Me: by “the rest,” do you mean all three? because none today
IMF: oh, i thought we used some…i haven’t looked yet…but yea, all of them then
Sigh.
Got hold of the other person, who gave me the rundown – apparently all being used next week, one way or the other.
No, I don’t have a contract – yes, I understand the implications of that. As several have chimed in to say, the market sucks at this point and I’m actually happy to have a client that I’m invoicing about $1200-$1500 a month, and that pays that money within 30 days. Even when said client pulls incompetent motherfucking shit like this on a not-entirely-rare basis.
Mostly I just needed to vent. Everyone does, from time to time.
Oh, you want coherence in my rant? I only rant coherently when I’m paid to.
Yes, what happened is that they switched the date they’re running this from this week to next week, at the last minute, and without telling either me [no surprise there] or the editor in question, apparently.
And that they don’t contact you saying there is a dot that they aren’t sure whether it’s a comma, please correct it. The 45 days will start counting again from the date the new invoice is received, of course.
Yes, we all realize that human emotions are something you have trouble understanding. You did name yourself after one of the most unsympathetic people in existence, after all.
It looks like she is getting paid, but in the newspaper and magazine industry, there are several ways payment to freelancers is handled. Some pay on acceptance. Some pay on publication. Some have "kill fee"s in which they offer to pay a certain percentage if the story, for any reason, gets scrapped after you submit it and it’s been accepted. Some don’t.
Lots of sympathy. Even as a graphic designer paid by the hour (no matter what they do with the product), we’ll occasionally get a non- or late-payer. But we can see 'em coming a long ways away…
…except my friend Michael. He’ll be all excited about this new client “who’s going to revolutionize the way ______ does ______!” And we roll our eyes and say “Okay, but how much did you get up front? So when this guy disappears with your artwork, you’ll have a few bucks in your pocket…”
He’s spent more time in small claims court than actually designing.
I have become better at this myself lately, been burned a few times, and every time makes me that much less prone to bend the rules or give someone a break. The ones I ALWAYS start bidding high and insisting on deposits are what I call the “salesmen”.
The phone call is always very upbeat talking about how they want a new go to guy or dependable service for a long standing customer relationship and how hes going to be referring me dozens of his customers and friends, and I am sure that for someone of your skills this will be a trivial problem you can resolve in less than an hour.
The last time someone gave me that speil, it was RAID5 array with 2 dead drives on a 12 year old windows 2000 server. The backups had not been updated to reflect new software they had added on their own so none of their work in progress had been backed up.
Drivesavers actually managed to get all his stuff back, in a week, for $4k. After all that he still acted disappointed that we apparently “lacked the skills” (or clean room, or people who fix borked hard drives for a living) to do it ourselves.
Twickster accepted the deal without a kill fee. That’s the point you are missing.
Nope. I’m fine with human emotions. But the OP discusses a business situation–there’s no crying in business situations. Twickster made a deal that had several possible outcomes, one of those outcomes occurred, and Twickster acts all surprised and shocked as if she were struck by a random stranger on the street.
No, I’m not missing that point. Sometimes you don’t have a choice but to accept a deal with some disfavorable conditions. That doesn’t change the fact that it sucks and you might want to complain about it among friends or on the internet.
