Welcome to The Conservative Cave©!Join in the discussion! Click HERE to register.
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Orrex (51,492 posts) Sun Sep 11, 2016, 12:19 PMA craft show annoyance My wife and I have an Etsy shop through which she sells her magnificent artwork, while I peddle chainmail odds and ends. It's not retirement money, but it helps with the bills, etc. A couple of times a year we do craft shows, usually with a "spooky" or "horror" vibe, given the nature of her style. Invariably, I get a few knuckleheads who park in (or right in front of) our booth and proceed to tell me all about chainmail, as if I don't have a whole table full of the stuff on display. They'll tell me at length about their friend who makes chainmail, or the piece that they themselves have been working on, etc. I'm good at expressing polite, tolerant interest, but it annoys the crap out of me because I know from experience that they're not going to buy anything. Also, their placement is likely interfering with other potential customers' ability to see what I'm offering, so I have zero incentive to humor them. Further, at the risk of self-congratulation, I've been doing this for a quarter century, so it's rare that someone will tell me something that I don't already know about the craft. "Did you know that people used to wear this as armor?" they'll ask. Or "You can make this faster by coiling your wire around a rod." Or "That's 18 gauge? You can get a tighter weave by using 16 gauge." No shit, random passerby. Thanks for your input.
mopinko (46,103 posts) Sun Sep 11, 2016, 12:41 PM3. art fairs nearly killed me. damn i hated them. i used to make political buttons. i sold a fair number at the fairs i took them to. but damn, i am making a $3 sale, but i have to have a 20 minute political conversation w every damn customer. some people i shared a booth w were jealous that i was selling all day and they sold little or nothing. when i counted up the dollar bills i usually had less than they did, as long as they sold 2 coffee cups. and did i sell ANY of the art pieces i had there? zip, nada, nothing. the flip side is the people who would say- oh, i always wanted to do ceramics. then they spend a half and hour picking your brain about the process. you want to shake them and say- i went to college for this shit. if you really want to know, i can refer you to a bunch of good schools. otherwise, no, i am not gonna stand here and educate you for free.
Orrex (51,492 posts) Sun Sep 11, 2016, 12:48 PM4. Absolutely spot on. Certainly I didn't study "chainmail" in college, but I don't want to give a real-time tutorial, either! Usually I'll say "well, you take one ring and join it to another, and repeat until finished." Then I'll direct them to any of the dozens of how-to sites online of the hundreds of YouTube videos on the subject. It's a business venue, after all, and I've paid a fee to be there, so I don't feel any obligation to nod and smile while a non-customer is standing there wasting my time. And it's never a matter of "well, they might buy something," because by now I know the type, and they never buy something.
mopinko (46,103 posts) Sun Sep 11, 2016, 12:51 PM5. never ever. you are spot on, too. and those fees aint cheap.
JustABozoOnThisBus (13,928 posts) Sun Sep 11, 2016, 03:20 PM8. I hate chain mail ... ... it's just some dumb message, and at the end it tells you to send it to twenty friends. As if I would bother them. Of course, if all goes well, I'll have riches beyond my wildest lottery fantasies. So maybe chain mail is not so bad. I just never knew where chain mail originated. Now I do. Keep up the good work. By the way, you can make looser, more ventilated chain mail by coiling your wire around a random passerby's head.
