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DiggAs the 4th of July approaches, I find myself looking forward to a great holiday weekend. We have big plans involving boats, lakes, fattening foods, and fireworks. Lorna is popping out of town for a few days, and my social calendar is filled to the max.
Still, I have work to do.
I am a strong advocate of making other people’s jobs easier, even if that means giving up some of my own luxuries in the process. While I don’t expect all freelancers to agree, I can’t help but feel that if movie theaters and gas stations have to be open 24-7 as just another way of catering to their customers, shouldn’t I be doing the same?
Working on Holidays
The benefits of working from home are not always 100 percent in the freelancer’s favor. I have deadlines tomorrow that have nothing to do with the United States of America and our Independence celebrations. The clients are overseas and requested a Friday completion date. They probably aren’t aware that it’s a holiday weekend for me (although if I brought it up, I’m sure they would have worked with me to come up with an alternate solution), so I am working through the evening and into tomorrow morning before I head out for my day in the sun.
I’ve been in similar circumstances for other American- and religion-based holidays. Although I certainly have the right to avoid taking jobs that have due dates during the holidays, I usually accept them anyway.
Working through Time Zones
I’ve discovered similar drawbacks when it comes to time zones. One of my steady gigs requires a monthly phone interview. I’m in PST, and so far, all of my interviewees have been East Coasters. This has meant some pretty early morning phone calls from my end of things. Again, while most of the people have been really good about setting a time that works for me, I feel that as the freelancer (as opposed to the client), it is my responsibility to do a good job – even if that means mass quantities of coffee at an ungodly hour of the day.
Cultural Communication Barriers
I had a client from Hong Kong once who asked me to write their About Us page. They cater to a largely American audience, so most of the time, they were happy to have me stick in American-specific and pop culture references for the writing I did. For this particular project, however, I put in an esoteric tie to Close Encounters of the Third Kind - a movie they had never even heard of, let alone used for puns. It took several rewrites and quite a bit of communication before we settled on a happy medium (the pun stayed in). Although I didn’t get paid more for my additional work, I considered it part and parcel of the whole cross-cultural thing.
Do You Always Have to Compromise to Succeed?
No, not necessarily, but I like to think that my approach of meeting clients on their own turf is part of what makes me a good freelancer. We work in a world-wide community, and it would be a mistake to assume that my way is the only way.
Lorna Doone Brewer is both a writer and an entrepreneur at heart. This is where those two worlds meet. She also blogs at 
Tamara Berry used to miss interaction with her daughter. Now she misses interaction with adults. Freelance writing is her happy medium.
I identify with you on all of those, but the cultural differences one is one that I was really thrown by a while back. Trying to keep North American sayings like “easy as pie” out of your writing can be tough and the man I wrote for had 0 tolerance for humor. :S
As for holidays, I usually work them, too. The holidays here in Guatemala aren´t the same for me and we don´t really celebrate North American ones, so I´m pretty much a year round worker.
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I agree with bending for some things, but I would hold firm on the time zone issue. If you are only managing to be present with the help of large amounts of caffeine, you’re probably not at your best.
Then again, I am not a morning person. I live on the East Coast and it is my dream to work with someone on the West Coast. I would still need to wake up before noon, but not by much ;).
Tamara,
I read your post twice because I wanted to be sure what I thought I was reading was what you put down. I have to disagree your premise that you are compromising. I don’t see compromise which means both parties are giving up something to make things move to a successful outcome.
At each of your points I see you making the concessions so the other party is not inconvenienced but you have not provided any solid evidence that they are or might be.
In other posts you have mentioned that you don’t deal well with conflict (I think I remember that correctly). I have to wonder if much of your efforts to bend for the customer, even well in advance, are designed to head-off any possible instance of conflict. There is a lot of room between having things go only your way when dealing with a customer and never having your point of view considered.
Two things are happening here, you are teaching your customers how to treat you (you don’t have a life if they need anything) and you are teaching yourself to value your life, happiness and working conditions lower than your customer’s.
On a slightly different front, you made the statement: “…I can’t help but feel that if movie theaters and gas stations have to be open 24-7 as just another way of catering to their customers, shouldn’t I be doing the same?”
It is a marketing myth that 24/7 availability is synonymous with providing good service. The evidence is overwhelming that customer service satisfaction has dropped substantially since the onset of the 24/7 retail environment. My theory about why is that when retailers had set limited hours they knew better when and how to schedule the employees who served the customers and during business hours the main thing was customer service. With 24/7 who knows when customers will arrive or how many. Combine that with the need to offset the expenses of being always on with payroll reduction which leads to a 24/7 skeleton crew composed of jacks of all trades. Instead of real customer service professionals gleaned and trained to serve, not just wait on, the customers the same employee who cleans the bathrooms, and brings the carts off the lot, and does a price check, will turn around and scoop your ice cream; now that’s a tempting thought.
While I am new to the freelancing business I have been a near full-time volunteer over the years. Some nonprofits can be notorious about owning their volunteers and controlling their time and schedules, and even suggesting that people who don’t show up every time for the whole time aren’t very dedicated to the cause. It took a couple of rounds of burn-out because I had four children at home and a traveling spouse but I eventually learned how to set boundaries and negotiate; and my happiness quotient improved markedly. And truthfully Tamara, the voice in your post does not sound happy at all while insisting that happiness is not dependent on getting your way.
I hope you can read this in the spirit in which I wrote it. One of the snarky realities about the internet is that it’s hard to assimilate nonverbal cues into the communication. With that I’ll relinquish the floor.
Deb