It’s many people’s dream, but running your own small business certainly is no walk in the park. Unlike working for an employer, everything falls on you, everything is your responsibility. You can’t just go home when the day is done – if the work isn’t done, you’re not done. Unless of course you want things to start mounting up, at which point your business, your customers, and your own health and wellbeing will likely start to suffer.

But one of the positives of working for yourself is building up close relationships with customers and suppliers. Especially if you run a local business, don’t be surprised if the relationships with regulars that you strike up have them returning more and more frequently – after all, customer loyalty is a thing, especially when it comes to independent businesses.

For the tailor in this story, her relationships with her customers is everything. For two decades in her local community, she’s built up a stellar reputation based on the quality of her work. At the heart of this is the fact that she’s the only employee, so locals requesting her services know that alterations and mending is going to be done by her skilled hands. It also means that she knows all the regulars by name, and recognises all the garments she’s worked on.

So when a customer accuses her of bungling a garment, she knows that she’s in the clear – after all, she’s never seen the shirt before in her life. But convincing the customer of that is another thing altogether.

Read on to find out what happened here.

Stand by your work

I am an alterations (and mending) tailor, and this happened around ten minutes ago. A lady just came in to pick up an order she dropped off two weeks ago. Among those items was a t-shirt I was altering for her husband who is now in a care facility.

Most of what I do for people there is to split open the back of their shirts/pants, finish the edges nicely and add either a drawstring to tie the back together (pants) or velcro (shirts).

She puts the items in her bag and then pulls out a new, flannel button down. Someone had hacked about 3/4 up the back of it (very jaggedly might I add) and left the fabric as it was, so it was getting all frayed and looked terrible.

I figured that either she did it or maybe the care home did it, and she’d like me to clean it up, finish the edge and make it look nice.

So of course, the tailor offered to fix up the shirt.

I said, “Oh wow, this really needs some cleaning up! No worries, I can straighten up the edge which won’t take away too much off the size of the shirt since it has this pleat back here for extra room. Do you want me to split it all the way up the collar too like the t-shirt?”

She replied, “No, maybe keeping the collar together is important. Just make it look better.” And I said, “Alright, no problem. I will finish the edge with the same material I used on the t-shirt though so we won’t lose any size.”

I made up an invoice on the computer, and then told her, “Okay, your total will be $13.64!”

The woman said, “What?” I replied, (a little louder) “$13.64 please!” Again, she said, “What?!” Even louder this time, I confirmed, “Umm… Your total is $13.64!”

What the woman took the tailor totally by surprise.

She asked, “Don’t you guarantee your work?”

I confirmed, “Well, yes for the first 30 days, if my work needs to be redone because of my mistake, I redo it for free.”

She told me, “Well you did this! I won’t pay that much for you to make this right!”

I replied, “Ma’am, I have never seen this shirt before. I didn’t do this work.”

But the customer wasn’t about to back down.

She said, “I never take my stuff anywhere else!” To that, I told her, “I’m sorry, I don’t know who did this, but it absolutely was not me. I would never turn out such a garment.”

Again she repeated, “I never take my stuff anywhere else!!!” So I explained, “Ma’am. I do this particular job a lot. What I do is fold it in half, lay it on the table, and cut a clean line straight through the back of the garment, and finish the edges. I could never in good conscience just cut randomly through the back of something and leave it raw to fray like that.”

But then, the woman shouted, “ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?!?!”

After taking a calming breath I said, “No, I’m not,” (but yes, I kind of was) “but I know with 100% certainty that I did not do this, nor have I ever seen this shirt before. I don’t know if the care home might have done it or not but I swear that it was not me.”

Still, that wasn’t the end of things.

She said, “I will give you $5 to do it.” I firmly folded the shirt and slid it across the counter, saying, “No. I will not. Please leave.” She snatched the shirt and her bag and stormed out muttering. Probably cursing my ancestors, but who knows.

I have worked at this shop for going on nineteen years. I have owned it for the last ten and have worked alone for those ten years. I remember most things that come through my shop. Heck I even remember customer first/last names (including hers).

A moment after she left, I remembered that when she left the t-shirt, she had like three or four other shirts she wanted the same thing done to (maybe the flannel was one) but decided to do one first to see how it went before committing to having the others done.

I sure hope she realises that she was wrong and feels bad about it.

Sadly, the chances are that the woman was just stressed out (or extremely entitled) and hoped that the tailor would not realise and do the job for free.

Maybe she was distressed about her partner’s health, or upset about the way his shirt had been mangled.

But it still gives no excuse for her to gaslight this poor tailor, or try to scam her out of money. Who does that?

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought that the woman was completely wrong for trying to trick the poor tailor.

While others said they’d be wary of taking her custom again.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought it was a tragedy that someone would mistreat a good tailor.

Of course, there is a small chance that this could be a genuine mistake. Perhaps the woman got confused, perhaps she is genuinely in a very distressed mind frame, struggling with the changes in her life and her partner’s health, and fearing for the future. There is every chance that that could have clouded her judgement and made her believe the lies she told.

However, it’s more likely that she simply was gaslighting the tailor. Whether because of financial strain or because she simply wanted the job doing for nothing, she was foolish if she assumed that the tailor wouldn’t recognise whether something was her own neat work or a disaster from somebody else’s hands. Because any tailor worth anything would recognise when a shirt had been torn versus one that had been tailored.

Good for the tailor for standing up for herself and requesting the woman leave the store. Because taking on any further work from her – whether at full price or the woman’s desired discount – would put herself and her reputation in another risky place. And she is doing her best running a small business on her own. She doesn’t deserve that.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who found a trail cam on her property and decided to develop the pictures.