When I was first starting out in business for myself, I was given the following advice. If for whatever reason, I were ever offered to quote for a job which I didn't want to do, I should work out the price, double it and submit this figure as my firm quotation. If I didn't get the job, that would be fine, because I wouldn't want to do it anyway. However, if the client was prepared to pay a high price, then at least I’d know that my efforts would be worthwhile, in the end.
This was one such job. The client was a major department store in London and my instructions were simple - produce by hand, labels for whisky decanters in an old style which was obviously handwritten (in other words, not too neat). The writing was to be in black with the heading in gold paint or ink. Obviously, it would have been much cheaper to have had them printed, but they wanted to say, on the back label, "to reflect the quality of this very rare, single grain whisky, every front label has been handwritten". This was a long time ago and I can’t remember the exact quantity but it ran into four figures.
Over a six month period, I produced the decanter labels as shown below. Even although I wrote them over such a long period, they were still mind-numbingly boring to write. Fortunately, I was very well paid for the job and I suppose that it was very good practice - at producing rough handwriting!
As I said, the whole job could have been printed, and it would have looked pretty much the same, at a fraction of the cost. However, the customer is always right and there is always some nut somewhere, prepared to take on work like this!
What was your most tedious job, and how did you cope with the boredom?
I did post a copy of this label a couple of years ago, but it seems to have disappeared - I probably pressed the wrong button!
