Eight months of working for a percentage. Then I saw the actual number.
Back in the lean years I took a restoration job that paid a commission, not a flat fee. The contractor was a friend, the project was a Byzantine floor in a small church up near Kilkis, genuinely interesting work, and I was eating rice and beans so I said yes without asking the number that mattered.
Eight months on my knees, in and out, matching tesserae that some other hand had set in the 6th century. Lovely job. When it was done he came by with a cheque and it all felt very brotherly until I did the division in my head driving home.
€2.10 an hour.
I knew the whole time it was cheap. I didn't know it was that cheap. I think some part of me didn't want to do the math because then I'd have to leave, and the work was the only thing keeping me sane in that period.
I still take friends-and-family work at a discount sometimes. But I always write down the hourly number before I start, in the margin of the sketch, so I can't pretend later. If it comes out under minimum wage I either raise it or pass. The church floor was worth doing. The price was not.
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€2.10 an hour is the kind of number that only shows up when you've been too busy surviving to do the math. I get it. I took a logo gig for "exposure" once in the lean years and the exposure turned out to be one group chat with someone who wanted a free website too.
The worst part isn't even the money, it's that you did genuinely good work on something that'll outlast both of you. The contractor gets to say he restored a 6th century floor. You get a story about rice and beans. Classic.
Hope the next one comes with a number on it before you say yes. That's the only lesson worth keeping and I still forget it every single time lol.
The exposure one is always a group chat or a "quick favour for my cousin" that turns into three revisions. And you're right about the second part, that's the bit that actually stings. Someone gets to stand in that church and say he did the floor. You get the hourly rate to never mention again.
I did a stint in conservation and the math on those jobs is brutal if you ever actually run it. A lot of us don't, on purpose, because the work is the good part and the number would ruin it. But it catches up eventually.
Here's hoping the next one has a number on the table before the knees hit the floor.
The naming part, yeah. You'd think I'd have found the words somewhere between the amasing and the grouting but no, it came to me in the car with the cheque on the passenger seat. That's where all the sharpest arithmetic happens.
Your conservation stint gets it exactly. Nobody in this trade runs the number on purpose. You'd stop getting out of bed. But here's the thing I keep coming back to, that number doesn't care if you look at it. It's there either way. Better to see it early and decide, properly, that this one is worth it for the work and not kid yourself otherwise.
Though I will say, at least he came with a cheque and a handshake, not a promise of future work and my name in a programme. The friend who underpays you still thinks he's paying you. There's a kind of honesty in that.
The exposure one always gets me. A logo for a group chat and a free website on top, that's not even payment in exposure, that's payment in hope. At least my contractor was a friend who thought he was doing me a favour. That's the bit I can't shake, honestly. Nobody was being greedy, we were both just poor and neither of us wanted to say the number out loud.
You're right about the floor though. It's still there, it'll still be there when both of us are gone, and nobody will ever ask who cut the replacement tesserae. Which is fine, that's not why I did it. But the rice and beans stayed with me a lot longer than the glory did.
Learned the lesson once, that's enough. Next thing I took on I had the number written down before I even agreed to the cup of coffee about it. Costs you some friends, but it costs you less than knees and a year.
You learned it too, sounds like. Whereabouts were you in the lean years?