Put a pause in there

The good news is that Whitey was apparently rallying the troops yesterday morning! I had 6 eggs last night which gave me enough to fill the 2 dozen order today. Yeah!!!!

Had a fabulous day at work yesterday too. It was one of those days when your past comes back and you have to be very thankful that you didn’t burn any bridges. There are times when it would be easy to simply speak your mind on the way out the door. If you ever think this might work for you, I recommend that you wait 30 minutes and then see if you still feel the need to say anything. This is actually a lesson I was taught by a friend who has an eBay store. I was selling a few items on eBay and there are times when you simply get the most ridiculous comments or questions from buyers. All information between buyer and seller is exchanged via email. The problem with email is that it is very simple to write re-actively. This is not always a good thing. Sometimes what we are feeling is just an initial gut reaction to what we perceive as offensive – if you stop, walk away, and focus on something else for 30 minutes you might find that there is a change in your perspective.

This actually has saved me from looking very foolish. I read an email that infuriated me because of the accusation the buyer was making regarding charges for an item. I took my friends advice and walked away. I came back later that night and read through the email again. In the second reading I noticed the buyer eluded to the fact that she had purchased multiple items. The system had not combined shipping (she went through individual invoicing, rather than selecting the multiple items). Sitting calmly at the keyboard, I looked up my policy on combined shipping and calculated what she should have paid, refunded the extra shipping charges on PayPal, and then sent her an email through eBay identifying the amount refunded and the correct process for checkout in order to combine shipping. The customer was new to eBay and thrilled that I had detailed the information on multiple item checkout. The customer has since come back and purchased many items from my eBay store, she has given me fabulous reviews, and probably most importantly, defended my store practices on public eBay boards, along with other regular customers, when a bitter individual tried to get my store closed. Sometimes I wonder what we could avoid if people would step away for a few minutes, take a second look, and then make a conscious decision.

It is good to pause.