Not much solace Jim, but I'm reminded of upholstering the '40 coupe a couple decades ago.

Anyone who's started/owned their own small business, or ever dreamt of it, thinks of the little guy expressing his entrepreneurial heroism or some such attribute. While true for many, in too many other cases it's a matter of the guy having to work for himself because he's used up all the employers who grew tired of his poor work habits. Because they don't understand the positive work traits of meeting promises and such other nuisances they repeatedly "buy business" with underpricing. So goes the cycle.

On the 40 coupe I shot myself in the foot (as we all do when making decisions that don't work out). The bride comes home from work one evening and asks if I'm about at the point of upholstering the car. My reply is "yep, why you askin'?" Turns out one of her co-workers has a young man new to their church who's just gotten out of Walla Walla from a drug beef and needs to get his life back on course. He claims to be an accomplished upholsterer and just needs someone to give him a break. Yeah, red flags all over the field eh? Well, being somewhat sappy and believing in all that redemption stuff I interview him. He has an impressive book of pics showing some of his past work. So we set up a plan. Because he's broke, has a small family, and just out of the can he's working out of his father in laws garage. Well, I'm not that sappy, so I don't give him the car, but give him access to the car to do all the measuring and pattern making. I buy all the materials directly from the supply house so there's no loss of control of material quality concerns. He gets started like a house afire. Trim panels made up, carpet cut, and then.......bupkus for a couple weeks. Yep, excuses aplenty...............familiar eh? As it happens, 4th of July that year was on a Friday and the shop was going to be closed for three days, so I gave him an ultimatum. If he ever wants to see a dime of income he comes to my shop and we work til it's done, no matter how much inconvenience. He whines about needing his large sewing table. I say I've got plywood and 2x4s aplenty, how big a table do you need? Upshot is he needed the money and finished it that weekend (actually by Saturday evening)....and did a fabulous job. But it wasn't going to happen that quickly based on his own initiative.

I get the "living within a budget" thing, but too often a "business" offers a lower price when compared to reputable shops because that's the only way they can attract customers who make that their primary decision point. Of course money only represents value in a transaction, time and aggravation are other cost factors even if we don't equate a monetary amount to them. Reminiscent of the old filter commercial tag line............."pay me now or pay me later". Like I said, small solace, but we've all done it to ourselves at some point or other.