Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I don't like the money side of business

I hate talking money with my daycare customers. It makes me so uncomfortable ... like I feel like I don't *deserve* to be paid or something.

This morning one family dropped off and only had a check for 2 days worth of daycare. Monday, Memorial Day, is one of very few paid daycare holidays. And I figured that she just didn't think about that. But when I brought it up, the mom kind of got attitude with me. Said she would write me another check when she picked up the girls, but I felt like she was ticked that I was getting paid for not working. But SHE got paid for not working. So why is she any better than me? *disclaimer* I'm probably being much more sensitive that I should be about the whole situation, but I'm still feeling very uncomfortable around her. Then I realized that she probably didn't remember/realize that she needed to give me a deposit check to hold her kids' place in daycare for next fall because they are taking the summer off, so I e-mailed her about that. Now I'm afraid she'll be even more ticked at me. But I'm just following my contract which SHE signed. *sigh*

I got a returned check for non-sufficient funds for the second time for the other family that is dropping off/making payment today. I have in my contract that they have to pay a $25 fee and I will only accept cash from then on out. Well, its more of a pain for me to take in cash, so I told the mom last time that I'll give her another chance but if it happens again I would only be able to take cash. I didn't think it would happen again. Especially only a few weeks later. But it did. So now I have to tell her that she owes me back payment and that I'll only take cash. Which she was very open about warning me last time that she thought one of her checks was going to bounce, so she probably won't care, but it still makes me uncomfortable.

2 comments:

Adam said...

It's a lot easier when you don't see your clients. :)

But, here's some advice from someone who doesn't know: start your sentence off with "According to our contract...". (shrug) That might help. It would remind them that they were apart of this. (shrug again)

Christi said...

"According to our contract ..." sounds so cold to me, so I hate to word it that way. I'm probably just being too wishy washy about it. Mom #2 was really cool about the whole bounced check thing, so at least that went smoothly.