[webproducers] Re: We're so cool you should work for free! (WILL SOMEBODY SHOOT ME NOW!)

| About the only thing that kept me from slitting my wrists was
| the fact that early-on in the process, I got them to sign an
| agreement that prevented them from using any of my ideas or
| design concepts for their web site just in case they were
| fucking around.

The government can be just as bad. The State of Washington - in particular
the Dept of Health is terrible with IT contractors. They had me wipe my
slate clean to take on an emergency project (I subcontracted through a
horrible agency I hadn't worked through before) -- after turning down other
contracts to do this, cancelled a vacation, even upgrading my laptop for
this "rush job" the person in charge took a job with another agency and they
scrapped it, about 3 weeks into the job. There was no "kill fee" written
into the contract. Then to add insult to injury, the agency I subscontracted
for had overbilled the agency and got caught -- stopped payment on my last
check of almost $3,000.00 (we didn't know this until week after it had been
deposited and mostly spent). So then I had no last paycheck and no job lined
up. They caught her overbilling because I honestly reported my hours to both
sources as I was instructed to do in my contract. (I had no idea this other
company was overbilling). Even though the State found her in error and not
me -- I was the one who suffered the financial hardship.

When I produced websites for Access WA government state web sites they
pulled a few slick and no doubt illegal moves. I had an IT contract vendor
number that I applied for the contract with and worked under. It took them 5
months for me to get my first check. During the process of finding out why
it was taking so long I found out that they placed my contract through
another vendor. (because they could pay me less through their contract). I
didn't want to make a huge deal out of it because the money was good and I
didn't want to lose the contract completely. However, nobody bothered to
tell me when the company failed to renew their contract with the state. The
agency that produces Websites for the state does not receive funding -- they
receive their money through the individual agencies they produced Web sites
for (through the public relations budget). Individual state agencies were
not required to go through this other state agency for web production. After
they stopped contracting with the company I was contracting through that
pretty much put them on the Web they accepted "competitive" bids from other
state agency employee's running Web design businesses on their own. This
would include an employee who make PR decisions for the state's second
largest agency! I didn't even bother to continue with my bid when I saw
that. I also didn't want to wait 5 months for a paycheck again.

I can be blatantly honest about this here and now because I would not
contract with the State of Washington under any circumstances after what I
have experienced and learned from others with similar experiences. However
that does not detract from the importance of the fact that I did not cover
myself contractually. Yes the bad check and I can collect on but I should
have covered myself contractually better. Nothing in the contracts said they
could do what they did but nothing said they couldn't either.

Kari


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