Captain France
Member
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2017
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- 184
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- 276
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- Age
- 37
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- Male
It used to be that people would band together to avoid underpriced work. I watched it happen multiple times on the forum I was on that is no more, and while it didn't always change matters - it did happen, as often as not, that when work sat undone for long enough requesters would bump the price back up.
But those days are gone. There isn't anything one person can do about it on their own, and so long as this "anything is better than $0!!!" mindset is king it's probably not going to happen again that turkers band together even in small groups. I know that, I just have a hard time not being sad and mad and disappointed when I see it happen.
Gonna stop there, otherwise I'll get ranty (I also know better than to think anyone wants to read pages of rant on the subject)
It's possible, that others adapt and even with price cuts still manage to earn above what you consider fair. So even with the same philosophy of a fair wage, you may be using a hand saw and they may be using a chain saw.
I mean, even from a "my rent payment hangs in the balance" (well, more like my ability to afford going to the clinic and pay my old credit card bills and not leech too much off of my mother, who is already helping more than she needs to by letting me stay at her house when I'm 30 fucking yars old) standpoint, if there's no union or union-like communication chain for a strike, there's a pretty bad reward/risk ratio to "I'm not gonna work for less than $10" and "I'm not gonna work if they drop the pay." My bills aren't going to let me hold off on them, you know?It occurred to me, as I was angrily shredding junk mail, that the issue here is actually the difference in mindset between the hobbyist/part-timer working for fun money or to supplement a full-time brick and mortar wage, and the full-time freelancer who approaches Turk from more of a business mindset (which may be you as well, I don't believe I've made your acquaintance as yet)
Not only does it feel like an unacceptable risk to continue to work for someone who has proved that they'll drastically cut my pay without warning or reason, *I can't afford* to subsidize them by spending too much time figuring out how to adapt to their lower pay - which in itself has an additional cost for me. If I'm going to spend what little spare time I have doing anything, it'll be finding someone who will pay me decently - which has a clearer and usually (in my experience) much quicker path to success.
I guess if your rent payment isn't hanging in the balance, you wouldn't care as much about stuff like that. Apologies, not sure why that took so long for me to realize.
Still, I think nobody goes for less than $6/hr, right? I don't really do anything for less than $7/hr, and even that's only if it's very low effort.
@turkinlight The thing with your handsaw vs chainsaw comparison is that we were comparing price/hr, not price/hit--and even then, my $8/hr was using a script to let me use keyboard controls, and said keyboard controls were bound to a PS2 controller for reduced hand-pain when I expected the batch to last longer.