Questions - and Answers
Recently, I was invited
along to give a demonstration at a locally run club; whilst there, chatting as
I was working, several people in the ‘audience’ asked me questions about being
a florist, and owning a shop, which I answered. I love it when people interact
with me in such a way.
As it was, it transpired
one of the gentlemen present recorded the conversation, and he has just emailed
me over a transcribed version; I thought it would be an interesting piece to
share with you. Some of it you may have heard/read, before; some of it you may
not.
I’ve copied them to this
blog in the order they were emailed to me, save for one question, which I
wanted to put first (mainly because I know a lot of people won’t bother to read
to the end!!) and while it was a way down the list of questions I was asked, to
me, it is possibly the most important; the one which sums up ‘being a florist’.
------------------------------------------------------------------
What
annoys you most?
Oh my, where to start? (a
rumble of laughter echoed around the room before the question had a post note
added, saying “in regard to being a
florist”).
That’s an easy one to
answer. People who believe that it’s an easy job; that I’m just “playing at my
hobby” all day. I am fully aware no offence is meant when it is said – several
times each week – yet the perception floristry is an easy life really couldn’t
be further from the truth. I am aware, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not
a hard job either, but it’s not all pretty-pretty in any way, shape or form.
Our customers, and the
public on-the-whole, don’t see those late nights when you’re trying to get
flowers finished for an early funeral the next morning and you find the lilies
you got in 10 days before, for the all lily tribute, are still not open and
they need to be or the tribute isn’t going to look how the customer wanted it
to, and when it comes to funerals, we have to get it right. Just this summer,
on one of the days when the temperatures reached over 30’c, I had to put the
heating on in the office to try and get some to open. Same with weddings; often
brides want lilies in vases, and as that is all they are having we have to
ensure they open, or the desired effect won’t be created. We have no control
over flowers at all, and they often put-us-in-our-place, reminding us they are
a natural organism which nobody can control.
Our customers aren’t
there in the morning when you open the emails from your wholesaler to find
flowers you ordered with them weeks ago, they were unable to get. The day
before a wedding recently, I had a call saying “you know you ordered 200 of
those roses? Well, we could only get 140”. I had a bride expecting 200 specific
roses, yet 60 of them I was unable to get hold of. Admittedly, our T’s and C’s
do state we cannot always guarantee an exact flower, and occasionally we must
make a substitution, but that doesn’t make it any easier; that could
potentially ruin a brides wedding day. Then there are the times we open a wrap
of flowers to find half of them are broken, or have been crushed in transit, or
(even worse) are rotting in the middle. The outside of the wrap can look
perfect so you’re none-the-wiser until you unwrap them. People seem to forget
that flowers are a natural, living thing; we have no control over them. I
recently had a complaint because the stems of some flowers weren’t dead
straight. Because of this I then had to re-write all my care instructions, to
ensure I added that the straightness of flowers cannot be guaranteed. But hey,
I’m just “playing at my hobby”
Our customers aren’t in
the shop when we arrive at 7am (and earlier some days) to find the flowers
which are meant to be waiting for us, so we can get the mornings orders made up
before the shop door opens, haven’t arrived. Not quite so stressful if for
delivery as unless it’s a funeral, we never guarantee a time, but when you’ve
had a customer in at 4.30 the evening before, demanding you get them a specific
flower by 8.30 the next morning, and those flowers haven’t arrived, things can get
a little tense – yes, we do have many customers like that, and yet, apparently,
we are just “playing at our hobby”.
How about those days when
we’re knee deep in water – this happens often thanks to vases not always being
as stable as they should be, and is most un-delightful on a cold, winters
morning – trying to get an order made up for delivery, with several lined up
behind to be made for customers who have pre-ordered when someone comes in the
shop, demanding you stop what you are doing to make them something to take-away
“now”. Just the other week, on a Friday, I opened the door at 8.30 (as usual)
and all that day’s orders were ready when I did so. By 8.45 I had taken 7 phone
calls from people wanting me to get them flowers ready to collect anywhere
between 9 – 9.30. Halfway through making those orders a gentleman walked in and
told me he wanted “flowers in a water bubble to take away now”. When I
explained I had to finish the pre-orders I’d taken first but should be able to
get him something ready by 9.45 he got abusive, nasty and quite threatening
with me. I tried so nicely to explain that it wasn’t fair for me to stop what I
was doing and make his order up in that instant, as my other customers had
taken the time to pre-order with me (albeit not giving me that much time) and
asked how he would feel if he’d ordered with me earlier and his order wasn’t
ready when he arrived to collect. I won’t repeat the words he spoke to me for
they were foul, and I was extremely grateful when another regular customer, who
is a very solidly built chap came in. But hey, I was just “playing at my
hobby”, right?
Our customers aren’t
always around the when drunken men come in a Friday after they’ve been in the
pub all afternoon; they’re loud, they’re rowdy, they always want what we
haven’t got and unfortunately some of them can be quite menacing. I’ve had a guy
stand the other side of my workbench holding one of my knives trying to
intimidate me before. I had a whole family once come into the work area and
surround me while their mother was placing an order; they stood there to ensure
I organised exactly what she wanted. Dealing with these kinds of people is most
definitely “not playing at my hobby”.
Our customers aren’t
there when a family come in who have just lost a loved one. They are dealing
with one of the worst times of their lives, and grieving their loss, and we
must gently coax from them what they want, while acting as a counsellor to them
at the same time. Many florists have completed counselling courses, because
we’re there, at the forefront, during those customers most desperate hours.
Dealing with grieving families is definitely “not playing at my hobby”.
We are constantly working
against the clock. As I’ve mentioned above I had 7 hand tied bouquets in water,
to get ready in just 45 minutes. I wonder if those people who tell me it must
be lovely “playing at my hobby” would be able to do so. Hobbies aren’t meant to
be against-the-clock, constantly, are they?
Even worse though, than
being told it’s just a hobby, are the customers who say “make it a nice one”
after they’ve placed their order with you. I (and all my fellow florists I’m
sure would agree) know it’s never meant in a detrimental way, but it is the
single most annoying thing we deal with. As if we would do anything else.
It’s a great job; the
best I could ever imagine doing. Every day I get to work with natures very own
colour palette; not many people can say that, but please, don’t ever think that
it is an easy job, or that we are just ‘playing’. Most of us have spent hours
(years) training; we’ve scrubbed floors on our hands-and-knees, made copious
amounts of tea and coffee for employers. We have our hands in cold water for
several hours each day; we’ve worked hard to get where we are and put in more
hours each week than we will ever be paid for. We go home at the end of the day
wet, dirty (flower stems are not clean in any way) and with feet and legs that
ache where we’ve been standing on them for 8-14 hours. We nearly always have a
pulled shoulder muscle where we are lifting watering cans above our heads to
fill up the water bubble on a hand tied bouquet. Almost all florists will suffer
with varicose veins at some level (unless they work all day in compression
tights; not nice, or comfortable) and more than 60% who spend their whole
career as a florist will end up with rheumatism. Our toes are nearly always
bruised, broken or cut where rolls of cellophane, scissors and knives seem to
fall on them, almost hourly. Under our fingernails can never be clean; our
hands and arms are often covered in deep scratches from thorns. There is always
blood at some point during a day – we must be so careful in the winter when our
hands are almost frozen, that we don’t cut the tops of our fingers off. I came
close with some secateurs once because I couldn’t feel anything.
Did
you always want to be a florist?
Goodness, no. It’s not
something I had ever thought about, and I knew nothing about flowers or plants;
I still don’t know much about plants.
Once, when I was 12 or 13 I’d visited a flower shop with a school friend
who wanted to buy a few flowers for another friend of ours who had just lost
her Dad. I don’t remember much about the experience, except it was a narrow
shop, dark, damp and dingy with a smell that correlated to the damp. It
certainly wasn’t something which jumped out at me in a positive way, making me
think to myself “one day I will make this my career”. We left with the flowers
and I never thought about the experience again until just a few years ago when
I visited a shop in Wales which had the same smell.
What
did you want to do then?
I planned to be a
secretary. My Mum and Dad saved hard to buy me a typewriter, which at the time
was top-of-the-range. I remember sitting
there for hours, practising “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”;
apparently the sentence uses every letter from the alphabet which is why it was
one we were taught when I took a typewriter class. I’ve never checked whether
that statement is true, or not; I just did as I was told, typing the same bit,
row after row after row. I can’t knock it now though; being able to touch type
has it’s uses in the shop
.
If
it’s not what you wanted to do, how come you are doing it?
I’ve asked myself that
very same question, many times over the years, and my answer is always the
same. I have no clue. Had I been allowed to leave school in the January I would
have been working with children. I completed my 3 weeks work experience in a
Nursery School and they offered me an apprenticeship but needed me to start
before my exams. School wouldn’t allow me to leave early and so that put paid
to that. I’m sure now they’d have let me on the condition I went back to sit my
exams. Because of this, when they then set me up in the February with a careers
advisor I was a bit peeved and went along only because I was told I had to.
I sat in a pokey office
with this guy in a brown knitted jumper that had leather patches on the elbows;
he was wearing dark wine-coloured cords and had unkempt messy brown hair. I
kept thinking the whole thing was a waste of time – as you do when you’re a
teenager – while he wittered on about different collage courses and how I would
need to up-my-game if I wanted to finish school with good grades and prospects
for a successful career. When he finally stopped he uttered the words “What are
intending to do when you leave?” to which I replied, “I’m going to become a
florist”. To this day I have no idea where those words came from; I can’t tell
you how entertaining the look of shock on my parent’s face was when I told them
(I can still see them both now, all these years later). I knew nothing about
flowers, had never even considered them as being any part of my life.
That same evening, my Mum
called my Nan to tell her the crazy thing I had come out with – I really wasn’t
the kind of girl anyone would have thought would choose floristry. The next day
whilst visiting my Great Aunt, my Nan had to take her to a florist to organise
some funeral flowers; whilst there she mentioned to the owner what I had said
the day before. Thursday of that week I was driven down to Portsmouth for a
meeting with the shop owner, and by Saturday I was working there. That was one
strange week, I can tell you.
Did
you have to complete any training?
Absolutely, I did. I was
put on the YTS scheme at the time (this meant my employer got me to work for
free) and I spent 4 days in the shop, with 2 days at college for the first
year. In the second year they dropped us to 1 day at college, 5 days in the
shop. My boss was old school though. I scrubbed vases and floors and made tea.
Back then we didn’t have foam frames, everything was made on wire with moss. I
spent half my life with my hands in a bag of moss trying to avoid the sticks
with thorns the size of daggers, the ant nests which would appear in spring;
red ants usually. During wet spells the worms would be out in force; I didn’t
mind these, would take them out to the garden and find a new home for them. I’d
go home, and my hands would be black with dirt, my arms ripped to shreds from
the thorns and edges of the wire frames where they’d not been smoothed off.
They sure used to sting in the shower. Then, the next morning, I’d get up and
do it all over again. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to oasis for making
foam frames, even if I do end up with half of it in my eyes on a daily basis.
Do
you have any regrets?
Only one, and that’s not
about choosing floristry as an option. It’s about how I left a job. I’d been
lucky enough after qualifying to get a job with an exceptional florist. I
learned more in a year working alongside her than I had in the 2 years I’d been
at college and working elsewhere. For 8 years I worked with her, going to
Chelsea as her sidekick each year when she competed. She’d loan me out to her
friends if they were busy or wanted time off (I wish I’d realised then what an
honour that was). I once got sent to another shop for 2 weeks where I was put-in-charge.
The owner was on holiday, didn’t trust the staff she had to run her shop, so
borrowed me from my boss. I loved that job (my main one, not the one I was
loaned out for) the people in the village where the shop was based, and my
boss. However, around the same time I was going through my own personal crisis,
so my boss was going through one too, and I was at work one afternoon when I
realised I just couldn’t do it any longer. That evening I packed up anything I
had to do with work, including my key to the shop, popped it all through the
letterbox with a note explaining I wasn’t coming back. I regret that; not the
leaving as such, although I’ve often thought about where I would be and what I
would be doing now if I’d not, but the way I did it. It was a cowardly and
quite pathetic thing for me to do; an awful way for me to behave. At the time
though, I wasn’t exactly in the best place emotionally/mentally and I didn’t
understand what she was going through either. As a woman, now at that same time
of life as she was back then, I totally get her erratic, antsy behaviour.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and what’s done, is done.
Have
you ever been rude to a customer?
Yes, 2 in fact. One not
that long ago who came into the shop, was extremely rude to me and bought along
2 big beefy young men who were basically trying to intimidate me. I asked them
to leave, they refused, pushing me further-and-further, until I lost my temper.
I won’t repeat what I said, but they did (thankfully) leave.
The other was a guy over
a decade ago, when I was Worthing.
It was Valentines Day.
There were 5 of us working in the shop, myself included, and our 2 bosses were
out delivering. Around 10am this man came in wanting a delivery to be made by
12 to an area outside of Worthing. The owners hadn’t been out with the
deliveries to the area at that point, so I agreed to add his order to their
list. He wanted to spend just £10, including delivery. I don’t know of any
florist who would agree to do such a small amount, but our bosses would not let
us refuse any order, regardless of how much someone wanted to pay. I did inform
the customer there was no way we would be able to guarantee by 12 though, and
the flowers would most likely not arrive until after 2. Our workload that day
was phenomenal. I also hate Valentines Day and if I didn’t have to work them, I
wouldn’t. They are nothing but stress and hassle from start-to-end. At 12.05 he called the shop, yelling down the
phone that his order hadn’t been delivered. The girl he was yelling at passed
the phone to me, and I did my best to calm him down, once again explaining I’d
not guaranteed a delivery time for him. I did tell him the orders for his area
were on the van and they had worked the route out to try and get to him in
time. This didn’t placate him, and he hung up on me. ‘Fair enough’ I thought
and carried on with the million and one other jobs I had to complete. 15
minutes later, as it turned out the same time the delivery was being made, he
came steaming into the shop, shouting. I sensed the younger girls I was working
with shrink back a bit, so made my way forward, into the shop, where he got up
into my face as close as he could, pointing his finger at me, going for me like
I had just murdered his favourite cat. I did everything I could, speaking to
him calmly, quietly, trying to explain all I had explained to him earlier. The
whole time he continued shouting at me, ignoring me and being so rude I still
don’t know now how I never punched him on the end of his nose. Eventually
though, I had enough. I managed to free my arms enough to throw them out to my
side, making myself as big and wide as I could, before I shouted at him “What
do you want me to do?” I’m not proud of myself for doing it, but I could take
no more. I’m not sure either, who was so shocked by my doing this. Him, or me?
He winced a bit, taking a step back, so I pushed myself forward in an extremely
aggressive way, before I again shouted, this time saying “Now, Get out of my
shop”. He went to argue back with me, at which point I pushed forward a bit
more, and within a few steps he was outside the main door. I finished with “if
you ever step foot back in this shop, I swear to god I will smack you”. With
that he ran off, and I turned around, livid, to see all 4 of the girls I was
working with, have looks of utter shock and horror on their faces. The second
they realised I was looking at them, they put their heads down, and avoided
making any kind of eye contact with me, going about doing their work. He never
did come back.
Has
that been your worst day at work?
No, not by a long shot.
What
has been your worst or hardest day, then?
There have been 3 of
them. One was the day I got a call from my best friend to tell me the man (who
the last time I’d seen him had said to me “You do realise, we will get married,
don’t you?) had just died. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day; I
know I dropped the phone, and at some point, our postman took me outside, sat
me on a wall and smoked a couple of cigarettes with me. I had to stay at work
all day though as my boss was on holiday and the girl I was working with wasn’t
a florist; she was our office girl, and we couldn’t have shut up. That was a
hard day.
The 2nd was 6
years ago when I answered the phone to my best friends’ eldest daughter. She
spoke just 2 words to me “she’s gone” and I knew the hard-fought battle my
friend had been fighting, against the cancer ravaging her body, had finally
been lost. She was just 42 years old. All I wanted was to get the shop locked
and make my way to her kids – they were 20, 12 and 9. As I was about to leave
the shop, a family came in to order flowers, for the funeral of their 98-year-old
grandmother. They were in bits; to this day I don’t think they ever knew just
what was going through my head as I served them. I’d taken one of the worst
calls of my life, literally minutes earlier, yet they had no clue how broken I
was inside.
The 3rd was
December 23rd last year. The day after I’d had to have my dog
put-to-sleep. I was heartbroken, yet every customer who walked through the
doors, or phoned the shop got their usual “happy, Sarah” dealing with them.
Between visits and calls I was to be found sobbing in the kitchen, however, I
never once let on to my customers.
That’s what is hard at
times about this job. People only see the good bits when they come in. The
cheerful people behind the counter serving them. Nobody sees what turmoil,
stress or heartbreak we can be going through in our own lives, as we serve
them. I sometimes feel that customers forget we are humans to, who are dealing
with our own demons at times.
Have
you ever cried in front of a customer?
Oh yes, twice, but they
weren’t for personal reasons. One was an elderly lady. She came into the shop I
was working in at the time. She was quite frail, and I could see she was
visibly upset, so I took her over to the seating area we had, sat down opposite
her and began to take the details I needed. She was ordering funeral flowers
for her husband. He was the only person in her life she had left. She’d had no
children, her siblings had all died years previous, and there were no nieces or
nephews. She had nobody, and before I knew what was happening, I was crying
alongside her. I’m not sure which one of used the most tissues.
The second time was
because of an 8-year-old girl. She was born of a second marriage, having 2 much
older, adult siblings. Their father had just passed away. That little girl came
in knowing exactly what she wanted to order for her Daddy, right down to the
colours and flowers. I’ve never experienced such bravery from such a young
person before; by the time it got to her choosing the card she wanted to write
on, I was beginning to feel very emotional. When I then watched her carefully unfold
a sheet of note paper, upon which she had written a poem she wanted to put on
the card, I couldn’t stop myself. I began to tear up and ended up spending a
good 5 minutes in the bathroom, just sobbing. I had to go back later to
apologise to her sisters for my unprofessional behaviour. Thankfully, they
totally understood and said they’d had many moments themselves due to the
little one’s bravery.
How
about happy days? What’s been your happiest day at work?
Oh my, there are
way-too-many of those to pick just one day. I worked with a girl once for
almost 8 years, and we laughed pretty much the whole time we were together. We
used to have some customers come in just to be cheered up by us. I’ve no idea
why were like it, or how we came to be so chirpy around each other, but we
bounced off each other constantly. She only worked part-time and I looked
forward to the days she was in. Of course, when we had to behave professionally
then we did, but if we could get away with smiling and laughing about things as
we worked, we made sure we did. Many a time I thought I was going to pass out
where we had laughed so much I couldn’t breathe. With anything in life, the
people who are part of it, are what can make-or-break your day. Sadly, it
doesn’t matter how happy, kind, friendly or helpful I am, there will always be
one-or-two people who leave the shop unhappy, but on the whole, I like to think
most people leave with a little bit of cheer, or positivity. Those are the
happy days.
How
many “Bridezillas” do you get?
I am so lucky, in 32
years of being a florist, I have only ever really had to deal with 2. One, I
will admit, got me so angry I kicked a cupboard door. It’s still not properly
fixed. She wasn’t in the shop at the time, I was talking to her on the phone. I
don’t believe she ever knew how lucky she was not to be here, because I think
if we had been face-to-face things could have ended up so differently.
The second wasn’t so much
of a bridezilla, as extremely awkward. She wanted fresh flowers that don’t
exist in the colour she wanted them, and it didn’t matter how many times I
explained to her, I could not get her to understand. She emailed me 19 times in
2 hours, sending me photographs each time of the flowers, all of which were
artificial. I even called a wholesaler who deals with the Dutch markets to ask
him to speak to her, and he followed up with a detailed list of the only
colours the flowers she wanted are available in, and still she continued to
argue with me about them. In the end I emailed back, explaining that as I
wasn’t going to be able to source the flowers she wanted, it might be best for
her to try elsewhere.
Several weeks later she
came back to me, having tried numerous other florists who had all told her the
same as I had, to ask me to make her bouquets without the flower that doesn’t
exist. I was tempted to turn her away, but that’s not good business, and I was
available on her chosen day, so I made the decision to book her in. This was a
mistake. Just 6 days before her wedding, she decided she wanted to change half
the buttonholes, along with the colours in her bridesmaids’ flowers, and again
she asked me “why?” the non-existent flowers weren’t listed as being in her
bouquets. I’ll go out of my way to help anybody, to supply them with exactly what
they want, but I called upon the Terms and Conditions she had signed, when she
agreed to the order, which stated she was unable to alter anything less than 21
days prior to her wedding date, although I did end up adjusting the buttonholes
for her.
And everyone thinks
florists have such easy jobs, getting to play around with flowers all day!
Talking
of weddings, how do you feel about people like M&S offering wedding
flowers?
I don’t like it. Not
because they’re taking business away from florists though. At the end of the
day there is room for us all and competition is a good thing. I don’t like how they
operate. I get that a bride might want to keep things simple and ordering via
their website is easy. The name the company has suggests quality and their prices
aren’t too bad, although they are a lot dearer than I thought they would be.
What I don’t like though is their lack of personalisation. I accept that’s what
the bride wants flower wise, but I am sure they don’t think about the logistics
of everything, because they don’t need to. They automatically assume anyone
selling wedding flowers is going to operate in the same way; they are wrong. To
a florist, our brides are people, they have names, faces, opinions. We work
with, and alongside them, creating their dream flowers. To people like M&S,
they are just another pound in the bank account. They don’t warn brides about
the pitfalls of ordering through them. They just take their money, churn out
something half decent, shove it in a box and get a courier on a zero hours
contract, who has no idea how to handle flowers and they must try to squeeze as
many boxes into his car or van as he can, to deliver. I’ve had a bride come
into my shop on a Thursday afternoon, whose M&S flowers had just turned up,
damaged, broken and brown. They should never be delivered 2 days before a
wedding to begin with, and they certainly shouldn’t be on their way out when
they do arrive. That’s why I don’t like them. Once they’ve got their money it
doesn’t matter to them. Those flowers had to have been made at the beginning of
the week, or possibly even before. That is totally unacceptable for any
bouquet, let alone a wedding bouquet. A florist friend of mine had a bride in
on the day of her wedding, because the order she’d placed with M&S hadn’t
arrived at all. These companies wonder why their businesses are starting to
fail; I think any fool with half an ounce of common sense can see why.
What,
or who, do you see as a threat to the high street florist? Supermarkets, or
home workers?
Neither; to me, the only
threat to those of us with shops, at this present moment in time, is our
colleges. I’m getting people come into me, looking for work, who have completed
their first year at college and have been passing their assessments with distinctions,
thus believing they know-it-all and can work in a busy shop. Some even believe
they are then ready to open their own shop. This is fine, I’m all for someone
taking a risk, however, the work they are being awarded distinctions for, I
would not even deem good enough for my bin. I’ve spoken to several other owners
of shops around the country, who are experiencing the same thing. Don’t get me
wrong, there are some who deserve their marks, but overall, the standards are
anything but acceptable and marks are being awarded which are far from deserved.
That is the biggest threat to our trade. People passing off shoddy work. I
understand the colleges must achieve certain levels to ensure they get funding
for the free courses they offer the following year (floristry is not one of
these). I assume the free ones, are funded by the fee-paying courses still
running, hence why they need to show good results. It’s not just the public
being seen off with unskilled staff and substandard work, either. The florists
paying to be trained, are also being seen off, for the sake of a few pounds in
the college coffers.
There’s a place for the
supermarkets, and for home workers; there is no place for bad workmanship and poor-quality
floristry.
Have
you ever failed at something?
Yes, I have indeed. One
of my previous employers was quite big in the Interflora world, back when
Interflora meant something, and set high standards – like the colleges, that is
no longer the case. Because of her involvement, she would make me enter all
competitions on offer, and I had to take several of their own exams, which lead
me towards a diploma. For the floristry section, we had to make 4 different
items, one of which was a traditional wreath for a funeral. A girl I was
working with at the time, also took the same exam. Back then, when we were
assessed on anything, our work would be turned upside-down and shaken
vigorously. If just one small piece of foliage fell out, we failed. Not just
the one item, the whole exam. I can’t tell you how nervous I was when I took my
City and Guilds exams while at college, as they worked in the same way. 4 hours
to complete 4 different items testing all we had learned, from basing, to
mossing and wiring. Training back then definitely made us more aware of what we
were doing and how we were making things, as well as ensuring we were able to
work with good speed. While these days they can be given an hour to make one
buttonhole, we were given 1 hour to make 100. Anyway, as we were leaving my
co-worker said to me “I’ve failed that; as I put my wreath on the floor for
inspection, bits were falling out of it”. I told her ‘not to worry’, it would
be fine, she was going to pass. I was right. It was me who failed. Apparently
when they shook mine, one, just one, spray carnation head fell out. That was
instant failure. I had to wait another year until I could take the exam again.
My co-worker always joked that she’d swapped our candidate numbers over when I
wasn’t looking and passed mine off as hers. Sometimes, even now, I still wonder!
We also came
exceptionally close to failure with the shop. Had we not moved premises when we
did, I wouldn’t be standing here now, talking to you all, telling you stories
about my little shop. Our first premises were not right for us, and we were
sinking without a trace. Had we not been lucky enough to find our little shop
in Fareham, we would have had to pull the plug; our success now, has come from
that failure. They say that sometimes we must fail to succeed; I fully
understand that and have learnt some valuable lessons from those failures.
Is
there anything you ever wanted to make, that you’ve not been asked for, yet?
Yes, I’ve always wanted
to make an alien *laughter rippled around the room*. I can see your faces and
tell you’re thinking I’ve finally lost the plot, but of all the tributes I have
been asked to make I always thought I would get asked for one. Thinking about
it after the fact, I should have made one for my best friend’s funeral. We
always used to joke about being abducted, and had I really sat and thought
about it I would have made one. Because I never did, the wanting to make one
has grown stronger. Maybe one day, if I get a spare hour, I’ll make one up just
for my portfolio.
I
bet your garden must look wonderful!
It doesn’t look bad, at
times, however, that’s not my doing. That’s another preconception people have
about florists, that we’re good at gardening. I can just about keep a shrub
alive, on a good day. Plants are living, they need nurturing, tender hands to
get them started, time to look after them. I love to see gardens full of plants
and flowers, but they will never grow well if I’m in charge of them. As
florists, we do with plants and flowers, after they’ve been cut. I can tell you
the best way to stop a rose from drooping, or a chrysant from losing its
petals, once it’s been removed from its roots. How to get it to that stage I leave
to the horticulturalists; they’re the ones who should have the amazing gardens.
They’re the ones who know-what-they-are-doing while a flower is growing.
Is
the summer your busiest time of the year?
No, it can be one of the
quietest. People often think the summer is “wedding season” so therefore, we
must be busy. Back 50 years ago, that may have been the case; these days though,
not so much. Weddings happen all-year-round, and on every single day of the week
now. There is no “season” any more. Early Monday weddings are becoming increasingly
popular, with most people, except us florists. Nobody wants to be up at the crack
of dawn on a Monday, and everything must be made on-the-day. The rest of the week
we can prep the venue decorations on the previous day; Monday’s we can’t do
that as fresh flowers don’t come into the country on a Sunday. Whilst there is
no real set “busy” time, there is also no set “quiet” time, either. We
literally must take it, one-day-at-a-time. Today, we could be rushed off our
feet, tomorrow we may not see a soul. There is no rhyme-or-reason to any of it.
------------------------------------------------------------------
These were the floristry related
questions I was asked. The other stuff you don’t really need to know! 😊
I did learn, reading through this, that I have a tendency to say "Oh my" a lot. I must work harder on my vocabulary.
Very interest, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete