ewlsey
Diamond
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2009
- Location
- Peoria, IL
We're about 30% of the way through a job that I just hate. Tedious little parts with way too many features. Everything has to look perfect. no crazy tolerances, but appearance parts suck. I should have doubled my quote.
At this point I know that following things:
1) It's taking forever
2) We're not making any money
3) They're still not going to be happy with it
4) I'm ready to be done with it
We have plenty of other work that I would rather be doing. This other work will make us more money. I don't like this customer anyway.
Job consists of about 30 part numbers in one assembly ranging from 50 pieces to 1000. We've run everything before in single quantities for prototypes. Now, the customer wants 5 complete assemblies ASAP. Apparently, they thought we would be done with the whole job by now, which is insane. We've been working on the project since the middle of January.
I figure that's about 9 weeks, or 45 working days. That means we would have to complete one whole part number every day and a half. That's just not feasible for a small shop. Not with finicky parts like this.
So, I'm thinking about bailing out. I've never done anything like that before, but I've really had enough with these guys.
Has anyone been in this situation? I suppose the honorable things to do would be to finish the job as quickly as possible and then ditch them. That's probably what we will have to do, but I'd rather just walk away. I'm even willing to take a lose on the parts that are completed.
At this point I know that following things:
1) It's taking forever
2) We're not making any money
3) They're still not going to be happy with it
4) I'm ready to be done with it
We have plenty of other work that I would rather be doing. This other work will make us more money. I don't like this customer anyway.
Job consists of about 30 part numbers in one assembly ranging from 50 pieces to 1000. We've run everything before in single quantities for prototypes. Now, the customer wants 5 complete assemblies ASAP. Apparently, they thought we would be done with the whole job by now, which is insane. We've been working on the project since the middle of January.
I figure that's about 9 weeks, or 45 working days. That means we would have to complete one whole part number every day and a half. That's just not feasible for a small shop. Not with finicky parts like this.
So, I'm thinking about bailing out. I've never done anything like that before, but I've really had enough with these guys.
Has anyone been in this situation? I suppose the honorable things to do would be to finish the job as quickly as possible and then ditch them. That's probably what we will have to do, but I'd rather just walk away. I'm even willing to take a lose on the parts that are completed.