I know… sorry boys, you’re never sure what you’re going to get when you show up here… if it’s not boob stories it’s [ahem] eMOtional blog posts…
Happily, PMS is actually over… but my word… Thursday? I could have cried at the drop of a proverbial hat… Every Billy Joel song I listened to would make me mist up… Good Grief. I’d expect to mist over at Eva Cassidy… but Billy Joel? I need help.
Anyway… a client of mine walked right into the PMS minefield. HA. Bet he’s sorry now…
This is how it went…
[cue birds singing cheerily outside, a clock ticks gracefully on the mantle…]
Computer: “You’ve got Mail!” and then I read; “Hi Dee, here’s a few more bits and bobs to do on so and so’s site. We’ve a couple more things to send through, will do that early next week yada yada. etc. etc.”
[to which I replied]. Thanks, just checking, this is at my usual [rather lovely] hourly rate?
Computer: Ah, actually, I think that the client can ask for whatever little bits and bobs he needs to have done to finish the site, we’re not charging him any more… do you really think you should?”
At this point I’d like to point out that I’m talking here to a middle man, between the client who paid them for the site and me, who actually did the work at a ridiculous rate. In fact, I’ve done somewhat above the 8 hours work originally paid for. The initial job was to develop a pre-prepared design to a working site. No added extras… Actually, as they have a staff member well versed in Contribute and static site maintenance I was unprepared for them to ask me to do the content… A lesson to oneself in getting a written agreement on what gets done for the quoted price… And to date there have been rather a lot of added extras, and this last email which listed 22 final touch ups is the second email of ‘final touch-ups’. (Just in case you thought I was being unreasonable…).
I sent him a bit of a stinger email. Not something I’ve been used to doing, partly fuelled by a long history of this kind of heel digging on his part and a hearty dose of PMS…
I think the best part about it is that I’m no longer a slave to the need to keep the peace. I know my worth in this area, I don’t have an emotional investment in this relationship that I have to balance so I can speak my mind and stand my ground without fear. And if I’m perfectly honest? Sometimes it feels a little bit good to stand up and say ‘Up Yours!’
PMS or no PMS.