Well I suppose I have not listed anything personal in a while, so here is goes.
Work has been kind of slow lately. For those of you that don't know, I fix vintage cameras, and I buy and sell some too, but 75% of income is from repair work. When I say vintage, I mean pre 1960 German cameras like, Leica, Contax, Zeiss Ikon folding cameras, and the like. If you have never worked for yourself it is really great, because you are always treated with respect, but the down side, is you can never delegate the unpleasant chores. Myself, I get really tired of dealing with people. I get customers that are clearly suffering from advanced OCD, and send me email every day, and if I don't respond they get all bent out of shape. One of the last guys that did this I added two hours labor to his repair and listed it in the invoice as unnecessary communication. I suppose I should adapt my great uncles philosophy: In every three people there is one nice guy one idiot and one asshole. Which are you? One other down side to this job, is a complete lack of women. When I started in 1995 about 50% of my customers were female, now I have not had one woman customer in the last seven months. What is up with that?
So the basics for now are that I am making less money than last year, and having to work harder to make that money--not fun.
Work has been kind of slow lately. For those of you that don't know, I fix vintage cameras, and I buy and sell some too, but 75% of income is from repair work. When I say vintage, I mean pre 1960 German cameras like, Leica, Contax, Zeiss Ikon folding cameras, and the like. If you have never worked for yourself it is really great, because you are always treated with respect, but the down side, is you can never delegate the unpleasant chores. Myself, I get really tired of dealing with people. I get customers that are clearly suffering from advanced OCD, and send me email every day, and if I don't respond they get all bent out of shape. One of the last guys that did this I added two hours labor to his repair and listed it in the invoice as unnecessary communication. I suppose I should adapt my great uncles philosophy: In every three people there is one nice guy one idiot and one asshole. Which are you? One other down side to this job, is a complete lack of women. When I started in 1995 about 50% of my customers were female, now I have not had one woman customer in the last seven months. What is up with that?
So the basics for now are that I am making less money than last year, and having to work harder to make that money--not fun.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
b00mb00m:
It can be tough working for yourself - fixing vintage cameras sounds like so much fun, though!
renna:
thank you so so much for the awesome comment on my new set! I'm really glad you enjoyed it!