The Expectation of Continued Employment (you wrote this?)

While I haven’t had anyone up and leave me for a long period of time leaving me to wonder if my contractor was dead or in the Witness Protection Program, I have had similar things happen.

Someone was a day late on a deadline. Didn’t let me know they were going to be late, they just "forgot" the deadline. Didn’t even bother to make up an excuse.

My absolute favorite … a contractor did the shoddiest work I’ve ever seen. The two articles I had her write were all KINDS of "English as a second language" and I was livid – I mean, I spent the same amount of time rewriting them as I would have spent writing them from scratch. It was wasted money in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I have yet to find a decent way to tell someone, "If you produce crap work, I’m not paying you." Because the contractor doesn’t know my standards and what if they think I’m just being an ass trying to not pay for work. But really, this work was AWFUL.

Then…to add insult to injury…I got this via email:

I have completed the assignment as requested. 

I will invoice you today for the total of $100 ( $50 per article, 2 articles completed).  Please advise what address to send invoice to.

There is a 10 day grace period for payments to be received after which time I charge a ___fee of 7% = $7______ per week late fee.

Thank you and I look forward to doing business with you in the future.

My brain almost exploded. So not only did I receive work of such a low quality it had to be entirely redone, if I didn’t pay for this awful, low-quality work within ten days (which was NOT mentioned when she took the assignment. You don’t get to give me your payment terms WITH the invoice – bad form) she was going to charge me a weekly late fee.

What gives a contractor the right to the expectation of a late fee when I don’t have the expectation of high quality work?

Because the assignment was NOT as requested. It was crap.

I have heard from other sources the writer DOES have a normal handle on writing and grammar. My only thought is that maybe it was subcontracted out to someone for whom English really was a second language. Which I could have done myself if I wanted to do that much editing.

It stinks, because good writers are difficult to find and out of the seven we hired for this project only three really impressed us. One writer never sent her sources, one was late, and then there was this. I’m down to four writers.

Maybe that will be enough for the time being.