I charged my neighbour 400 zł for a portrait and now I'm avoiding her at the stairs
She asked last spring, very casual, over the fence: would I do her daughter for her birthday. I said 400 zł thinking that was the friendly thing, not too much, not insulting. A4 toned paper, three sessions plus the redo of the mouth that took me a whole evening.
Now she tells everyone in the building I do portraits. Someone from the third floor stopped me with photos of her son on her phone, and I could see her already doing the same arithmetic in her head. 400.
The real problem is I don't know how to say the next number. If I say 1,200 to a neighbour it sounds like I've decided she's rich, and if I say 400 again I will be doing six of these and hating the paper by the end of it.
I've started taking the stairs.
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The mistake was saying a number out loud before you had a price. 400 zl for three sittings plus a redo is not a friendly price, it is a discount you never agreed to repeat, and now the whole stairwell is quoting it back at you.
Here is what I would do, and it is not comfortable: the next person who stops you with photos gets a plain sentence, no apology in it. Something like, that was a one-off for a neighbour, my price for a portrait is X. You do not have to explain the arithmetic or defend it. If they flinch, fine, they flinch. Someone who only wants the work at the old number was never going to be a good client anyway.
I have made this exact error with restoration jobs. Once you underprice out of politeness, the only way back is to be a little cold about it for a while. It passes.