I’ve been doing this for many years, and MOST customers really do get it — But I still get clients that tell me they can’t meet me during the week because they “have a job,” and want me to come out on the weekend, when we are closed and I do not work, after I just told them my availability. Oh, and that’s not a reach: I’ve been told verbatim I don’t know how many times: “Well I have a job!” Or my favorite one: “Uh no, that doesn’t work for me because I work for a living!”
Really? Tell me more about this “job” of which you speak, since you seem to be the only person that has one.
And I’m not just totally full of shit too!
I am actually taking tomorrow off (not really, will be glued to my work phone and home office) because I am having my furnace and hot water tank serviced. I made the appointment weeks ahead, you see, and they gave me a available dates and a time window of arrival, an “E-T-A” if you will. So did tell them, “Well I can’t do it when you guys actually operate, because I have a job?” Ah, no. No I did not. Did I pout and explain to the dispatch how sometimes getting time off at my work is like pulling teeth? Of course not.
I have worked my fair share of Saturdays (like two weeks ago, for example), Sundays, and late nights (basically a regular thing now, oh well) for special circumstances: convenience of access, taking a weekday off and making up for, making extra money, begrudgingly (but with a smile!) offering a favor for a long-standing customer, or more rare my direct boss asking for a favor to achieve the same effect.
Everyone here has worked when they should have been at home with something cold and looking up bad project cars. That’s part of being employed. That’s a employer-employee hazard that varies depending on where you work and what you do.
But when a customer does it in a tactless manner (and I’ve heard them all, from childish-tantrums, to “do you know who I am”), they may — MAY — be tipping their hand that they feel that their time is more valuable than mine. “Oh you’re not working Saturday? Well then you have all day to make time for me when you think about it. No, no, I don’t want to hear about your personal life. I’m the one talking here!”
By all means, ask. We want your money and we want you to want us. It may work out! But once you hear an answer you don’t like, don’t press. Or maybe call someone else. Why do they never call someone else? Please call someone else, you’d reeeeeally be sticking it to me then. Except of course, I suspect competitors also don’t work during non-working hours/days off? Fascinating.
Please forgive the rant — but remember to treat your humble laborer as your fellow man.