One of my Coworkers damaged my customers art and I worry I’ll be left to deal with it
Sorry for long post but I need to vent and possibly get advice.
I took this order for a first time customer a few weeks ago. He had nearly a dozen individually signed and numbered prints from different well known artists and spent well over two thousand dollars on this order. He was very hesitant about leaving his art here and I told him he was welcome to retain the art but assured him that we were all trained to handle art, (because in my shop we actually are trained very well by the manager) he eventually opted to leave the art with us and the last thing he said as he was leaving is “I trust you guys”. Cut to three weeks later and my coworker is putting hardware in the frames of one of the pieces, drill wobbles, and she ends up jamming the drill through the foamcore, into the art, and hitting the acrylic. Gigantic hole in the artwork.
This happened on my day off and I only learned about it the next day. The pieces were due today and as far as I know he has not come to pick anything up yet. My manager has called him twice but says that nobody is answering and there’s no voicemail option so he doesn’t even know one of his pieces is destroyed. Manager doesn’t work again until Saturday and I’m pretty much working all through the next two days. It’s likely I’ll be the one having to deal with the customer when he comes in, and I just don’t think that’s fair. I’m feeling pretty resentful of my coworker right now. I feel like she or my manager should be the ones to face the customer, because I had nothing to do with this damage. I’m considering taking the next two days off just to avoid dealing with the mess, which I know is kind of cowardly but I just don’t get paid enough to deal with rightfully pissed off customers when it is just not my fault. Does anyone have advice for what they would do in my situation?
TLDR: coworker put a hole through a hesitant new customers signed and numbered artwork. Manager couldn’t get ahold of the guy, so now it looks like I’ll be the one dealing with the fallout. wwyd?