Full Work Day…For Free!

So my uncle is a board member at a local non-profit organization and he called me yesterday for some computer help down at the club. I had kinda assumed this was going to be a freebie, and headed down to solve a printer problem and some various little bugs. I was there for about an hour, which wasn’t a big deal. The problem is, an hour later I was called back for a larger problem. This time I was down there for between an hour and a half and two hours. All fixed up, I headed home and hoped that was the end of it.

Unfortunately, today I received a call with more trouble, and I headed down again. The hard drive had just completely crapped out. Buying a new hard drive, installing Windows, and getting their computer to about where it was before the old one crashed: A little over 4 hours. I will also be contacted again tomorrow, because they did not have access to their Excel and Quickbooks backup CD at the time. Helping them restore their files shouldn’t take much time, but as it stands, at my normal rate, this job would already be worth $210. If it was a normal business, I would have no problem confronting them about it, but this is a non-profit organization, PLUS a favor for my uncle. I’ve done lots of freebie computer jobs, but shouldn’t I be allowed to draw the line after X number of hours?

Whatever. Being a nice guy sucks.

August 18, 2005 • Posted in: All, Computers/Tech

One Response to “Full Work Day…For Free!”

  1. mom - August 23rd, 2005

    Uncle or no uncle, good cause or not, you absolutely have the right, should they call you up again in the near future, to say, hey, love being a good guy and all and helping out when I can but I have to feed myself so I really can’t do another freebie; how about half price for you guys this time
    and if you talked to your aunt, you would know that your uncle has a tendency to let people take advantage of him so it probably hasn’t even occurred to him that maybe just maybe he’s asking just a little too much this time
    of course, if they do ask for your time again, you could always ask your mom to approach the subject with your uncle :-)

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