Pet peeve

[Bowhead Whale]

Dragon87 wrote:

My pet peeves? One is when people talk louder or turn up music when I am on a cellphone. Especially if they KNOW I am on a cellphone. Especially if I am calling on their behalf. And they know that I can’t differentiate sound to any degree (ie. I have to turn down or turn off music when I am on the phone or talking because I just can’t tell the difference between the two sounds). I’m talking fiancee and roomies here.

Another pet peeve? My fiancee’s mother. She’s a manipulative b***h, she asks him to do all sorts of construction projects when he visits for the weekend that he doesn’t necessarily know how to do (like fix a door to not let in cold, not install a new one to do this, but fix the old one, because it’s cheaper). I mean, he’s not there to just serve her, and she has no right to expect it! And then I ask him to grab me a drink when he’s already going up to get himself one, and she says I’m manipulative. And that’s the worst of what I do. 🙄 Guilty mind?

Bleh.

I hope you’re not DRIVING while you’re on your cell phone. Because if you do, tell me where you live. I’m gonna get there to slap you. 👿

Yup! Phone driving is one of my pet peeves. Just like cell phones in a library, cell phones in a church or cell phones in an internet public service. Cell phones should not be allowed in places that require quiet. 😡

[Jennifer]

I hear that… I get emails pretty much daily asking for custom art, and I’ll say that 95% of the time unless they are a friend or someone I know from here, after I give them a ballpark price quote I won’t ever hear from them again. I don’t mind that at all. It’s when they come back at me with “OMG THATS SOOOO EXPENSIVE” or even tell me I have to lower my price that I get a little sad. I rarely make above minimum wage on my non-Windstone art, which I find just a little depressing, since it is a skilled trade that not everyone can do. Skilled tradespersons should be making above minimum wage.

Another thing many don’t take into account is cost of material. This can be applied to any art that is made- I get this a lot with my jewelry, and what folks don’t realize is that each stone costs a lot of money (they ARE gemstones…) and that my silver is bought per foot. Right now I am paying well over $12-18 PER foot, and many of my jewelry pieces contain 5-10 feet of silver each! Add in the price of the stone, which ranges anywhere from $10 for my lesser stones, to $50… $60+, and I really am not even making money on some of these. Yet people will complain.

Decent quality art supplies are expensive too. There are types of watercolor out there that will cost you $20-30 per .5 oz tube. Brushes can run $5-$50 each depending on quality. A block of paper, which can contain as few as 15 sheets, can cost over $40 for the good stuff. Everything adds up! 😆 Even my art markers are $3.75 each… and sometimes I use up several in a single drawing.

Even digital art takes resources. My art program cost me $600. My electricity costs me money to run it. If computer parts break down, I have to replace them to do digital art. My Wacom tablet wears out and I have to replace it too (not cheap!). Etc.

It always pains me when people see my work and prices and think I’m doing well for myself. Honestly I’d probably be making much more doing a full time minimum wage retail job! Not to mention that I have to pay extra taxes, have to keep a history of every expense, everything I buy and sell, and pretty much do the paperwork of an office lady while trying to do art to support myself on, usually for 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s a nightmare often. Why even do it? Because I love what I do, at least the art part of it, and I was always taught that you should try to do what you love the most.

Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.com

[SPark]

I hear you there! People have no concept of what materials cost at all.

And the extra taxes thing gets me SO steamed. I could get on a food stamp program, and take the government’s money, I make so little. So why not just let me keep what I earn and quit making me pay totally ridiculous amounts in taxes?!

I hear government people talking about how they support small business, and I want to go up to them and tell them what I think of the way they treat small business owners. *grrs* If they support us so much, why not give us a friggin’ tax break?

[Andrea]

Greater Basilisk wrote:

Sorry about that inconsiderate dork, SPark. I don’t know why people can’t understand that art takes time and you pay for quality.
I’ve got a couple professional pet peeves. When you work with people you inadvertantly will. But they’re not unmanageable. Nothing ticks me off as bad as this: When you’re driving on a main road and have the right away and some idiot pulls out of a side road ahead of you. You’re coming at 60 km/h or more and he figures that he can accelerate fast enough not to hinder you. Or he doesn’t care and figures you’ll brake for him. I absolutely hate that. Bad drivers are my biggest complaint anyway.

The only thing that tops that is when they rush out to get in front of you and then turn on the next side street! 😈 Couldn’t just wait a freakin minute for me to pass!

[purpledragonclaw]

SPark, some people just don’t think about, or worse, don’t care, about the time and energy and effort you put into making your costumes look realistic and believable. There will always be someone who doesn’t understand, but I’d like to think that the people that do make up for the bad apples out there.

I could really rant about pet peeves, especially after reading some of what all of you have written. Driving while talking on the cell is my biggest. Some speed up, then slow down, and back and forth, because they are concentrating on talking, not driving. On the freeway is the worst. Or when they speed up to make the light after driving 5 mph until it turns yellow. Next: blasting your music while driving. The bass is so blasted out on their vehicle it’s wrecking their suspension; at a stoplight; I roll my windows up and it makes almost no difference. 🙄 Next: the people who just don’t think. I’ve seen that a lot working in retail. Enough said. 😆 What else? Hmm, people who don’t properly restrain their pets is another one. Ah, and how could I forget? My favorite is people who whine and whine and don’t do ANYTHING to improve their situation when they’ve had ample opportunities to! 😡 Honestly!

[Kristen]

Bowhead Whale wrote:

Dragon87 wrote:

My pet peeves? One is when people talk louder or turn up music when I am on a cellphone. Especially if they KNOW I am on a cellphone. Especially if I am calling on their behalf. And they know that I can’t differentiate sound to any degree (ie. I have to turn down or turn off music when I am on the phone or talking because I just can’t tell the difference between the two sounds). I’m talking fiancee and roomies here.

Another pet peeve? My fiancee’s mother. She’s a manipulative b***h, she asks him to do all sorts of construction projects when he visits for the weekend that he doesn’t necessarily know how to do (like fix a door to not let in cold, not install a new one to do this, but fix the old one, because it’s cheaper). I mean, he’s not there to just serve her, and she has no right to expect it! And then I ask him to grab me a drink when he’s already going up to get himself one, and she says I’m manipulative. And that’s the worst of what I do. 🙄 Guilty mind?

Bleh.

I hope you’re not DRIVING while you’re on your cell phone. Because if you do, tell me where you live. I’m gonna get there to slap you. 👿

Yup! Phone driving is one of my pet peeves. Just like cell phones in a library, cell phones in a church or cell phones in an internet public service. Cell phones should not be allowed in places that require quiet. 😡

GADS no!!! If I get a call, I either pull over, ignore it entirely, or I hand it to the passenger and they can take a message. I usually have a passenger, so they usually answer for me. But I think I’ve only ever received 1-2 calls EVER while driving, and I don’t call out. When I’m the passenger, however…

And anyway, if I did drive while talking on a cellphone… that’s the same to me as driving impaired. I remember spending one lunch with Colin looking at the street in front of us and counting the impaired drivers (for one reason or another). One person was listening to headphones while driving!! 😯

[Necron99]

SPark wrote:

So if any of you don’t know, I make costumes for a living. I specialize in mascots/fursuits. It’s been really rough this year, since luxury stuff like that is the first thing to go when people are feeling the pinch, but I’ve been coping. I love doing this, and I’m not going to give up on it if it’s at all possible.

Anyhow, that’s not the point. That’s just the intro.

Today I got an e-mail from a customer. He’s buying a basic costume set, fuzzy gloves, fuzzy slippers, a tail, and a set of ears on a headband. When we started discussing this I told him that ears cost $20.

The e-mail says that he wanted to ask if the ears he was getting were the super-realistic ones mentioned on my website, the ones where I hair the ear rims individually, one hair at a time. Then he said that he assumed they were, for $20 but had just wanted to make sure!

This is stupid, firstly, because the one place they’re mentioned on my web site is the place where I say doing a full costume to that level of detail costs several hundred extra. So why on earth would one assume that doing it on some random individual part doesn’t?

But secondly, and this is the pet peeve, WHY on earth does he think that I’m going to spend most of a day placing hundreds and hundreds of individual fibers by hand for twenty flipping bucks?!

And this kind of thing happens all the time! People look at my pricing, and they make snide comments about how I must really be rolling in the dough! ARGH! Yes, a full mascot suit is $1,200. Yes, I realize that’s a lot of money, but that suit takes me most of a month, and costs me $300-odd in supplies, so I am getting $900 for my entire month’s income, you dip and I have to LIVE on that! That isn’t money I get to spend on silly fluff, that’s the money I pay my rent with and buy food with and some months I barely have enough to do that! Of course most months I do a few plushes and a bunch of tails and so on, so I have a little more, but seriously I have never made more than around $1,500 a month. You just try living on that and see how well you do!

Grrrrr.

That just drives me crazy and I hate it. I’m scraping along, practically dirt poor, and these people who HAVE hundreds of dollars to buy stupid frivolous stuff like costumes with sneer at me for how much I charge, because they don’t even take ten seconds to think about how much work goes into something like that!

So that’s my pet peeve. What’s yours?

i hear ya people make the most stupid assumptions about others wealth either to make them feel better of to make you feel crappy . My dim-witt brother inlaw says i must make a lot of coin on disabillity . It may seem like a lot for him seeing as how he is 30 yrs old and cutting lunch meat for a living but my mear 800 a month doesnt even start to cover my expeses , i spend 425 a month for meds and now my insurance is upping my copays to $40 each thats double so now my meds are going to completely take all my disabillity plus and extra 50 bucks i need to scroundge up

[Maria]

Phoenix wrote:

Greater Basilisk wrote:

Sorry about that inconsiderate dork, SPark. I don’t know why people can’t understand that art takes time and you pay for quality.
I’ve got a couple professional pet peeves. When you work with people you inadvertantly will. But they’re not unmanageable. Nothing ticks me off as bad as this: When you’re driving on a main road and have the right away and some idiot pulls out of a side road ahead of you. You’re coming at 60 km/h or more and he figures that he can accelerate fast enough not to hinder you. Or he doesn’t care and figures you’ll brake for him. I absolutely hate that. Bad drivers are my biggest complaint anyway.

The only thing that tops that is when they rush out to get in front of you and then turn on the next side street! 😈 Couldn’t just wait a freakin minute for me to pass!

I know! If I wore motocross boots I’d be tempted to kick a dent in their door when I pass them. A buddy of mine kicked in a car’s door when the driver threw cigar ash out his window which went straight in my buddy’s face. Served the sucker right. 👿

[Author]

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