My high-end ADHD Tailor

[Gettingittogether]

OMG,

I don't go to the tailor often, but when I do, I go to a high-end guy who is really good. This guy makes my pants fit so perfectly. I once had a woman tell me she went out on a second date with me because of the pants I was wearing. At the time I was confused. Later, I realized, OMG, those pants (not expensive) were exquisitely tailored by this particular guy. Fit my body like a dream. All of the pants he's done for me fit like that.

This time I needed to have some suit pants let out and some other pants taken in. Well, I LOVE the tailor and think he does world-class work. He gets decent reviews online, but he also gets complaints about missed deadlines or incomplete work.

And today I noticed something. This guy works with his wife and the wife writes down the order--as in take in three pants and let out four pair of pants ... hemm two of the pants ... Well the wife and husband talking to each other could not get the details right. They use an old-fashioned order form, handwritten with carbon paper. And so I saw it. This guy has been in business for 30 something years in the downtown area of my city. My guess: he has ADHD and the wife probably does as well, though more mildly so. They struggled like crazy to write down directions to themselves.

And I get it, my order was an ADHD nightmare (at least it would have been for me.) Because I had so much stuff going on ...I had a bunch of pants. And some needed to be hemmed only. Others needed to be hemmed and taken in in the crotch area. Others needed to be let out and hemmed.

I sat there ten minutes as they jotted all this down. The wife had to start over twice on clean billing sheets. I ended up sitting down.

It's interesting. If I were in their place, I would have written down directions for every pair of pants and the color of those pants. I would have also used a computer, where I could correct and read and re-check what I've written.

So now I think I know why this tailor (who has done amazing work for me) gets so many bad reviews online. He and his wife aren't good at writing down the directions of what needs to be done. And then I remembered that yes, they had missed some deadlines for work I've given them.

Again this is guessing here, but my thinking is this guy does fabulous work as long as he and his wife have written down the correct directions to themselves. Looking at their struggles today, I can easily imagine that they do sometimes get the directions very wrong, and so the completed work misses something that the customer wanted. Seriously, took them ten to 15 minutes to write down directions for my work. A better organized or neurotypical person--would have taken 5 minutes max on the directions. And wouldn't have had to start over twice.

[STEM_Dad]

That's very observant of you.Learning more and more about ADHD has definitely helped me to be better at spotting it, too.

Do you think that the couple might be open to your idea for improving their drop-off process? It sounds like the tailor's skill is top notch, so just improving the business process would probably help them have better reviews.

[Gettingittogether in reply to STEM_Dad]

I used to offer unsolicited advice. I don't these days. This guy has been in business for 37 years and he's got a great reputation (except for ADHD stuff apparently).

[STEM_Dad in reply to Gettingittogether]

That's probably a good policy to live by.

[emiL1234]

Take no chance, visit them with one pair at the time!

[Gettingittogether in reply to emiL1234]

It's funny: that's the way I have to treat complicated tasks for myself. I have to go one at a time.

[PinkPanda23]

So observant! The key point for me was "they are bad at writing down directions To Themselves!" In my career over 40 years, I had the most struggles at places where the instructions were written by other people. I always wrote my own instructions for my jobs once I knew them well enough to see where the pitfalls and tricky parts lay, and how to avoid or correct them. For that reason, I was always selected to train others, because of my out of the box thinking and methods. I was always too slow to keep up with ever-increasing, measurable deliverables/goals, but nobody knew it as well or trained others as well as I did. Unfortunately, that was not always valued as much as production, and I lost several jobs after many years for bumping up against volume vs. quality goals. Had they used my skills to their advantage, it could have been win-win. I was 54 when I learned I have ADHD, and I might have been able to keep my last job of 11years before diagnosis if we knew- they were willing to accommodate. I got new glasses because I thought it might have been my vision. But of course it was much bigger than that. Your taylor's story resonates with all of that.