Cloudy With Light Cynicism

We grow flowers for multiple retailers.  I have to keep reminding myself of this.  We are a wholesale business.

I get a lot of phone calls from florists, flower arrangers, brides etc who want to buy flowers directly from us.  I try to resist these sales; they eat so much time.  Now I mostly only do it for friends.

I am a one-man sales team.  I have a lot of stuff to sell and it is much easier if I can sell it a trailer-load at a time.  I have to be careful not to get into converstaions about "what shade of blue is it?" when someone only wants to buy 50 stems.  I would never get home in the evening, I never get to eat my dinner until 9.00pm as it is.  I particularly dread it if someone arrives with a ribbon that they want to colour match.  We have to store our flowers in the dark and the whole episode becomes laughably annoying.  I once had a woman crying down the phone because the flowers were "the wrong pink."  THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO ME AGAIN.

Yesterday I had a call from Conde Nast Bride magazine who said that they wanted to feature our flowers in their magazine.  This sounds flattering.  I am a weak and vain man; usually I will do anything if I am given some praise. 

It quickly became evident that what they actually wanted was free flowers and not a ten page feature on me.  I also have to be careful not to advertise in areas that will bring business that I don't want.  My cynicism is increasing as I get older.  Over the years I have spent a lot of time faffing about doing other people's work without getting paid; it is hard enough to make a profit in the flower industry as it is.

The thing is, life is more fun if you say yes to things.  My life has been more straight-forward since I became cynical, it has also become more boring.  I agreed to find some flowers for the magazine.