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> Then one day the business owner (my father) said “hey this customer is going to come by and pick up the order so don’t print a shipping label.” Yikes had to figure that out. Then one day another customer said “hey can we pay cash on delivery?” C.O.D. used to be a thing. Then I had to add that.

What happens if you just say no? I have a feeling a lot of complexity stems from the fact that these exceptions are easy to handle when you’re doing things manually, so it’s hard to say no. But if you think about the business case I would not be surprised if the correct answer is no more often than not.



> What happens if you just say no?

Do you want to say no?

That's not an easy question to answer. You should think about it. Is it worth alienating some customers to handle them in a larger scale?

Naively, this looks like an automatic "no", but it's not.


Not in these cases. It doesn't make sense to deny taking money from a customer unless you're near capacity and can replace the customer.


I’d say that depends. If it will cost you more money to handle a specific exception than what you can generate in gross profit from those sales, then you should just say no.




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