You Falsely. Now I have added the Maybe. I know a couple of things. When I (we) get into trouble our emotions, pride, and ever-crouching sin can get our minds pretty tangled. I want to behave justly and kindly but find it difficult to even know what just behavior is in some cases.

Life can be confounding sometimes. Sound theology helps iron out a lot of situations. But, we are confronted with a world where we are all liars, all proud, all make unknown and known errors, and sometimes we are falsely accused. I want business to be simple but it is not.

A Good Job Gone Bad

I had an 8’ long cabinet I picked up for repairs from a restoration company. They had me pick it up at their customer’s house. So, that made me a sub-contractor for this particular work. That was OK. I do a fair amount of work for this company. It has been a great relationship. Their customers gave great reports about me. The company always paid me promptly. No real problems; but then—the cabinet fiasco. The whole thing (I am not recording all the sordid details) turned into she said, he said, he didn’t do (but we know he did do), money issues and… well, if you have ever been in business you know the scenario. I know I am a sinner and far from perfect.

In fact, I have taught my apprentice not to ever use the word perfect to describe anything we do. We are not perfect. We strive to be perfect but do not claim to have achieved that status. This is not an excuse to deliver bad work. It does recognize the reality that, simply put, we are not perfect. For the cabinet in question, I thought I had done great work. We have multiple five-star reviews on the internet. I really work to produce superior work. In the shop my eyes and my apprentice’s eyes saw a well performed repair/refinish job. The customer’s eyes saw a project that was so bad that the cabinet had to be redone by someone else. I cannot explain this. It just is.

Acting Honorably in Imperfect Situations

So, how does all this relate to the work of producing a well trained apprentice? I am convinced that apprenticeship training must include discussions about the bad experiences, the errors, the false accusations, lies and (hopefully not) counter lies, excuses, rotten circumstances, bad advice from suppliers, our own bad work, poor communication, laziness, and dishonesty. Somehow there needs to be discussions about how Christians may justly and wisely act within an imperfect world. How do we apply our belief in the sovereignty of God in all circumstances?

We ought to discuss our own possibilities for errors and our propensity to deny them. We should teach our apprentices how to behave wisely within difficult circumstances. We should discuss how to christianly handle situations where the customer is clearly wrong. We might talk about the covenantal nature of responsibility and what that means for a business owner. A discussion about money and how its role in disputes ought to be rightly handled would be useful. Anyway, I am convinced we ought not hide these events and conversations from our apprentices. Maybe by God’s grace, our embarrassments can help them become better than we are.

Apprentice Has a WIN & the Master Learns Something

A Refinishing Job Well Done

This week Tim completed his first solo contract project. It turned out great. His customer was pleased as punch (however pleased a punch may be) and handed him a handful of cash. It was a win for everybody. I consulted with my aspiring apprentice near the end about final details—how to perfect the work for presentation to the customer. Tim was pretty proud of his work on this. He fixed any minor imperfections to the best of his ability and turned out a great job.

Old Dogs CAN Learn New Tricks

It was a good moment as he asked for final advice. We like and respect each other. I believe he has the gift to become really good at this type of work. It was my privilege to be a part of his learning. I took a few pictures, before and after. The color I worried was too dark turned out perfect. Sometimes it is best to simply let the apprentice learn on his own, but this time I was the one who learned something i.e. clear coats brighten dark-stained wood grain. And, sometimes if you remain silent you can avoid having said something stupid.

Young Dogs Learn New Tricks Even Faster

Tim has started to move on to a new type of skill now. He is building his first drawer. The more I can teach him the better for both of us. He learns new skills and I have more time to do other work, like seeking new customers or playing on Facebook. I pray daily for God’s blessing on both of us and for success for us as we build this business.

Tim’s finished cabinet refinishing project

Customer Care: The Color of Success

I failed in some of my duties as Master Craftsman this week. I should have been helping my apprentice understand how to communicate with the customer on important details and decisions. In this case the now fully sanded cabinet needed to be re-stained—but in what color? My apprentice simply chose a color he thought would be close to the original cabinet color and went with it. Me, I think the antique piece is considerably too dark. And it is too late to change the color since the stain is all soaked into the wood.

Color Me Diligent

There is some kind of principle muttering and puttering around the edges of my mind concerning this event. There likely are lessons here that are transferable to any trade.

I believe we tend to be lazy sometimes or at least lack diligence in our work. I should have advised Tim to get approval from the customer for the color used prior to applying it. After all, we have a stain sample board in the shop that could easily have been used to confirm a correct color.

Everyday Choices & Taking Care of Your Customer

There have to be a million choices made every day by small business managers that are similar to this. Color, fabric type, quality of a part, decisions that a customer ought to have a say in should not be guessed at and supplied by the worker and then fobbed off on the customer as ‘well, its done now—sorry.’

Once again there is a moral question about doing what is right for the customer. As the master craftsman I believe it is my duty to teach that right morality and wisdom to my apprentice. He is under my care, and needs to hear Godly wisdom on how to handle normal issues of the day.

The Apprentice Lands His First Contract

This week marks the first contract for furniture labor sold by my apprentice.

Fixing The General’s Water Damaged Furniture

About six weeks ago Tim and I were working at a customer’s house (The General—a retired Marine Corp general). The General’s house was flooded due to a frozen water pipe above the upstairs ceiling. Water washed everywhere including directly down on the top of a nice antique cabinet from the circa, 1920’s. The cabinet was totaled and the General decided to give it to me. I barely accepted the piece because it was so badly damaged that I was uncertain I could ever get the money out of it needed to justify its repair. But we hauled it back to the shop.

I soon gave the cabinet to Tim with the instruction that if he could sell it, or wanted to keep it for himself, I would instruct him in its renovation. It would be his first independent project.

If the Key Fits!

The story took a strange but happy turn soon thereafter. My faithful apprentice was stripping and refinishing an old pie safe made sometime prior to 1890 (there was no plywood in it). The pie safe had a door with lock but no key and none of the keys on my sample key ring fit the lock either. Tim, on a whim (or an urge from the Spirit of God), decided to try the key from the 1920’s cabinet on the older pie safe—and it worked!

This is the stripped and refinished pie safe.

The Apprentice Becomes the Contractor

After contacting the pie safe customer with this news and conversing with them a few times Tim was able to contract with that customer to rebuild The General’s former cabinet for a price of $700. It is, admittedly, not a lot of money for the hours Tim will spend restoring this cabinet, but it is the birth of new skills that will help him become independent in this trade.

This is Tim’s excellent work on the rescued china cabinet!

Now Tim is branching out on his own in terms of skills, including how to contract work, pricing, materials ordering and more. And, I have the privilege to be his mentor all along the way.