For the last two weeks my only client for my design services has been some close relative. I mostly worked at his place on his computers, and I worked at home on my computer only for several hours, just in order to upload huge quantity of photos on his FaceBook and Picasa album, since his upload bandwidth is a few times slower than mine. Two weeks ago he payed me for the past work that I have done for him and we agreed for the price of the hour of work for the future projects. I was surprised how much work has he been giving me, since I expected that I would work for him just a few hours per day, so I could also work for other clients. But since there was so much to do at his place, I did not have any motivation and time to request orders from others.
After the last payment, he said that I should not expect new payments from him for a while, since he needs to get payed by his clients first. We agreed that he would call me only if there would be some urgent job to do, so I would have opportunity to get payed also from clients who have the money. But then I got surprised when he started giving me one order after another. I also noticed that he has been buying quite a lot of new stuff, so I told myself that he obviously knows what he is doing, and that he must have decided to give me a lot of work in order to support me by paying me a lot of money, since I have presented him exactly how much money I need monthly in order to pay all the bills.
Since I got a notice from the bank yesterday that I need to pay certain amount of money to cover my debt, I summed how much money I urgently need to pay the bank and other monthly bills. So when I went today at his place, I faced him with the number. He became very surprised and upset, when he saw the sum of how much he owes me for the work that I have done for him in past two weeks. From the beginning state of shock, he slowly started to build more and more anger, trying to present himself as a victim, as I milker cow, and me as the one who is exploiting and ripping him off. When I asked him, how come that he is acting so surprised, since we agreed on the price, and he knew and saw me what and for how long I have been working on his projects, he answered that we never agreed on the price, which is certainly not true.
He argued that if I would work for the price as I requested, I would in a month earn as much as the politicians. But I have not worked for him in past two weeks just 8 hours per day, 5 days in a week, but 7 days per week, and occasionally over 12 hours per day, so many working hours accumulated in that time. I guess he did not expected that, and he also never checked how many hour accumulated in between. I did not allow to react on his provocations, I stayed calm and tried to reason with him. But as I have known him for many years, he does not use reason very much, but allows his emotions to take him over and decides to play a role of helpless victim. He eventually told me, that he will try to pay me tomorrow, since he expects to receive some payment on his bank account. But after a while, after he stirred his emotions even more, he said that he is considering even paying me nothing, since this is a robbery, and that he is considering to never order my services again.
But I did not react and simply explained him again that the price of the hour of work that we agreed upon is less that one third of what I usually charge and one fourth of what is the standard recommended price for design services in our country. And he does not want to understand, that I have to pay for the taxes, expensed and the bank credits, since I am self-employed. If he would employ me, that would be the whole different story, since the employer pays for the taxes, but this was not the case. My current monthly expenses are twice the amount of money of the minimum wage in our country. I simply can not afford to work as employee at some company, since I would get just a little more that a minimum wage. So the only option at this time for me is to work as self-employed, to get some orders, and charge per hour of work much more than I would get as someone's employee.
We agreed that starting today, I would not work for him any longer and that I would work for other clients in the future. He would just call me if there would be any urgent job to do - and here we go again. But really, I simply can not feel pity for him just because he is my close relative. If he is not able to include the price of my work in the services and products that he sells forward to his clients, this is his problem. I can not care if I work for him or for someone others. Certain people want from me money, and I need to get money, regardless if from him or from someone else. It is quite cool to work at his place, but there are many emotions, judgements and projections involved, and he sometimes forgets what he promised. So tomorrow I will hit the road and start to visit new potential clients in order to get better payed jobs without or at least with less emotional dramas.
I also noticed that I've had a very unpleasant feeling, a knot in my belly, for the last week and I was not able to release the tension. A lot has been happening lately, very fierce forum and online chats, and strong pressures from the bank. I expect that I will be able to get enough orders and thus money in order to pay my debts. But I can not know how things will develop, so I will be giving it my best to try and see what will happen. Let us introduce the Equal Money System as soon as possible in order to quit fighting about how much is someone's labour worth and establishing equality and providing for basic needs of all living beings!
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