I underbid a memorial piece by $6,000 and I'd do it again, which is the problem

Widow came to the shop in March. Wanted a headstone for her husband, granite, 4 foot upright, rough face with a polished panel. She had the plot number and a drawing her grandson did of the lettering.

I quoted 4,800. Material was 1,400, sandblast and polish another 900, setting with the monument company 600. That leaves 1,900 for what was eleven weeks of carving and four trips to the cemetery to check the base. I knew the number was wrong when I said it. I said it anyway.

What I keep turning over is why. She asked twice if that included the setting. I said yes both times. I've been doing this thirty years and I still price grief like it's a favor I'm doing, and then I resent the stone for three months.

The gallon of coffee I drink at the bench costs more than my hourly on that job. I did the math after, out of spite, and it came to 14 an hour.

Raised my minimum on new commissions to 9,000 in June. First two callers hung up. Number three signed, and I'm carving it now, and the difference in how I feel holding the chisel is not small.

I don't have a clean lesson here. Just that I set that price in the first five minutes of the meeting, before I'd even heard the lettering, and I've never once gotten a number right that fast.

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Teddy Lin·2w

the part that gets me is that you knew while you were saying it. i've done the same thing with commissions, not granite, but the moment where you're already doing the math and the wrong number is coming out of your mouth anyway. i used to think i was being generous. at some point i realized i was just avoiding the five seconds of discomfort where i'd have to say a bigger number out loud and watch someone react to it. eleven weeks and four cemetery trips for 1,900 is not a discount, that's paying to not have an awkward conversation. the widow thing makes it messier because she didn't do anything wrong and neither did you, which is exactly why it's hard to untangle. anyway, the carving sounds like it came out right, and that part isn't nothing.

Gloria Mae Jackson·2w

Now I'll tell you, that line about paying to not have an awkward conversation stopped me. I quilt for people, and I have absolutely underpriced a wedding quilt because a young couple looked so hopeful and I didn't want to be the one to say the real number out loud. Took me near forty years to figure out the flinch was mine, not theirs. You're not wrong about any of it. But I'd say this gently: calling it avoidance is true, and it's not the whole truth either. Some of us were raised where asking for what a thing is worth felt like putting on airs. That's a harder knot to untie than just learning to say a bigger number. Anyway. You saw it clear, and that's most of the work.

Roman PetrakOP·2w

The quilt detail lands. Forty years is about right for that knot, I'm not there yet.

The "putting on airs" part I know from the other side. My old man did tile until his knees quit. If I'd ever told him I charged a number for a piece of stone he'd have laughed at me. So somewhere in the back of my head a fair price for my own hands still sounds like a swindle. Material costs I can name out loud without blinking. The rest of it sticks in the throat.

One thing I'll say, for what it's worth. On the headstone I never got to say the real number, so it just sat there the whole eleven weeks. Every trip to the cemetery I was doing the math again. That's the part I'm not doing anymore. Not the money, the carrying it around.

Roman PetrakOP·2w

You named it right. Avoiding the five seconds. That's the whole thing, and I've been dressing it up as generosity for years because it sounds better.

The part I'd add, since you've done it too: the five seconds isn't even five seconds. You say the number, they go quiet, maybe wince, then they either pay it or they don't, and either way it's done by the following week. I've spent eleven weeks paying interest on a discomfort that would have lasted one phone call. That math is worse than the bid was.

What do you make, if you don't mind me asking. You said not granite. Curious what the version of this looks like in another material.

Inês Costa·2w

The detail that stays with me is that you knew the number was wrong while you were saying it. I think that moment is where the real thing lives, not the $6,000.

I work in cyanotype, much smaller scale, so take this as it is, but I have done the same with prints. Quoted low because the person in front of me was carrying something, and I did not want to be the one who made it heavier. Eleven weeks of carving for 1,900 is not a pricing mistake so much as a choice you made with your hands before your head caught up.

The one thing I would gently push on: she asked twice about the setting. That reads less like she was hunting for a discount and more like she needed the number to be final, so she could stop holding it. You gave her that. So I do not think you underbid her. I think you absorbed something and did not want her to feel it.

The problem, as you say, is that the body remembers. Next time the hands will do it again before you have decided anything.

Roman PetrakOP·2w

You're right that it wasn't arithmetic. I knew the number was wrong and said it anyway, and I've been trying to pretty that up as a mistake for four months. It wasn't.

But I'll push back on the gentle part. She asked twice because she was afraid of being taken, and I answered twice, and both answers were yes. That's not her being difficult, that's me deciding she didn't need the real number. Cheap and dishonest aren't the same thing but they were sitting in the same chair that day.

Cyanotype. That's a slow material. You'd know the difference between a bad mix and a decision.