Elena 
Had some things happen this week that just got me started thinking about business and how it relates to how we feel about one another.
If you’ve been reading along, last week my family got dumped by the composition teacher because she and I disagreed about the purpose of a first draft, and because I was reluctant to have my son turn in a final without receiving the corrected draft back first. That little disagreement escalated to the point where she felt that, “We have had too many communication problems between us and my deadlines will be more than strict next year… I am afraid that we will only continue to disagree on many things.”
Well in honesty we only had this one disagreement. Everything else I kept to myself
But then I started to do the math. I was paying roughly $360 per year for this class. Sam is a 7th grader, which means she potentially could have had him for five more years. At the same rate that comes to about $1800. I have four children younger than Sam. If they all started in the eight grade, at the same rate, that would be about $9000! A net loss for her of probably closer to $10,000 – over a rough draft.
A similar situation is going on with my mother. Last year a leaky air conditioner above her bedroom caused considerable damage to her garden level apartment. It took the owner months and months to get that fixed up. About that time water from poor drainage outside of the apartment seeped in, she developed mold in her carpet and the wall board and paint started to peel. That too took them months and months to fix. So my mother has basically been in a leaky, wet apartment for almost an entire year. Finally they got everything sealed and fixed, but when my mother asked that they clean the carpet, the manager told her the carpet was filthy and that it was her responsibility to get it cleaned! So, compliant as my mother is, she called in a carpet cleaning company. However they wouldn’t touch it because of the mold problem and told her the carpet needed to be replaced. The manager wouldn’t budge. Mr. Pete and I went to talk to her and we were basically standing eyeball to eyeball, and she still insisted that they would not clean the carpet!
The estimate we had for my mom’s carpet was about $75. My mom’s rent was $700 per month. She is moving out this weekend. She has lived there for eight years. Assuming she could have lived another eight years in good health I estimate she would have paid about $67,000 in rent. For a $75.00 carpet cleaning the manager just tossed out $67,000!
Mr. Pete and I are both small business people. I had been known to drive 38 miles out of my way with a baby in the car just to deliver a letter that a doctor needed ASAP! I did it in the name of costumer service and keeping a costumer happy! Mr. Pete too has traveled far to drop of an instrument or do an emergency repair just to keep a costumer happy. We have also tried to meet concerns of eBay costumers weeks after the sale, sometimes with incredible demands! Are we old school or just nuts? It just seemed to me that most of the time keeping an old customer happy is more cost effective than trying to find a new one! A little finessing of both of these situations would have been a lot less costly!
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