That phrase was drummed into us by my woodwork teacher some decades ago, and it's a mantra that everyone who cuts anything, be they carpenter, carpet-layer or haute couture designer, will know and follow.
Customers, on the other hand, should be able to rely on furniture suppliers to do the measuring for them. Unfortunately, a customer last week seems to have been let down.
The plan was simple enough, if unusual:
The customer has two elevating single beds, joined together to make a king-sized double. They're designed to be used that way, so that each half of the double bed can be elevated independently. What the customer wanted was a bed frame that would fit around the existing beds to give them a more contemporary look, with the added feature of a pop-up television in the foot board. The salesperson assured him it could be done and sold him a very smart and very big (and quite expensive) super king sized bed frame to do the job. And it very nearly worked.
Sadly, nearly is not good enough. The new bed frame was very big but not quite big enough, by a matter of about two inches in width and about three inches in length. So, when I arrived to assemble the new bed there was simply no way to make it fit.
Our customer had measured his existing beds but maybe the salesperson had taken his measurements from the catalogue, rather than measuring a real bed. This would have given him the external width and length, not the internal dimensions. Either that, or he had used the maximum mattress size, without taking account of the new bed's internal reinforcement (that is normally below mattress level).
But whoever didn't measure accurately, the lesson is the same: measure carefully - and measure twice!
No comments:
Post a Comment