Clothing shops that sell ready made trousers need somebody to hem them, and guesthouses need somebody to hem two hundred sheets and take in forty staff shirts. We do both on trade rates with a monthly invoice.
A plain trouser hem in quantity is 35 rufiyaa rather than 50, a curtain or sheet hem is 25 a metre, and a staff shirt alteration is 60. Collected from you and returned to you in Malé, twice a week on a fixed day, which is easier for everybody than somebody carrying bags across town when they remember.
We invoice at the end of the month with GST and a line for every garment, and we keep the docket you signed when the bag was collected. Two shops have been on this arrangement for over eight years.
The only condition is the fixed day. Work that arrives on an unplanned afternoon goes behind the counter queue, and the counter queue is people waiting for something to wear that evening.