From now on I will be able to enjoy discounts when I order Iranian Caviar over the Internet or when I shop at Tiffany's. Also my bills for Dom Perignon will be way down. Finally able to enjoy the wonders of being an old fart!
Traditionally I don't work or have my employees work on my birthday. Besides I try not to get engaged in any negative thoughts or actions and at the exact time I showed my little head to the world 65 years ago, I meditate on what I want to accomplish the following year.
Status quo is fine with me...I am happy (Felix means happy in Latin) with what I have.
I am healthy, not near wealthy but can pay my bills and travel, and I am surrounded by love. What else can I wish for? Only that everything may continue to be the same the following twelve months.
Sometimes I reminisce on what I had the opportunity to do regarding my design profession and can see that I left my footprint from
With over 40 years in the design business I think I know it all, but nooooo! ...They always surprise me with ever more creative ways for not paying some of my invoices. No matter how you draw a contract and you think it is ironclad the client will always slip through a minuscule crack and evade or relentlessly put the brakes on a final payment.
When I was young, inexperienced and beautiful and I was in design school we had a lady professor who taught us the business part of interior design.
The first day of class she showed up in a smart burnt red "tailleur". Patent leather pumps and belt and a lovely camellia made of black silk with white polka dots that had landed on her lapel completed the “ensamble”.
She opened her briefcase and produced a shinny hatchet that she carefully placed on the desk catching our undivided attention. Then she introduced herself telling us what her classes were going to be about: how to avoid being ripped off by our clients.
She started saying that anyone who hired a designer to tell him or her how to live their lives or where to store the underwear must be crazy. With that premise injected in our brains she started to tell us some of the millions ways a client uses to avoid fulfilling their part of the contract while blaming it on us.
My eyes wondered from the camellia to the belt, to her lips painted the right shade of red to the hatchet and at the same time paid very close attention to what she had to say.
Lesson 1: Ordering
After you and your client have agreed upon the elements to be ordered in the form or furniture, lighting, wallpaper, fabric, etc., you MUST receive payment for 100% of the order plus a design fee if any.
You will NEVER order anything using your own company money. If for some reason the client calls you up one early morning saying that the check for the fabric is in the mail and to “please, please, please daaaarling… order the fabrics while the check is on its way because the rehearsal dinner for their daughter is going to be at their house and they must have the curtains in time for the party”.
At this moment you are probably commiserating about her and say to yourself “what the heck, let’s order it, it is going to be only a couple days until the check arrives at our office and with those couple days the workroom will be able to finish the work on time”.
That was the time when the professor placed her right arm on the desk, pick up the hatchet with her left hand, lifted it up in the air and said: “you might as well sever your right arm than write a check on behalf of a client’s order…Do you understand me?
“You are lucky if you receive the check two or three months later after the party is already history and after they had paid the caterers, the florist, the engraved invitations and the luxurious cruise they have given the kids as a wedding present".
That hatchet never left the desk while we were in class with her and she used the bloody image over and over again with different examples until it was embedded in our minds forever.
I will never forget the camellia either.
Apio Verde atrasado :)
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