Member #3315
12-31-08, 07:44
For the first time in my mongering experience here in BA I check my phone's clock as the chica walks in the door, all protocol previously taken care of and both of us ready to go. Fast forward a few beats and the phone rings in the apartment (Esmeralda 973, piso 1 C into 4D or whichever apartment I was in specifically) counting time and I look at my phone again. About 40 min has gone by. I protest a bit but get brushed off and what am I going to do, make a big deal out of it? Not so much. She says something about the clock starting before, when I first 'met' her, or whatever. It comes out kinda fast and my castellano isn't tipity top so I don't catch the exact words.
So my dear readers, I ask you, is it unreasonable to expect 60 minutes of clock from the time the chica walks into the room _after_ all the opening logistics have been executed? She cleans up a little before we walk out, straightens the bed out. Is that my time she's doing that on? What about the lengthy 10+ minutes it takes for her to take my money, go back to wherever and do whatever, and then show up again ready to go. Is that part of my hour too?
Being a long time contractor I've often lamented all the ancillary shit I have to do that isn't directly paid for by my clients. I've said to a client on more than one occasion (paraphrasing) 'if it's at all related to your project and I'm spending time on it those are billable hours.' If I was hot shit I'd bill everything, as I said: at all related to the client's problems or desires that I'm spending time addressing. My preference would be they pay for the customer acquisition time I spend winning the work. From the first moment I pick up the phone till the last second I put it down, I'd like to be paid for the time I spend that I wouldn't otherwise have spent had I never known them.
But, alas, it mostly doesn't work that way. If you had a lot of leverage and you played with the numbers right I'm sure you could get something similar to what I've described in terms of compensated time. For me personally though it's pretty much never happened. In my experience in the field of digital production hours billed are usually the core production 'building stuff' hours, and all the related time sinks are somehow built into that price or eaten depending on how you want to look at it.
That being said, we're talking about projects that are at least 40, 80, 160 hours of work at the minimum, and where talking about potentially many hours more in all the related hoo haw. If I were charging for one hour of work, like say I was a fortune teller or a masseur or something, I would think they should get the full hour, and I'd charge what I needed to to make the business work. It would seem a rip off to be like, no actually you only get 50 minutes because I had to run your credit card or setup the table or clean the dust off my crystal ball.
The question then presents itself: is it reasonable to expect a full hour of quality time from an apartment chica? From the time she walks in the door ready to give you her full attention to the knock / phone ring that signals times up? Or 55 minutes maybe, the rest for for wrap up? Or does wrap up usually take longer and that should be part of the hour too? I can see wrap up from the knock on the door till out in the hall taking 5-10 min or maybe even a bit longer.
And let's say we do believe we are entitled to a full 60 min, or 55 min. How do we enforce this expectation? Tell the madam 'yo, I want a full fucking hour from the time the chica walks in my room ready to fuck me till the minute you knock on the door telling me my time is up'. What's do be done when they don't give you the full hour regardless? Complain? Never come back. Complain and never come back? Maybe you could bring a stop watch and tell her, 'yo, I'm going to time this, and if I don't get a full hour I'm going to __________'. Never return? Btich at you? Magically teleport the money I've already given you back into my pocket?
The path of least resistance is to simply live with what I'm given, but I don't know if that's going to work for me. Simply informing the madam of my expectation seems like the next best step, and I'll probably be trying that, but I won't be surprised if that enforcement technique is largely ineffectual. And then that might annoy me even more cuz like I actually made a point to say something and it still didn't play out 'right'. Maybe their process is their process and who am I to btich about it? That's the service that's offered take it or leave it.
One way or another the 40 min of me time I was given this evening didn't feel satisfying. At least 50 seems minimally reasonable.
Tiz
So my dear readers, I ask you, is it unreasonable to expect 60 minutes of clock from the time the chica walks into the room _after_ all the opening logistics have been executed? She cleans up a little before we walk out, straightens the bed out. Is that my time she's doing that on? What about the lengthy 10+ minutes it takes for her to take my money, go back to wherever and do whatever, and then show up again ready to go. Is that part of my hour too?
Being a long time contractor I've often lamented all the ancillary shit I have to do that isn't directly paid for by my clients. I've said to a client on more than one occasion (paraphrasing) 'if it's at all related to your project and I'm spending time on it those are billable hours.' If I was hot shit I'd bill everything, as I said: at all related to the client's problems or desires that I'm spending time addressing. My preference would be they pay for the customer acquisition time I spend winning the work. From the first moment I pick up the phone till the last second I put it down, I'd like to be paid for the time I spend that I wouldn't otherwise have spent had I never known them.
But, alas, it mostly doesn't work that way. If you had a lot of leverage and you played with the numbers right I'm sure you could get something similar to what I've described in terms of compensated time. For me personally though it's pretty much never happened. In my experience in the field of digital production hours billed are usually the core production 'building stuff' hours, and all the related time sinks are somehow built into that price or eaten depending on how you want to look at it.
That being said, we're talking about projects that are at least 40, 80, 160 hours of work at the minimum, and where talking about potentially many hours more in all the related hoo haw. If I were charging for one hour of work, like say I was a fortune teller or a masseur or something, I would think they should get the full hour, and I'd charge what I needed to to make the business work. It would seem a rip off to be like, no actually you only get 50 minutes because I had to run your credit card or setup the table or clean the dust off my crystal ball.
The question then presents itself: is it reasonable to expect a full hour of quality time from an apartment chica? From the time she walks in the door ready to give you her full attention to the knock / phone ring that signals times up? Or 55 minutes maybe, the rest for for wrap up? Or does wrap up usually take longer and that should be part of the hour too? I can see wrap up from the knock on the door till out in the hall taking 5-10 min or maybe even a bit longer.
And let's say we do believe we are entitled to a full 60 min, or 55 min. How do we enforce this expectation? Tell the madam 'yo, I want a full fucking hour from the time the chica walks in my room ready to fuck me till the minute you knock on the door telling me my time is up'. What's do be done when they don't give you the full hour regardless? Complain? Never come back. Complain and never come back? Maybe you could bring a stop watch and tell her, 'yo, I'm going to time this, and if I don't get a full hour I'm going to __________'. Never return? Btich at you? Magically teleport the money I've already given you back into my pocket?
The path of least resistance is to simply live with what I'm given, but I don't know if that's going to work for me. Simply informing the madam of my expectation seems like the next best step, and I'll probably be trying that, but I won't be surprised if that enforcement technique is largely ineffectual. And then that might annoy me even more cuz like I actually made a point to say something and it still didn't play out 'right'. Maybe their process is their process and who am I to btich about it? That's the service that's offered take it or leave it.
One way or another the 40 min of me time I was given this evening didn't feel satisfying. At least 50 seems minimally reasonable.
Tiz