OMG Nightmare online employer

Okay, I’ve been SO lucky to work with some of the best people ever but there are some nightmare employers out there and I finally had the pleasure (cough) of working with one.

The woman is crazy, period, and she wonders why she keeps going through freelancers – it’s always them of course. I wonder how many it will take for her to wonder if it’s actually HER? With her Godlike syndrome, probably never. She’s perfect in every aspect when she looks in the mirror – mirror, mirror on the wall, why are you telling the biggest tale of ALL?

Don’t be taken advantage of by any employer.

This lady wanted way too much for free. Now I’m a nice person and really easy to work with, extremely fair in my billing, etc. but I need her to get a grip! Well, it doesn’t really matter if she does because I called it quits but she’d do well to get a grip.

She really didn’t pay too well as it is, not terrible, but not to my standards but she sounded decent, had some interesting work that I wanted to get involved in and promised more money once we got a few things going. Okay, fair enough – and again, I was really interested in some of the stuff she had going and wanted to learn more so I figured it would be good experience for me.

Next thing I know it’s “can you do this real quick”, “can you do that real quick”. I did a couple of things without billing her, they were just quick few minutes things. No big deal. Um, until it started adding up. There were so many small things that those minutes started adding up to hours by the end of the week.

Plus she kept me on IM for LENGTHY amounts of time. Literally. She was online pinging me when I woke up and would be there all day and all night pinging me. And be annoyed when I wasn’t there. If I wasn’t online, she’d call me…no matter what time it was or if we had been working all day. Lady, I have a life. This is why I work at home – for flexibility. Unless you are paying me a LARGE amount of money, I am not at your beck and call day and night.

I eventually started billing her for some of this stuff.

Sorry but I can’t keep losing that much time, now you’re totally taking advantage of me and my kindness – please don’t mistake it for weakness.

She got irritated that I was billing her for things that only took a few minutes – never mind the fact there were a s&$! load of “few minute tasks” that accumulated to HOURS. Sorry but I don’t work for free.

Then she asked me to take on a higher position part-time because it needed to be filled and I was interested in it. So if it worked out, I’d take that position and we’d fill my current position with someone else. Now mind you the pay for this higher position paid more, and it should, I am not getting ‘flipping burgers pay’ for management – yeah right.

So I billed her separately. One bill for the original position at the lower hourly rate. One bill for the higher position tasks at the higher position rate. She didn’t like that, she wanted me to do it all for the original position pay.

Okay, this lady is officially crazy and I’m done!

She had told me a million stories about all of the freelancers she had gone through and at this point I know exactly why.

On top of trying to be flat out cheap but want top quality work, and someone to babysit her at ALL times, she was way too arrogant, thought she knew EVERYTHING and no one else knew anything.

The woman once told me “I don’t think you understand how email works”. Ummm, did you really just say that? My knowledge of the Internet goes WELL beyond how email works! And I’m quite sure this was evidenced in the highly commended work I did for her. But she’s just one of those people that feels superior to everyone – oh, I’m sorry, since you’re God can you answer my prayers (I’ll keep what my prayer was to myself!)

Anyways, just wanted to rant for a minute I guess LOL and say don’t ever let someone take advantage of you. If they aren’t fair and want something for nothing, it’s going to turn all bad. Your work and time is valuable and you should treat it as so even if someone else doesn’t.

After all of this happened, I went back and read reviews on her, wish I would have read them first. I’ve just never had a bad experience with an employer so live and learn. She had a ton of negative reviews – people she hadn’t paid, people saying exactly what I said, people addressing her condescending attitude, her wanting too much for free, etc.

If you can check out an employer, do so. If you read a ton of bad stuff, pass them up. That’s one of the treasures of working online, you CAN be choosy.

Remember, you work for YOURSELF. Don’t let anyone devalue you or your time. ‘We aren’t in Corporate America anymore Toto’ – you can’t work my fingers to the bone for slave pay and be a jerk too!

K

P.S. – I’ve since seen her post that same position and others a hundred times LOL, guess she still can’t keep anyone. I’ve thought about telling her why but I don’t know if I’ll bother.