My lodger, Kurt, used to have a business - mending electrical appliances. He said the phone never stopped and he knew, as do I, that not answering it is no option. No answer, no work. So, he answered, in the middle of a tightly scheduled day of work, he answered, got behind, worked late and invited stress into his very ordered life - other people’s stress.
On spurs of moments, he needed to know how much the parts would be, the nature of the problem, then plan in a visit that was on a route that made sense for other visits that day and that he needed to know in his head, and how long the work would take and then give an answer.
“How come there’s a call-out charge of 65 euros - just to drive here and back again?” his customers would ask. The 65 euros, he explained to me, yes, covered the wear and tear on his van, his petrol, his time, and then his time on the phone with them, for five days solid as they check this and verify that, and just make sure, plus the calls from all his other potential customers who in the end don’t ask him to come at all. People want to pay for the service they get, but they don’t want to pay for running the business that provides it.
In the end, Kurt burned out and was off work for three years and more and is still on benefits and, with a little help and encouragement is going to find work - he can do anything in manual trades, has a gas-fitter’s licence, can handle a saw, pipe-bending equipment, weld, you name it; he built his own solar panels and has knowledge that no landlord can be without and that this one is very glad to have in house. This is a win-windfall situation for me. However, Kurt doesn’t want to go back to his old business, not one bit of it.
But, it’s true: asking costs nothing; even if it does cost something. Not to the asker, though. In translation, they send their PDF and ask for a delivery date and a cost. Sometimes I know the cost will be too much. For instance, I just did a test translation - it wasn’t that long, but it took time. I sent it back and they liked it. They said “We can do business - we will pay you 6.5 cents a word.” I don’t think we’ll be doing much business and, what’s more, I don’t think that someone offering 6.5 cents a word, when the market norm is around twice that, should be asking for test translations, either. They want the best, and pay the worst. They wasted my time, but it didn’t cost them anything to ask.
Some send not a PDF but a JPG. So, to give an estimate, I need to convert it to a PDF - takes a minute, and then do an OCR conversion, which is a hit and a miss at the best of times and then calculate a word rate, to which I add 20% because the document was photographed at an angle: I can read it, but OCR has difficulties. And, why was it photographed in the first place? Yes, to save time. A sworn translation is on paper, but agencies ask for the Word version so they can put it into their database and save time. Their time. And they ask for it as a complimentary service, like scans, which also take time. “We’re under time pressure so we need a placeholder.” I now charge EUR 1.50 a page for a scan. “How come you didn’t say so at the start?” “Because you didn’t ask at the start and assumed I’d do it for free.”
Or the document may be in workable format. XLS or PPT: but they take a lot of time to fiddle with. As do documents with tables and columns and rows. Flowing text takes a lot less time than a list of specific terminology, because you get freebies like “je suis” and “encore une fois”. But they want to apply the same word rate. A word’s a word, isn’t it? Well, “you” kind-a trips off the tongue, but “band-linkage” needs a bit more thinking about, actually.
I used to do shopping for clothes when on holiday (I don’t do holidays now, I’ll do one when I get 100 subscribers here). I had all day and could browse all I wanted, no stress. When I went to Palm Springs for White Party, the town of 40,000 inhabitants would be invaded by 20,000 homosexual men, and I popped along in the days before the party to a leather workshop to ask if they could do some work for me. I got a 15-minute lecture about how everyone was descending on the city and wanted their work done immediately and he just couldn’t cope - what a bloody nerve we had (he said he wasn’t calling me a “dickhead”, which was nice). I cut him off where I could get a sheet of paper in edgeways and said, “If you can’t do it, no sweat, I’ll get it done another time, or by someone else, but thanks anyway.” In the end, Octavio and I just walked out mid-tirade, even though it made us look a bit like dickheads. Maybe you think I’m one now, but this is a plea, not a tirade.
In the end, the maxim is correct: it costs nothing to ask, even if replying takes half an hour. However, one other thing also costs nothing. And that’s saying, “No, thank you. I appreciate your time and trouble.” And, if you tell the supplier why - timing, or cost, or other conditions - maybe the next time you ask, you’ll get a nice little deal.
I ask sometimes for people to sign up to my blog and I know they look, because the viewing figures are much higher than my subscribers list. It’s nice that they look, anyway. I need to find a way for them to say it’s rubbish, because they can’t if they don’t subscribe. But, they know where to find me. That way, I know to adjust my price. And maybe then I can go on holiday again.