They aren't just afraid of snakes.

Usually on this blog, and on most beauty blogs, the focus is on what companies should deliver and what we, the consumers, deserve and expect. However, I feel like we have a double standard when it comes to indie companies as opposed to corporate ones, and we're demanding so much more from the little guys than we are from business giants.

Indie makeup is like soylent green: it's people. Real people who have real feelings. On the one hand, we like that. We want indie to be our best friend. We want friendly e-mails and twitter conversations and to be their friend on their personal Facebook, we like business transparency and special exceptions, and personalisation to our packages and little notes on invoices and heads up about sales and coupons, and products named after us and products and colours we suggested or helped to shape and influence. We love it. We feel involved and part of the process and like we're buying from friends and it's not just business.

On the other hand, we want serious business. We want professionalism and orders to be filled correctly and in a timely fashion and mistakes to be rectified, we want polite professional e-mails and decorum at all times and no hint of getting annoyed at the always-right customer, and no slip in the PR façade. An indie business owner is your friend until they do something you don't like, and then they aren't. It's OK for a friend to borrow a DVD and forget to return it until you remind them, but it's not OK for a business to forget your free sample. That's unprofessional. If you call your friend a fucking bitch, it's OK (and pretty warranted, let's face it, you asked for it) for her to insult you back, but that's not OK if she's a business owner. Any business owner.
Anywhere.
Ever.
Even if the person isn't a customer, and an argument develops online in an unrelated group which has nothing to do with that business, with the business owner's personal account, with an issue that has nothing to do with the business, when no one has mentioned the business, and the person isn't even a customer. That's not OK. That's unprofessional and shocking and it reflects poorly on their business and you should boycott.
Business owners aren't allowed to get angry at people who insult them and threaten them who aren't customers, when they aren't working or in their uniform or on their business e-real estate. It's unprofessional. Even if it has nothing to do with their business, it still does, because they own one. They aren't even allowed to flip people off if they cut them off driving to Wal-Mart, or get in an argument with the guy who cuts in front of them with a million packages in the post office when they only have one tiny thing. It's unprofessional. They are their business, all the time, everywhere, even when they're in the shower. Opening an Etsy store immediately forfeits all rights to a human response. Every single person they interact with, however fleetingly or minimally, from the bus driver to their kid's teacher, must be treated like a valued potential customer.

Sound unreasonable? It should. It's an impossibly high standard and is no way to live. Yet, increasingly over the past few weeks I've been seen businesses criticised and condemned for not meeting that unachievable standard.

How do indies cope with the blur between professional and personal? How do they, without a publicist or customer service representative or PR agent, know where to draw the line between friendship and business?
It's extremely difficult and there is no right answer. Being too friendly can result in accusations of unprofessionalism or misreading situations or relationships, and being too business can result in people thinking you're being cold, distant, abrupt, rude or simply offensive. When we're used to the warm personal touches of some indies, running into a colder business presence can be jarring and even feel offensive, as if they don't want to be our friend.

The situation gets even stickier when you factor in that many indie owners are also customers of other indie stores. It makes sense, after all - they make makeup or B&B because they love it, so of course they also buy it and many support indie. As a result, they end up being a part of the blogging community when a new company or product is discussed, or they're hurt when something like Glittersniffer happens to them, too. They're people, and consumers, and business owners, and they're involved in the community. Is that OK? Can another business owner also be an angry customer? Is that unprofessional; is that bashing the competition, or is it their right as a consumer?

For most indies, their work is a labour of love. They make it because they love it and they love making it, and we respond to that. We like to encourage and support real passion for the things we like, rather than just profit margins and market gaps. When their work is criticised - even if that criticism is valid, it doesn't feel good, and while most indies respond with grace and take it in stride, I'm sure it's very difficult. Some, I'm sure, can take it personally and be upset and maybe defensive. To a certain extent, I think we have to forgive this, or at least try to be understanding. Customer service and making makeup are two completely different skillsets and an indie may not be blessed with both. They don't have a PR person to remain polite and detached when they sort out problems. And if you hurl abuse, unprovoked, at an indie owner, don't think it isn't within their rights to hurl it back simply because you might one day be a customer or they own a business. You have just as much responsibility to be civil, polite, and generally decent in communication with an indie business owner as they do to respond that way, and if you open by slinging insults you absolutely deserve whatever you get back.

I'm not saying that customer service doesn't matter or indies should be exempt from delivering it; genuine problems should be fixed and help given. We are all entitled to the products we paid for to arrive as described, in a timely fashion, satisfactory condition and to be fit for their intended purpose. I do think, however, that we set the tone of communication and that if you open communication with an indie business owner being rude or abusive, you need to be aware that they aren't your emotional punching bag, and they aren't some PR person trained to blithely accept your vitriol and respond with bland platitudes. They will react like a human, and you will deserve it.
That might sound strange coming from me. Sure, I rant and I curse - on my blog. In my communication with companies, even if I hate them, I'm still civil. It's just common decency. You don't send a storm of abuse into someone's inbox unless you're a troll. It isn't productive, it isn't a courteous thing to do, and even if you were in the right before, it makes your highground get vanishingly low.

When thinking about this issue, I tried to compare it to corporate makeup companies and relate the situation of what would happen if you got an e-mail response from a corporate business owner that could be considered abrupt, or a little rude. I couldn't, because it wouldn't happen. Not that a corporate business owner wouldn't send a response like that, but that you wouldn't get a response at all. Not from them. There are layers of staff between us and a corporate brand owner - you might have a problem with the shop staff, or the person answering the website e-mail, or the customer service rep on the phone, or their PR company, or an issue with quality control, but none of it gets back to the company owner. They're insulated from it all, and so if you really dislike someone you dealt with you generally think it was just that person and is not indicative of the brand itself, and you're less likely to completely stop shopping there.

Indie doesn't have layers of staff - most don't have any, or any training when it comes to crisis management and conflict resolution and how to stay calm and polite without getting personally involved or offended when you're being insulted or having your work criticised. I think it's unfair to expect a one-or-two person operation to have the same kind of service as a multinational corporation with offices overflowing with staff who have nothing at all to do with product creation. Usually, indie owners are the sole creative and driving force behind the company. Expecting them to do everything just as well as a fully staffed corporation is already asking a lot - expecting them to have no personal life whatsoever, no friends, and express no emotion so they can always represent their business perfectly is as ridiculous as it is impossible. When someone at Sephora leaves work and takes their uniform off, they're no longer representing their company. Their entire life isn't their job - why isn't the same true for an indie business?

We can't have it both ways. They can't please everyone and they'll go insane if they try. There isn't even an obvious answer - just a tenuous balance somewhere in the middle and the hope that no over-zealous blogger with a touch of crazy and a whole lot of angry isn't going to try and bring you down for it, and I know some of them are honestly afraid of this. Indie can either be cold and über-professional and business-like all the time and we can deal with them not being our best friend, with keeping communication curt and civil and us getting what we paid for, or it can be warm and personal and sometimes mistakes happen and that doesn't have to be the end of the fucking world. It can be one or the other, or it can try to be in-between and we should recognise that it can't be both and that finding that balance is hard, and inevitably people will disagree on where the middle should be. They can't be your friend when you want to feel involved and an unprofessional businessperson a beat later for trying to act like a person. Indie is people. All the time, even when it's inconvenient.
Mistakes and misunderstandings are going to happen, and if the standards we hold indie to don't become more reasonable, I can't see them wanting to stick around. I know that isn't what we want, and I certainly don't want to be the reason we can't have nice indie things - do you?

This isn't so much a rant, as it is a request. Every other post on this blog might be for the good of the consumer, but this one is for indie. For the love of adorable kittens, please give indie a break. Back the fuck off it for a while. At least don't hold it to higher standards than you hold corporations, for goodness' sake, when they're operating with approximately one billionth of the staff and resources. Get some perspective, they aren't all Glittersniffer. If the products are good, if you get them on time, if they're as described and they don't arrive split open or unsanitary or drenched in pig's blood, if you aren't robbed or lied to, maybe that can be good enough for a while, and we can avoid starting any more witch hunts.