Oh well, a few weeks in and I now realise that inadvertently some feathers may have been ruffled at the garden centre ... oops!
When we first arrived to sign our contract there were a few things we needed to be sure on, normal business specific stuff.
Firstly: the cabin was a dull pale blue so before signing I asked 'can I paint it any colour?' and was told basically to do what I wanted as long as it didn't damage the shed.
Secondly: can we only have our contract saying we are open 5 days not 6 please because we have to make our own stock and need time to do this - contract changed.
So having sorted these two things which were important to us I merrily got the purple paint out and generally pottered around making it all look pretty and colourful.
Ahh, it would now appear that I am one of the few people that asked to change things because others are sighing and saying 'I love the colour of your cabin, we couldn't change ours'. Also, because I have always been the type of person that spots a potential problem and tries to do something about it rather than waiting and groaning, it would appear that this is not the done thing either! I have now roped pretty much everyone in to helping create a welcome sign for our part of the site - and now find out (again with sighing) that this was tried years ago and never happened; another oops for just getting on with it!
So, the moral of the story as far as I am concerned - if it's your business, take ownership of it and make sure you are able to do the things that are important to you. It is business, and it is your business - no-one is going to do it for you and all the groaning in the world doesn't sell more stock.
We openly said that if we couldn't change the contract then there was no point us being there - not from a 'oh be like that' attitude but because if the site rules didn't allow us flexibility to trade then it wasn't the right place for us and we would have looked elsewhere. But as for expecting me to not paint things purple .... come on, that is not the Hippo way!
