What the heck are you SMOKING?

[MoonCat]

What you need is some kind of automated e-mail reply system so that any requests received after a certain date say something like "My deadlines are as follows: blah blah blah I will not be taking any requests after this date (and/or) I will not be taking any holiday orders after this date; normal work and shipping schedules will resume on X date." Then if you want to give them a personal response as well you can...and if not, they can sit and spin

Trouble is, people don't understand deadlines anyway. Over the years I've had literally hundreds of people try to get something into or out of the paper after deadline; it's one thing to ask about 5 minutes (still too late) but people will ask 24 hours past, two days past, a week...deadlines mean nothing to them. That's why somebody in another dept near mine has a sign that reads: "If deadlines weren't important, they wouldn't begin with dead."

[XCashier]

I have a TARDIS key around here somewhere, but it's for the older incarnations (I had a new-style one I made, but I think I lost it on the subway).

Does it look like this one? This is my TARDIS key.

[Dreamstalker]

Mine's very similar, but not exactly the same.

[spark]

What you need is some kind of automated e-mail reply system so that any requests received after a certain date say something like "My deadlines are as follows: blah blah blah I will not be taking any requests after this date (and/or) I will not be taking any holiday orders after this date; normal work and shipping schedules will resume on X date." Then if you want to give them a personal response as well you can...and if not, they can sit and spin

I don't think they make auto-replies clever enough to figure out if it's an idiot sending me a message Dec. 17th for Christmas, a normal customer sending a message wanting something for next spring, or a really well-prepared customer ordering for *next* Christmas. I really can't think of any sort of filter I'd trust to differentiate between those.

[BeenThereDoneThat]

I don't think they make auto-replies clever enough to figure out if it's an idiot sending me a message Dec. 17th for Christmas, a normal customer sending a message wanting something for next spring, or a really well-prepared customer ordering for *next* Christmas. I really can't think of any sort of filter I'd trust to differentiate between those.

Well, you're probably right about that although there may be something more advanced out there. You'd probably have to send the same disclaimer to everyone. Hopefully the non-sucky writers would understand (and you could always write them back personally, telling them you'd make an exception for them only, if you knew them well and could trust them).

[sstabeler]

I think the point is that the message says that normal work would resume on X date, so whoever is asking about something on a non-insane deadline would realize that the message is about people ordering for this Christmas. I.E. the really well-prepared customer and the customer wanting something in spring will probably wait, while someone wanting something for this Christmas would likely give up ( or send another e-mail frothing mad, but those are the ones you probably don't want to deal with anyway)

[spark]

I think maybe you guys aren't understanding what I'm meaning here. Or... I'm not understanding you or something.

For one thing, "normal work" always goes on. I sewed projects today, I'll probably even sew some tomorrow even though it's Christmas Day. There is no time of year when you can't e-mail me about a commission, there are always ones under way, and there are always spaces at the end of the current project line. So there's no point in time at which I'd want to tell all customers asking for commissions to go away.

And it is a very huge, massive bad idea to tell customers who are being nice and commissioning me sanely to go away first and then write them back to say nevermind, you can commission me! I mean honestly! If YOU told somebody "I'd like to give you money for your work" and the first response you got was "sorry no, gtfo" and then suddenly they were all "nevermind, please give me your monies" would YOU want to commission them? It would make me look like disorganized flake, or like a jerk who likes to play stupid games, or something! The solution is about a hundred times worse than the problem! I would much, much, much rather have to type up a letter a few times a year "sorry, it's past the deadline" for idiots like the one I posted about than piss off half my customer base every single time one of them tries to commission me!

[LillFilly]

What Spark, you don't just have those custom plushies ready in the back room? *ducks & runs*