Animal Antics
Today, I get to pause and breathe after the recent whirlwind of activity. I am grateful for a few days of cold weather—we got a skiff of snow overnight—that will give me a reason to stay inside. The heater is on in the greenhouse and the seedlings will be okay until temps warm up again this weekend. The chicks are snug in their brooder box, and we have no shortage of animal entertainments in the yard.
This gentleman has been wooing a small flock of hens for the past week, without much success:
He spends a lot of time out by the chicken coop, too, and that makes Dave nervous. Dave doesn’t like competition.
The robins decided which porch rafter bay they liked best and finished building a nest. This is right outside my kitchen window, so I’ll have a front row seat when babies are born:
We have not seen any bear sign yet, although I know they are out of hibernation.
We decided to raise pigs this summer after all. We’ve had several inquiries from customers about reserving pork for the fall. Our pig supplier texted me on Sunday and asked if we wanted any this year. I suspect Cassie might have mentioned us, because this lady also provides the 4-H kids with their livestock, and Cassie was heading to her farm right after the wedding shower. I called the processor yesterday and made sure we had a date reserved, then texted the supplier and said we’d take five piglets some time in the next couple of weeks.
I’m going to put a roast into the crockpot after breakfast, then tackle the to-do list.
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I need to comment here about unreasonable expectations. I checked my e-mail when I got to the hotel Sunday evening and noticed that I had received an order that afternoon for several back issues of Twists and Turns through the Big Sky Knitting Designs website. Those are delivered to the customer via digital download. I noted the arrival of the order and moved on to the next e-mail.
When I got home Monday evening, the husband mentioned that there was a message on the answering machine from a customer about a pattern. It was after business hours (and I was tired), so I made a note to myself to deal with the problem first thing Tuesday morning. However, I came down in the morning to discover that the customer had filed a dispute with PayPal for non-fulfillment of the order.
I suspect the files are in the customer’s spam folder. I very rarely get complaints about files not being delivered. When I do, I send the files directly to the customer via e-mail and follow up to make sure they have been received.
I don’t even argue about these types of problems anymore. A dispute filing is a black mark against my seller rating, so I immediately refund the customer’s payment. I did the same with this customer.
I included a message to the effect that I was sorry the customer felt the need to file the dispute and explained that I had been traveling. I also said that I would have e-mailed the missing files immediately had I been given the opportunity to resolve the problem.
This is one of the unfortunate side effects of the culture in which we’re living. People have developed incredibly unrealistic expectations about almost everything. I am a one-person operation and occasionally, I am away from home. I don’t put my cell phone number on the website because I am careful about who has that number and because I do not believe it is necessary for everyone to have instant access to me. I do think my knitting patterns are worth purchasing, certainly, but they aren’t so important that the customer can’t wait 24 hours for an answer to a question. However, people have been trained to expect an immediate response for everything, no matter how trivial.
I’m old enough to remember when we had to send away via snail mail for items, and the terms and conditions almost always stated, “Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.” If some of these people had to wait 6-8 weeks for delivery these days, they might die of impatience. 🧐