*On the phone, May 10th*
"Hi, I had an appointment with you on May 28th?"
Yeah?
"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to cancel. I found someone who will do it a LOT sooner."
Okay.
"Sorry about that...I'll keep you in mind for next time, though....?" He hesitated, as if he were waiting for me to offer him something sooner.
Okay.
"Well...bye..."
Bye.
Here's the thing, kids...I like getting paid. I like getting paid sooner rather than later. So if I can do your tattoo today and get paid today, I will. I won't tell you to come in a month from today if I COULD do it today. I don't think people get that. I prefer to have the money when the car payment is due instead of three weeks after when I'm getting angry phone calls from the bank. Same goes for my mortgage. I like to eat every day, more than once. So I'm not going to postpone getting money from anyone unless there are already other people in line that are going to be paying me today and tomorrow, et cetera.
When I'm making appointments with people, I make a point of bringing my appointment book over to them and making a big show of flipping through all the pages so that they can see every day has stuff written all over it, and I'm flipping through weeks and weeks of full days to find an empty spot. I think people think I'm bullshitting when I say I don't have anything free for a month or more. I'm not. I honestly don't think I'm that great, but people really seem to dig what I'm doing and they don't mind waiting for it. Apparently I'm doing something right, and fairly consistently. So what I'm not getting is these people who come running in, panting and slobbering for me to tattoo them, then they can't believe they have to wait. I don't know if they feel like the guy who discovers the supermodel standing in line at the grocery store or what. They're always dismayed that they won't be my first.
I'd just as soon scrape off some of these barnacles who want it yesterday. They're pains in the ass to deal with and I'd probably never make them happy anyway. The yahoo I mentioned above isn't the first, I get them pretty frequently. He'll 'keep me in mind for next time'? Oh, I'm sure he will, and I'm slobberingly grateful for that. I'll keep him in mind, too. Next time I'll tell him the wait is two years.
