Why I won't go into business with friends
Should you go into business with a friend? That is a tough question, and one that I have experience with.
I had a friend who kept at me to join her in her business cleaning houses, but it turned out to be a disaster. She did not want to pay me a fair share, but I was expected to do more work than she was. The work load was continually spread out to my cleaning 2/3rds of the houses we cleaned and her picking the rooms she wanted to clean and leaving me to do the remainder.
The time I cleaned a house all by myself she still took 80% of the money from the job. When she decided to give clients a break on the cost for cleaning (knocking 3+ hours time off on how long we cleaned), she took the loss out of my portion of the pay for the job - even though we ran over because she talked to the person owning the home and left me to do most of the work myself.
And how was the "partnership" dissolved? She dropped me off and said she would see me when she picked me up for the next cleaning job in a few days - I have not seen her in several years. She never had the guts to tell me to my face (or even in an e-mail or anything else) that I was no longer working with her. She did have the gall to call and invite me to a going away party for a mutual friend, I forced politeness and never went to the party.
So... the lesson here? Know what you are getting into and be certain that the work you enter into is something that you both can agree on the work and pay distribution of. I might go into business with a friend again, but only if I am certain the friendship can survive anything.
I had a friend who kept at me to join her in her business cleaning houses, but it turned out to be a disaster. She did not want to pay me a fair share, but I was expected to do more work than she was. The work load was continually spread out to my cleaning 2/3rds of the houses we cleaned and her picking the rooms she wanted to clean and leaving me to do the remainder.
The time I cleaned a house all by myself she still took 80% of the money from the job. When she decided to give clients a break on the cost for cleaning (knocking 3+ hours time off on how long we cleaned), she took the loss out of my portion of the pay for the job - even though we ran over because she talked to the person owning the home and left me to do most of the work myself.
And how was the "partnership" dissolved? She dropped me off and said she would see me when she picked me up for the next cleaning job in a few days - I have not seen her in several years. She never had the guts to tell me to my face (or even in an e-mail or anything else) that I was no longer working with her. She did have the gall to call and invite me to a going away party for a mutual friend, I forced politeness and never went to the party.
So... the lesson here? Know what you are getting into and be certain that the work you enter into is something that you both can agree on the work and pay distribution of. I might go into business with a friend again, but only if I am certain the friendship can survive anything.
posted by Sandra at 10:56 PM
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