I’ve been living in the area between frazzled and stressed lately. Here’s why:

1) I never have enough time. I still don’t feel caught up from the craziness of November/December and am behind on soapmaking and filling orders for the stores that carry the line. When I focus on one thing, another thing suffers. I don’t believe in the “supermom” myth and I don’t expect to be able to do it all, but I do need to find a better balance.

2) My daughter is in the Terrible 2′s. She can go from my sweet little to a demon quickly. Lately she’s been telling me that she wants to be a bad guy! It’s adorable and so frustrating. I know that this is something that children go through, but I’m always afraid that she’s going to keep growing up and it’s not going to change. I don’t know what to do sometimes.

3) I have a gray hair. I’m okay with being 30, even happy about it. I’m not okay with my hair changing color, because I love my natural color and don’t want to even think about dying it. Then the inevitable will happen: I’ll get old. My body will start breaking down and soon I’ll be blogging about hip replacement and whatnot. Nevermind, I can’t even talk about this right now.

4) My neighbor across the hall has a violent ex that keep breaking into our building. He was screaming in the hallway the other day and punching walls and just being scary psycho. I cracked open the door and told him to leave now or I’m calling the police. I know I probably shouldn’t have done that, but he did get a bit calmer after realizing that other people knew what he was doing, and I would have felt way worse if he had pushed her down the stairs while I was sitting in my apartment listening to them. I’m worried about what’s going to happen when he comes back.

All of this, plus the little stuff, has been weighing on my mind so much this week. Then I get an email from an online customer.

Bad Customer ~“I just received my order, and I have to say that I have never seen anything like this before?!

I am very disappointed thus far, and yet, I have not even tried them. I really don”t know what to say beyond that. Just disappointed.”

I was so offended, I felt personally attacked. I don’t understand why she would be so rude, instead of sending a nice message inquiring about it? Why would she think that I would under-fill my jars? I know that I’ve worked so hard for this and truly believe in giving a great product at a great price and it shocked me that someone would automatically think the worst.

Me ~ “You received 6oz of scrub and 8oz of lotion. My products are priced by weight, not volume and I fill each jar or bottle by hand using a scale. I use those size jars because it’s unattractive and a pain for product to be spilling out over the tops. My listings are very clear about the weight of product being sold, and the packaging has nothing to do with that. I’ve never had a customer before send such an email, probably because everyone else realizes that jar size and product weight are not the same thing.”

I wasn’t really sure what to say. I wanted to explain to her that I didn’t rip her off but I was also really mad and wanted to not be nice.

Bad Customer ~ “actually, I do not see that anywhere on you site.

great customer service.”

I was really really mad after that. I appreciate all my customers and take pride in my exceptional service. Every time an order has arrived damaged I’ve either replaced it or given a refund. With her though, I just felt like she wanted to be difficult and there was nothing I could do to change it. I wasn’t about to refund her purchase or send her more product, because nothing was wrong with hers.

Me ~ “The product weight is in the listing title. You obviously saw it, because you referenced it in your first convo. I typically offer excellent customer service and go out of my way for my customers but I do not appreciate being sent rude messages, and I don’t want business from difficult people. I’ve sold over 500 6oz scrubs and 8oz lotions in the past year and you are the only person who has had this problem, which leads me to believe that the problem is you. I simply don’t have the time to deal with people who won’t be happy no matter what the answer is. My listings are clear and it is never my intent to mislead anyone.”

I’m not really proud of being so rude to a customer, even if she was so frustrating to me. With everything else going on, I just couldn’t take it. And it’s true that I don’t want business from difficult people, if someone doesn’t like my product I’m fine with them not buying it and not bothering me. I’m also fed up with going out of my way for people that do not appreciate it, in life more than in business, but since I work from home and this business is a huge part of my life there is a definite overlap. Should I have done things differently? Like, offer her a refund or something free just to smooth things over even though I didn’t do anything wrong? Is the customer always right?