i'm not a business woman!

NEWSFLASH: I am not a business woman! I have never ever ever desired to study business or work in the business world and that was confirmed a thousand times this week.

As I have mentioned, Mogra Star is VERY poor, they are in a deficit every month so they have to be intentional about where they spend their money. For this reason, many common household items are not present here. The biggest problem I immediately saw last year was that they have no shelves in the store room where they keep their food. It is shocking and pretty disgusting actually; the tomatoes, potatoes, onions etc are just placed in piles on the floor. Granted, since they do not have much money there is not an excess of food on the floor, but it is still not sanitary at all. This week I freaked out because I went to grab a tomato and saw a white rat crawling inside the pile. GRROOSSSS
Additionally, they receive clothing donations and they don’t want to give them out to the kids all at once, so they keep the clothes in bags. The bags are not organized at all so if a small child needs pants there is no way to quickly locate them.

So I have been suggesting to them to since September they create an organized store room with shelves, but nothing has been done. First I didn’t think they understood the concept, and then I realized they simply didn’t have the money. This week I hit my limit and I decided it was important enough to spend my own money on, so I found a fundi-carpenter- and I asked him to find the costs for me. We went to the rooms and measured the spaces together and designed the shelves for both clothing and food. This is where everything went bad.

The next day he came with the costs of 4 shelves, 9 ft by 7 ft. appx $250. That was more than I was expecting for simple wood, but do-able. The crazy part was his labor, charging me $200 to build 4 shelves- I call that skin tax, obviously since I am white I can pay him well, right?? I took the quote and said I would call him later, after speaking to a few people to confirm it. Throughout the day I decided to cut back to just 4 shelves and reduce the size a bit, still providing them with enough space for the items. So when we sat down later in the day to discuss everything I asked him how long he expected to take building the shelves. He said 7-9 days, and he wanted to be paid by the day, obviously (oh, and his days might be only 3-4 hours). I looked at him very seriously and said, my sister is a fundi in the US and she could build me these shelves in 1 day, and I would not pay her $200. I will give you 3 days to get the materials and build these shelves. He protested and we finally agreed on 5 days, 5 whole 8 hour working days! But I was only paying him for 4 days, a small fraction of the original cost. At this point he was not happy with me, thinking I was cheating him, but I was even more cross with him because he would not sign a contract of any sort and was just a very unfriendly person. Looking back, I knew from the moment I met him I didn’t like his character and should not have hired him, but can’t change that now!

So day 1, I was gone all day so I called at 1pm so check up on him, but he wasn’t there yet. Great- I was scammed I thought. I come to find out he estimated the timber costs 1/5 of the price, and they didn’t know what materials to buy anymore. So I spent that evening redesigning and calculating costs, refusing to add more money (I was very harsh with him, showing him I was all business, even though I had no idea if I was being fair or not!) Eventually we came up with a plan that I thought was fine and he was to buy the materials the following day.

The next day he made a sturdy, decent shelf, I was surprisingly impressed with his work. However, he brought an assistant that helped him and demanded I pay him- not in our original budget of course. After much debate, I decided I liked the character of his partner and they did good work so I paid him. But I told him I would provide him with 1 of my students to help the following day, for free. Before he left he also casually said he underestimated the amount of wood and needed more money to buy additional wood. I am already upset with this guy, so you can imagine how this was for me. I told him I had no money and he better find a friend or some way of finding the wood because I they better be finished. After discussing how to solve yet another timber shortage problem we decided on building boxes for the food to be stored in (which ended up being great)

So he did surprisingly finish in 4 ½ days (I think he wanted to get away from me asap!) and the work he did was solid, I am impressed with it (but after all, I think any of us could build a few shelves without major issues) and even more happy that we now have proper store rooms. But because of his miscalculations we had EXTRA timber that is now wasted. When I paid him he had the nerve to ask me for a BONUS. A bonus! At this point I had no probem telling him that I think he did good work, but I could not give him a bonus because of all of his miscalculations and his bad attitude with me. I was not too charitable to him, but I was already giving him a generous pay and he was a world class jerk to me in many ways so I said no!

As much as I hated those 4 ½ days dealing with him, I learned a lot about how to be a supervisor of a project and doing business. Not to mention the cultural differences we have in work ethic and pay. I am sure I overpaid him, and he played me hard core, but now I know to use my gut more and only go with a person I can reason with and he will communicate clearly to me. At least we have proper store rooms now and organization is on its way! Sorry I didn’t have pictures of all the completions, but you can see the small before and potential after pictures! It’s been a crazy week, with scarce electricity so I better go now!