I work for a recording studio as an engineer, where majority of the clientele are what people would call “from the streets”, and thus most of my working hours are in the late nights (10pm – 6am).
In our studio, a client would pay half of the total studio fee as a deposit, then the rest once the session is over, but from time to time, I get clients that tries to cheat their way out of having to pay the remainder by either claiming that they’ve already made payment through Online banking (which I have no way to confirm this because boss is asleep), or they’ll tell me to send the files first and then they’d pay (to which I refuse, but sometimes they’d refuse to leave until they get the files, and we’d end up sitting there for 3-4 extra hours).
It’s even worse now that my boss have added +$15/hr extra smoking fee, as to which some of them just straight up refuses to pay, but proceeds to smoke indoor anyways.
I’m having hard time enforcing these rules, as it’s usually 10 of them to just one of me, and I’ve asked my employer countless times to just collect the full amount upfront (for the late night session) to avoid these kinds of situation altogether, but he refuses because he doesn’t want to lose those clients/potential business (which I feel it’s better they don’t come to us at all).
My bosses solution to all of this is to collect payments at the door before starting any session, but 99% of the time, this ends up in me arguing with 5-10 different people at once.
It’s seriously starting to wear me out, and obviously the long term solution would be to change the work environment, but my current position in personal life doesn’t make this an easy choice.
Is there any short term solution to this?