In anything we do, errors and mistakes are bound to happen, and no one can completely stay off errors; we only try our best to reduce such occurrences. In a business setting, errors are bound to happen in the process of handling one or two areas, and that was exactly what I experienced last week after a few years of not experiencing anything like that.
I’m into the laundry business, and last week Friday, one of the clients close to my workplace brought two children’s shirts for me to work on. The thing is, the lady has a laundry service at home, but those particular two shirts are not always washed properly by the laundry person at home, so she normally hands them over to me whenever her children want to use the shirts. That day, the shirts were brought to me by one of the staff of the woman who’s the boss of the big salon office close to me.
I worked on the clothes, and along the line, a dark part of one of the shirts got bleached by the bleach I used to wipe off the stubborn stain on the white part.
When I saw it, I was immediately weighed down, thinking about how harsh the woman was going to react to the news of the clothes being spoiled. Meanwhile, I had seen her several times talk harshly to people, which says a lot about her nature, and also how her staff (ladies) usually spoke with fear whenever they came to drop clothes with me.
How do I handle the situation?
This was the bugging question that troubled me all through the day and night while waiting for the next day to meet her.
The only solution was to beg her, and if she insisted on me buying a new shirt as replacement, I was also ready for it. But then, the approach mattered a lot. I had concluded that she was going to spill out a lot, and you know, I might lose myself too and react, considering the fact that she isn’t that old—she’s a very young lady—but still, I just needed to absorb everything she would say and be polite enough with my pleas.
Saturday night came, she sent one of her girls to collect the clothes, and I decided to follow the girl instead with the clothes. To my greatest surprise, the lady I thought would roar became very calm like a dove while I gave her the error report.
Yo! It was unbelievable to me!
She said she understood because she’s also into business, and errors are bound to happen. When she offered to pay for my services, I refused, and she refused to let me go without getting paid. So she forced me to take half of the money if I couldn’t take all.
Thanks for reading
Photo used is mine