Taking Care of Business…or Getting Rid of It?

So yesterday I managed to shuffle off a client whose project, I had finally come to recognize, I really did not want to do. Ever find yourself taking care of business simply by getting rid of business?

The job: a huge index. The subject matter: arcane. We are talkin’ 375 pages of Anglo-Saxon maritime history. The editors proposed to deliver this project to me last December, two months after I’d signed a contract. Making matters worse, I’d agreed to do the job for half the going rate. Because academic institutions are nonprofits, much research in the humanities would not take place or be published at all if individuals and organizations had to pay real-world prices, and besides, I’d annoyed my last client from this outfit and wanted a chance to redeem myself.

To compile an index, you take final page proofs and comb through them looking for important terms, facts, discussions, whatEVER a researcher might be looking for; cook up key words; find every reference to every key word (using your human judgment to filter out the chaff); arrange them under topics and subtopics; and alphabetize on at least two and sometimes three levels, meticulously following Chicago style. It is a mind-numbingly boring job, tedious, ditzy, and exacting. Indexes we’ve done for similar but shorter works have run to 30 or 40 MS pages.

I figured this job would take about 10 days or two weeks. Ten days or two weeks of excruciating tedium, for not very much money.

December came: no page proofs.

January. February. March.

I figured they’d forgotten me — must have found a graduate student to do it on an unpaid internship basis.

April. May. June. I forgot them.

Now, in the middle of July, they resurface. Both editors are junketing around Europe. And they want their index done right now.

Meanwhile, we have a big job in-house — an entire issue of a new client’s journal — and we are not in a position to drop what we’re doing and spend the next two weeks ditzing around with an index the size of a woolly mammoth.

My associate editor is swamped with work. Returned from China and had to turn around and go to another conference the next day. Teaching full-time. Running the world’s largest academic journal of organizational management , also full-time. She will be spending all of this weekend reading journal copy behind me.

Besides, indexing is not her forte to begin with and medieval history is far, far outside her field.

Vaguely part-time wannabe contract assistant: ditto, and probably frolicking in Colorado with her hubby and four kids as we scribble.

There’s not a full-time indexer on the planet who will do the job for what I agreed to do it for, mooting the idea of subcontracting to someone at ASI.

So I was about to play the Cancer Card, tell them sorry, folks, I’m sick, and back out. Then I thought of an old acquaintance who’s now living in another state and doing editorial work. She’s very smart, well organized, and efficient. Hm.

Thought she would laugh when I told her how much I’d agreed to take for the job, but to my amazement, she agreed to do it! I’m paying her the entire amount that I bill, so I’ll make nothing on it — not even a finder’s fee. But…it’s worth it, IMHO, to get that onerous job off my desk.

I’ve about reached the point of deciding there’s not enough time left on this earth to spend it doing work that makes my eyes glaze over.

Lessons Taken:

1. Do not accept jobs — any jobs — that make your eyes glaze over.

2. Do not agree to do work for less than your standard rate, no matter how worthy you think the cause is.

3. Don’t wait to fire clients who can’t keep a timely schedule.

4. “A$k and ye shall re¢eive” works both ways. Negotiate fees down as well as up.