I’m freelancing these days. Not my preference – I actually like having a nice 9 to 5 job with a predictable income and benefits – but you play the hand you’re dealt.
I have a regular client, a print publication, which is a relationship that goes back several years. (I, in fact, worked there in a nice full-time job with a salary and benefits for about a year, but that’s a completely different rant.) The local editor there – this is a multi-city publication – is a super nice guy, but man I want to kill the incompetent motherfucker right now.
I have a thing I do for them on a once-a-month basis. Fine. The thing is, if I submit material and they don’t use it, I don’t get paid – no kill fee. So last week I sent him an email saying “how much do you really need, there’s still X amount from the previous month that didn’t get used.”
He calls me on Wednesday and says “I need X Y and Z. X and Y is is for more than one city (i.e., gets paid at a higher rate), Z is Philly only.” (This, BTW, is after he’d told me in January that stuff would be at the higher rate in 2012 – which he then reneged on without telling me, it ran Philly only.)
Me: Are you sure? Really sure? Because I will do it if you need it, but I don’t want to do work that I don’t get paid for.
Incompetent motherfucker: Yes, I need it, I just talked to [this other person whose efforts are the basis of the page count], and yes, that’s what I need.
Me: Okey doke, I can give you this if I do [blah blah], would that work?
IMF: That would be excellent, thanks.
Me: Okay, I have to change around what I’d planned to do, but I can get this to you by noon Sunday {start of his workweek}.
IMF: Great, thanks.
So, I submit X, Y and Z on Saturday afternoon, and think, great, I will be able to invoice $500 for this.
Yesterday: Tax Day. It was ugly. Very, very ugly. I was not making quarterly payments, because I need my not-exactly-huge income for boring shit like food and shelter.
Last night: checked to see if the material I submitted was online. It wasn’t. It sometimes isn’t, because there’s a whole 'nother set of incompetent motherfuckers up in New York, so I figured, fine, whatever. Well, not fine, but not exactly surprising.
This morning: checked the print edition. Not a single fucking sign of this $500 worth of material that was supposed to run here today. Not supposed to run in NYC till next Tues., so I don’t know how far this sodomy extends. IMF doesn’t get in till 1, so I can’t call him up and bitch him out.
Dear incompetent motherfuckers of the universe: if you’re dealing with freelancers, please do not ask them to do work that you will not actually use, because then they are wasting their fucking time doing things they will not be paid for, which means they are not spending their time – a finite resource, even for people who don’t follow a 9 to 5, 7 day schedule – doing things they will be paid for.
Motherfucker.