My Job-Bidding Adventure
 

Hi everyone...
Well thanks for all your great advice in the thread asking for advice on that shoot. I'll use it, for sure.
But that will have to be on the next job.

I went out to talk to the client about this job and found out that what the person had told me on the phone was not what they needed -- i.e. go to this place on Wednesday, and film this preacher speaking.

I got there at the funeral home and waited 45 minutes while the client finished a conference call, figuring it would take less time to wait then to rebook the appointment. meanwhile a funeral was going on, and grieving people were streaming out into the lobby, filling up the chairs next to me, sobbing, distraught. Nothing I could do but sit there for 45 minutes, feeling like an intruder.

When i finally got in, the client (owner) passed me off to his manager to talk about the job, with directions to book me.

What they really wanted was more an intensive, a biography/montage of this preacher. Whole different ball game. This lady and I kicked around ideas for awhile as I tried to make her possibilities known to her.

Twice she left me sitting there, saying she'd be right back but instead coming back in 20 minutes to a half hour. They seemed busy in the back so i thought maybe they were doing a lot of things at once.

By this time the funeral was over. i was alone in the room about six inches from a dead body underneath a sheet, raised up from a platform in the floor. I kept waiting for a hand to reach out and grab my wrist or something and pull me straight down into hell. Or for it to sit up and its head to spin around, all Linda Blair-like, spitting some pea soup.

I was hungry and thought i was booking a really big job, so I stayed. I had a critical bills situation which this job would have solved. Finally we went into her office to work out the final details. We even made a conference call to set up an appt for me to meet with the preacher down south although the time was up in the air.

It was almost 5 pm at this point and my appt was at one. I had to cancel the day's other appointments. At the last minute she changed her mind and said no, maybe they'd just do a photo montage, she'd get back with me. That would have been fine, but a photo montage was not really what she was looking for.

We were getting along great and she just backed out. I told her I could do a job on whatever level she needed, a biography or a smaller job such as a photo montage. As for rates, they knew that up front, so they should have known early on if they coudn't afford it.

She said she'd let me know on monday. I left her with materials, a rate sheet, etc, and left, driving home an hour in Friday rush hour traffic. When I called her to check back, she said they had gotten distracted by another large funeral out of area and all their efforts were going into that. She said she coudln't talk but would call me back the next evening. She never did.

Moral of the story? Never spend four hours. And if they don't respect your time, reschedule, don't wait.

I'm sorry to hear of your ordeal. My philosophy? The client is ALWAYS a pain. However, you went into overtime there, just to get the brush-off. I have been in several similar situations myself, but would never waste 4 hours for free.

I did have one web design client though, and it was one of those "could you just..." nights. I had finished the site, and they wanted to "just change the font". Then they wanted to "just change some text". Again, and again, and again. And with every change, the wife wanted to print the web page, so she could look at it on paper. It was frustrating, aggrevating, and I was charging them only $15 an hour to " just ". I should have charged more.