My car, my conscience, and calculations

My car is kaput. Cold as a mackerel. Frozen as an icicle. My stubborn, creative, car-savvy son has battled like Hercules to tame my Cerberus and bring it back from the Underworld. Nope. I’m scrambling for a replacement.

My conscience dictates that I give as much fair warning to my clients as I can when I need to cancel an appointment. Sometimes that’s impossible: I once, an awful time ago, had to cancel an appointment because I was in an ER, maybe an hour before I was supposed to knock on a door. OK, stuff happens. This time, it’s the uncertainty that’s impossible: I keep hoping against hope that “tomorrow” will be the day good fortune smiles and I’ll have the loan, the car, the insurance and all the rest lined up and I’m back on the road.

And of course, there are the calculations. Every appointment missed is lost income in one way or another, a disappointed client and stalled momentum. So I’m cancelling with two or more days notice. I’m cancelling with every alert available to me: phone call, text, email in all combinations I have per client. It doesn’t feel like enough and it doesn’t feel like the best I can do.

And it struck me like a car battery dropping on my toe (yup, that nearly happened in this quest): I’m doing what my clients do when they cancel late. Balancing the “But I feel good enough.” “But I want to get the work done.” “But I don’t know when I’ll be able to reschedule.” with the “Well, I cut off a tip of a toe.”. I understand a bit better now. But I’m STILL annoyed at the client who thought she ought to risk her remaining remnant of toe. That WAS going too far.