I’m just not a terribly good capitalist.
We just had a client in who was on the verge of dropping off a job that would have made us about $300. Fairly simple slide imaging stuff, but in sufficient quantity to make it useful to break out the bulk load camera. Then she mentioned that she was an art student and it was stuff for her portfolio.
Uh oh.
Here’s where a good capitalist would have said, “Oh that’s nice” or something, done the job and happily pocketed the money. Unfortunately for us, all of us in the office have been college students, and we know how tight money can get.
I think monetary sympathy is tied in to some flavor chemical. I’ll know that I’ve gotten too far from my starving student days when I start to forget what 20 cent ramen noodles taste like. I’ve got a couple packets in my kitchen cupboard just in case I feel like I’m too wealthy.
But I digress…
WorkKevin is a recent graduate, so he knew that there were facilities available for art and architecture students to do exactly what she wanted us to do. While they aren’t exactly free, her using them to do her job for herself would be a lot less expensive than having us do the job for her. We gave her pointers on film types to use, where to find them and where to have the slides developed, and then sent her on her way.
All for free.
On the other hand, one of the biggest reasons that our office exists is to save our clients money by reducing outsourcing. Great job on that count. Not so great on our other objective, which is charging enough to be self-supporting within the system.
Ah well. Put it down to public relations expenses I guess.